Volume is a tricky thing. The louder a track is, the better it sounds to us. While the quieter a track is, the muddier and less interesting it sounds.
Every plugin you have has the potential to change the volume of your tracks. Especially plugins like Logic’s compressors, limiters, or distortion.
As you drive up that distortion, your track starts to sound louder and more exciting. But is that distortion really improving your track? Or just making it louder?
One of my top 10 feature requests for Logic Pro is a true, one-to-one automatic gain compensation for all Logic’s plugins. Especially for all the EQs, dynamic plugins, and distortions.
Autogain compensation is amazing. It ensures that your track’s levels are exactly the same no matter how much you process them with plugins.
Pile on the compression and EQ. Drive that distortion up by 20+ dB. Who cares! With autogain you’re only hearing the effect of that compressor or distortion. Not the sudden boost in volume.
Unfortunately, very few Logic plugins offer autogain. And even of the plugins that do offer autogain, the levels are not identical pre- and post-processing.
Hopefully Apple will someday hear my wishes for Autogain. But until then, why not use Smart Controls to manage volume for us?
Smart Controls are easily overlooked. But they’re super powerful for mapping plugins and instruments to do just about anything you’d like!
So instead of manually juggling gain, let me show you how you can use Smart Controls to do this for you automatically. Check out today’s video for more 🙂
Absolutely ‘wondrous’ Chris. Lovely presentation of a feature that will save time during workflow. But you’re right, it’s something Logic developers could have fixed long before now.
I’d love to see you do an in depth study of Mid/side EQ, as it appears there’s different uses for this technique, on individual channels, and on the Master bus.
Whilst there are a number of YouTube videos deal with aspects of this, I think you could do it more justice!!
As always, thanks for the great advice.
It’s transformed my workflow this year.
Thanks, you’ve solved some things that were problematic to me, that I couldn’t find easy workarounds or solutions for. Problems solved! Nice one Chris, Ta.
Wow. Most excellent Chris — Respect! I had no idea about these LPX features. Glad to have this info – sophisticated stuff that is super valuable. Keep up the fine work; looking forward to your continued success in the new normal.
Really clever. Is this what the compressor smart control is doing on the software instruments, I.e. where it’s just a single compression level (no ratio and threshold)?
Hey Robin, absolutely! Many of the premade/preloaded Smart Controls combine multiple plugin and instrument parameters. For example, Kyle’s “Compression” Smart Control affects Threshold, Ratio, and Make Up Gain at the same time.