Logic Pro X | All the BEST Settings (and which to IGNORE)

hey everyone welcome to the channel today I'm going to go through all the settings in logic from top to bottom and explain what they do and what you might want to set them as there's a lot of settings and preferences in logic and it can be overwhelming no matter what your skill level is so I figured I would go through all of it and explain it and hopefully help you make sense of all of that so if that sounds good make sure you like And subscribe and I'm going to get started to get started we're going to go logic pro preferences General and we're just going to work left to right the one thing you need to do first though um in order to properly follow this video or to use logic as its fullest is to go to Advanced and turn on this enable complete features logic comes by default in a kind of watered down like Basics State um that streps away some of the advanced features that you might not need but generally if you're learning the settings turn this on and you'll have full functionality of logic so once you do that you check that box go back to General and we're going to start project handling and move on from there so startup action this is what happens when you first open logic and so I prefer it on do nothing which basically nothing happens when I open logic uh it's up to me to go open a project or start a new project that's just how I like to work but you can have it open the most recent project which is whatever you last had open when you Clos logic um open an existing project you can select from a template you can create an empty new project or you can create a project using a default template or you can have it ask what you want it to do again I like do nothing I think the default here is to open your most recent project but that can be a big time waster every time you open logic if it opens a project you don't want it to so I just I like do nothing it saves a little bit of time if you want to do the create new project using template say you're a podcaster right and you have like every time you open logic you're starting a new podcast you go put this on template mode and then select template and you can go select your podcast template um that's just one way you can use that setting okay when opening a project ask if current project should be closed this is is that dialogue box that pops up like hey you're opening a project do you want to save and close this one generally you'd want that on you do want to close your old projects cuz that'll free up CPU the only reason you'd want to leave a project open is if you're copying data or files back and forth um otherwise yeah leave that on export mini command save single mini region as format zero I don't know what this is so just leave it on leave it at the default if you need to dig into midi stuff this might be something to look into um auto backup so this is the autosave feature like how many versions you want it to autosave uh retroactively I think is the word I like it on 10 that's a good Middle Point as you increase the number obviously it's going to be safer you're going to have more alternate versions but that's going to use more CPU to store more of those alternate versions so as you decrease the number you will be a little riskier but better on your CPU so I find that 10 I think 10 is the default as well 10's a good middle ground for that or or you could turn it off I would not recommend that cuz then it will not autosave um so just do the I like the last 10 recent items is what shows when you go to file open recent um the system default is 10 just leave it at 10 that's fine going to the editing tab undo steps the same thing as like the auto backup the higher the number you go like you'll have more undo steps it'll be a little safer the lower number you go you're going to have less steps and it won't be as safe but you're going to save CPU so I like 20 but if you're doing some really heavy projects you might want to lower that to save some CPU um you could also raise it if you want but I feel like 20 is a good amount this add last edit operation to region name you can just leave that off cuz it to me it just crowds the region area um Groove template edits immediately update all Associated regions I believe that's if you update your groove track it'll update you know everything else that's following the groove track so you'd probably want that on I don't use Groove tracks a lot so that's up to your discretion create new new regions after splitting Loops definitely leave that on because you want to be able to split your Loops right like you don't want to have to drag them shorter um if you have a loop out there and you cut it you want it to actually cut okay select regions on track selection this is pretty cool because then if you click like if I go click this simple analog lead it's going to highlight all the regions in there it makes it really convenient for just editing stuff quicker generally if you click a track like you're probably likely to go touch audio region in there select tracks on region SL Marquee selection so that's the other way if I go and click a region does it highlight the track I personally like that off but you can do what you want there select regener tracks on Marquee selection so see I go and like select a track then it it pulls it up there that's up to you okay right Mouse button opens up shortcut menu so when you right click this is the shortcut menu um if you put it as a signable tool you'll actually get a third item up here and you can just change whatever it does so like now it's the scissors and I can right click and immediately scissor something so if you're doing a lot of editing that could be good um it gets in the way for me because I like the shortcut menu but you could also do the shortcut and Tool menu where it'll change what your mouse does so you know you can go to pencil and change to pencil um this also just it's a lot to look at so I just like the shortcut menu because if I need to change the tool I go up here I hardly ever change the tool I almost always use these two so that's what it does um trackpad I won't talk about trackpad I don't use the trackpad my laptop's tucked under there now right here this is big uh pointer tool in tracks provides fade tool click zones so this means if this is off um and you bring your mouse up to the top here nothing happens it's just a a loop either a loop or extend audio region but if you turn on this fade tool click Zone then at the very top you'll get the ability to do quick Fades and that is killer that's like a Protools kind of workflow so definitely have that on you can also experiment with Marquee tool click zone so when you get to the bottom half of a region it'll automatically give you the Marquee I thought I'd like this but it messes up my workflow too much but that's what it does okay quick swipe and take editing click zones I like that on limit dragging to One Direction that is not the boy band that is when you're dragging something around does it like if I were to take this right here can I move that up and down at the same time or if you turn it on in tracks area you can only move it left and right or up and down you can't do both that's what that does I don't like that on personally I like to be able to move it everywhere because you can always turn on snap and it'll kind of stay relative to a position so that's what I do there piano roll editor region border trimming you can leave that on okay cycle cycle pre-processing you can leave that off catch you can leave all this stuff on the defaults notification just skip this accessibility if you don't need accessibility you can leave this alone moving on to audio devices this is my favorite page I go here the most you're going to want to leave Core Audio checked all the time your output device is where you're playing back to so that should most likely be your interface or your MacBook speakers or headphones whatever you have input device you'd want to pick ideally your interface or something like that if you've created an aggregate device you can set it here if you don't know what an aggregate device is it let you sum together multiple audio interfaces or audio devices and use all of them at the same time um if you want to set that up I have a video about it up top IO buffer size basically IO buffer size set it to a lower number when you're recording as low as your computer can handle um because this is going to reduce latency but increases the processing on your computer if you're mixing or not doing anything like real time audio monitoring set this up as high as you can because it'll use less CPU for your latency and more CPU for what you're actually doing resulting latency this is just telling you like if I were to record right here I'd have a 48 millisecond round trip like from strumming the guitar into the computer to back 48 milliseconds that's too much but if you throw this down to like 64 then you have an 8.9 millisecond round trip that's a lot better okay recording delay this is if you want it to put a delay on what you've recorded like going in um leave that at zero unless you got a weird situation going on um all this other stuff you can leave on default uh processing threads automatic process buffer range medium multi-threading playback and live track summing High Precision rewire Behavior if you're not doing anything specific you don't need to touch these General display audio engine overload message you're going to want this on because if you overload your CPU you want it to pop up and tell you what's going on otherwise you're not going to know what's going on you won't know that you need to fix it um sample accurate information you can leave this on all the things um I don't know why you wouldn't want sample accurate information automatic bus assignment uses so I recently changed this I learned about it for this video you know when you open up like a new track and you're going to go software instrument and you're going to go to the library and you're going to pick just something a glocken Spiel okay this glocken Spiel on default it creates two buses a small booth and a large Church Reverb um and that's nice that's part of the sound but if you are like me and have like a plan for all your buses creating one of these is going to drop two random buses into your hierarchy of buses you know so if you put this automatic bus assignment uses you can tell it like hey don't use anything below 32 for these automatic bus assignments that also like if you create a track stack that will use an automatic bus assignment and it defaults to starting at bus one but like I like to mix with a certain hierarchy and so I've turned this to you know any new buses go above 32 which is like on this other page so now all the automatically created buses go to this page and I still have my original page right there um that's huge I was like super nerding out about that when I figured it out software monitoring leave that on uh input monitoring only for Focus track and only when input monitoring is enabled if you have this on basically you have to highlight the track and arm it for recording and press the input monitoring button to be able to hear it if you turn this off you'll be able to hear any inputs uh when the input monitoring is on regardless of if it's armed or you've clicked on it so I like this off because then it's like a regular soundboard like if you plug something in it and the fader up you can hear it you don't have to like deal with selecting a Channel or anything independent monitoring level for record enabled Channel strips if you click this it'll actually give you a separate record level so like on here the volume is pretty low on playback but when I hit record there's a record level um if that's off then they both share the same level so I actually like that on it must have gotten turned off when I was prepping for the video but I like that on because you know when you're recording something you probably want to hear it pretty loud but that doesn't mean when you're playing back you want to hear it at that level so it lets you set two different levels I kind of like working that way um that's up to you Dim level when you're in your mixer here on the very Master output there's a d and so that's going to dim your output by a certain amount and you can decide that amount right here I think- 20 DB is the default and that's fine so like here's playback and then I can dim it by 20 DB so that's really convenient if you want it to be more or less you can change it but that's what it does plug-in latency compensation you want it on all um playback pre-roll you can leave that on low latency mode I would leave that off because most things you wouldn't need to be in low latency mode um if you're recording you might turn that on if you're having issues but I would start with your IO buffer size before coming to low latency mode sampler you can leave all of this as is I left it all on the defaults U virtual memory same thing leave it all how it is unless you're doing some super crazy stuff the defaults will do fine for you okay cross fades for merging and take comping so like if I were to go comp this take right here you're setting that cross fade amount so that's 5 milliseconds if I increase that then you will get a bigger cross fade I wonder if you can actually see that or not yeah so you have to physically change it to see that so there's a small cross fade you can jack this up and have a big cross fade generally like the 5 milliseconds is fine cuz you just need a little bit so I'll leave it on five but definitely do what you like now you know cross fade curve if you want it just regular you can leave that alone if you want it to lean one way or the other that's where you change it scrubbing I left all this on the default IO assignments this is for surround and like advanced audio output routing if you're mixing in headphones or just on like a stereo pair of monitors you're fine bounce extensions don't change anything here input same thing don't change anything file editor these all pertain to when you open the editor on an audio file and go to this file editor right here um so do you want to be warned before processing a function by a key command I'd say yeah throw up the warning um clear undo history when closing a project you probably don't want to clear the undo history just leave it there it's not taxing your CPU I promise you um record selection changes in undo history record normalize operations and undo history um you do want to keep those cuz you want any action you do in the undo history five undo steps is probably plenty I hardly use this file editor I don't know about you guys um but that's I left all that on the defaults MP3 you don't need to worry about MP3 here because you can change it when you go to export so if you go file balance projector section um and go to MP3 you have all the same options right here so I would just change it when you're going to export and not worry about it in your main settings recording um your recording file type you can either do aiff which is like an apple exclusive thing but it's basically the same as a wave or you can record right as a wave file either one when I export I export as a wave so I think that's the most important thing but you can set this wherever you'd like 24-bit recording I like that on I like to record at high quality overlapping track recordings this is is a bunch of what if scenarios for Regions overlapping and so basically you can go right here so like when a midi region overlaps and the cycle is off do you merge the region do you create a take folder um you can overlap them you can create a new track create a track alternative I like merge because sometimes I'll play one part of a midi and then like another part or I'll play the notes of the midi and then write in some pitch and mod wheel I like merge for that and I prefer the same thing when the Cycle's on I leave this replace on regen erase and then on the audio side I like to create take folders no matter what um because then it just makes it really nice for editing later it's all right there in a little package okay midi if you are not doing anything crazy with midi you can ignore this I'm not going to go into it because I am not an expert on midi so you're better off looking for a logic pro midi video from an expert moving on to display um everything in here is going to be whatever you like because it's just display it's it's mostly Aesthetics so appearance system setting you can also switch between light or dark system setting dark always you know um okay Windows large local Windows menu large inspectors this is just going to change the size of certain things uh wide playhead if you're into that I am not um show help tags this is great because if you hold your mouse over something you're going to get it's like hey that's the editor you can access it by hitting e that's helpful um default values I turned this on because if you go in this region section it'll tell you hey the gain's at zero otherwise it's just empty so I like seeing all the zeros um show icons in new tracks dialogue so when you go right here to this new tracks window this is with it off and then if you turn this on and then go to the new tracks you get this this feels a little Garage Band to me I don't know um like I hear sound from Studio capture I don't like that I want it to just like look regular yeah I want to select my audio output I don't want to tell you where I want to hear sound from that's probably a weird side topic but yeah I leave that off show animations that's like when you open windows and stuff does it I like that displays so display middle C as C3 I think default is C3 all of this I left as defaults clock format if you want to change it I like the regular clock format um onto tracks show track bar or number while scrolling I actually haven't messed with this one we are learning [Music] together this is probably better on a session with more tracks here we can we can simulate it so it'll kind of tell you I don't like that it's not no nope nope nope okay track color Auto assign 96 colors this is when you open a new track is it going to be the static color which is like blue for audio green for Midi yellow for drummer or will it autoassign colors so like as you keep making new tracks they're just going to be nice colors I prefer that I like the auto assign 96 you never run out of colors that way um region color as track color that just keeps it all plain and simple I think by default it used to be anyway it used to be on individual so like your track color could be blue and your region could be yellow it's super confusing so when you set it like that and change your track color it's going to change everything on that track that's generally what I think you'd want um marker color is static oh cool see we're learning together marker color I would like Auto assign for marker color so I think that means when I come up here and create a marker marker ooh look at that marker that's fun thank you for joining me as I play with colors um oh and then you close it and yeah you have the auto marker colors I would definitely do that that's better than just like no marker color let's get rid of some of them okay background is dark you can do bright you can do custom whatever you want I say dark all the way um grid lines you can change the color of the up and down and the left right you can just click the automatic if you want but I kind of made them a little more bold um so you just play with that if you want a black or white um depending on what you like to see that's what those do this is going to be like how light or dark something is uh I like them kind of brighter but not in your face Bri um region settings here shaded Loops B basically do you want your Loops to be the same color as the original or or darker I like darker cuz it kind of lets me know hey this is a loop here um and then the show plus button next to drummer regions the plus button adds another section and I like to have the plus button there uh mixer okay plug-in window open plug-in window on insertion so when you open a new plugin like when you put a plugin on there let's put Channel EQ it opens the plugin I like that because 99% of the time when I am adding a plugin I want to change something on the plugin so I like that okay show recent plugin list in plugin menu so when you go here to add a new plugin like do you want to see the recents I I like the recents personally um level meters this all has to do with your mix window or your info window um Peak hold time this is when you have a peak that little top section so if you do 4 [Music] seconds how long is it going to hold that Peak up there before they fall um I like 800 but I could also see like 2 seconds return time is how quickly they bounce back so very slow it's going to look like [Music] this and then [Music] um um as you speed it up you know they bounce faster uh this is the recommended one I think that's a little slower than I like to see so I usually go to faster the 30 millisecond one it's whatever you like I found faster feels the most like Pro Tools so if you're a Pro Tools person that would be your pick right there Channel order this is all for like 5.1 and Surround stuff so just leave it on default unless you are doing surround stuff and then set it to whatever you'd like um editors piano roll bright background if I open up piano roll here bright background I don't like that but you do you if you are not creating musical scores then you can skip this um I'm not going to get into it because there's that's a whole another area and again that's not my area of expertise um same thing with the movie if you are scoring to picture a lot and need to do Advanced movie settings you can do that here um automation we will talk about move automation with regions so when you move move a region and there's automation associated with it what do you want to happen um I like to ask because if you never move then you have to go manually move that automation if you always move then it's going to always move and you don't have a choice so I like it to just ask like hey do you want to move this automation over I usually say yes but it's good to not move it if you don't want to um include Trails if possible you can leave that on pencil tool hold for stepped editing or hold for curved editing so if you have the pencil let's put some points in and then if I drag and hold with the pencil it's going to do like stepped editing like that or you can have it on hold for curved editing [Music] and it'll do it like that um some weird things to play with I don't have either of those turned on um well I guess I I leave it on stepped editing but but I usually use Marquee so I don't really go there snap offset this is when you have snap automation on so when you're in Automation and you right click you go to snap automation this will offset it by five ticks sometimes if your automation is right on the downbeat you'll actually get like some transients or something through before the automation happens so that minus5 ticks it might be default by now that'll offset it a little bit ramp time I don't know what that is just leave it uh I have it at 200 milliseconds right mode Chang is to touch so when you use right mode and you're done it goes back to touch I like it that way I don't really use right that often and then right automation when you go into right mode do you want it to affect sends pans plugins I think I just want it on volume send and pan that way I don't mess up my plugins um automation quick access I leave that off I've not used quick access control surfaces um I put in my noes leave alone unless you want to do a deep dive if you're not doing a lot with control surfaces you don't need to worry about this I don't do a lot with control surfaces so I'm not going to go over it too much I know how to set up basic ones if you want to see how to set up basic ones I can show you that in a video so my info I just put my name in these two and then move on put your own name though don't put my name and that is it the last tab is the advanced and you should have turned on enable complete features that is a rundown of what most the settings in logic do let me know down in the comments if you have any specific questions or things you want me to touch on more this was quite the lengthy video so thank you to those who stuck around if this video was helpful make sure you like And subscribe and I'll see you on the next [Music] [Music] one

Channel: Woodyard Music

Views: 2,114

Keywords: Mixing, Mastering, Music, Music Production, Recording, Producing, Home Studio, Sound, Audio, Workflow, Beginners, Audio Engineering, Efficiency, Plugin, Beginner, Intermediate, Lesson, Tutorial, Explaination, Logic Pro, Logic Pro X, Apple, Preferences, Settings

Id: vsRzim5CLEc

Length: 25min 14sec (1514 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 14 2023