Goodbye Redmatica Hello Logic Pro X

Rumours have been circling for a few days that Apple is in the process of buying Redmatica. A little known Italian software developer, Redmatica produce some highly regarded music software, for the creation and management of audio samples. I’ve been using Redmatica’s excellent ProManager and KeyMap software for three years now.

Yesterday, Rematica users received a note advising that founder, Andrea Gozzi is closing Redmatica “to pursue other interests.” We were advised to download the latest updates before June 12 and make backup copies of our Redmatica software.

What This Probably Means

Redmatica’s focus has been the creation and management of samples. So, Apple would be buying the technology to use it in the EXS24 sample player (and probably Ultrabeat as well) inwith Logic Pro (and Mainstage) and probably to improve Garageband as well. EXS24 is a great bit of code, but the sample player has not been significantly improved (apart from 64bit memory access) in a long while. The current version has much the same interface and user functionality as it did in Logic 7, back in 2004.

In the meantime, Native Instrument’s Kontakt has established itself as the big player in the sample world. And, recent additions like Spectrasonic’s Omnisphere and Izotope’s Iris have also raised the bar in terms of user interfaces and ability to manipulate samples.

With the purchase of Redmatica, Apple could significantly upgrade EXS24, or create a whole new sample player with improved library facilities and a much better process for creating and mapping samples. Apple could also use Redmatica’s intelligence to improve sample management in Ultrabeat, as well as Logic’s own library, loop management and sample editor window.

Although I love Logic and use it everyday, there many aspects of audio asset management where Logic is not best in class. However, Redmatica was viewed by many people as amongst the best, so it’s a shrewd move, if Apple are looking to beef up their next audio editing suite.

What It Could Mean

Of course, a purchase like this could mean more than just improvements to Logic’s existing features. Redmatica’s Keymap was the leading programme for the creation of Kontakt libraries and ProManager was designed to also manage Kontakt and Reason sample libraries. Could it be that Apple has plans that involve these technologies as well?

Imagine if Logic could easily convert Kontakt libraries into EXS24 libraries (while retaining all functionality). Or, imagine if you could export EXS libraries as Kontakt libraries. Either, or both would radically lift Logic in the sample-driven production and sound design world.

And, if we are dreaming, then what about a feature that made it easier to sample and map any song in your iTunes library, on the fly? Logic still can’t match Propellerhead’s ReCycle for straightforward loop slicing and no-one has developed a programme to easily sample and slice a whole song, then quickly sort the samples by type and sound.

Besides, anyone who has been in music production for a while will already have a lot of audio siting on their drives that may well be under-utilised. It’s a nice idea, but not always easy when you have Gigabytes of old project files to sort through.

Conclusion

Logic Pro users tend to be a nervous lot. There’s always a fear that as Apple’s future looks tied, more and more, to mobile devices, intensive programmes like Logic Pro could be cut (or radically dumbed down). But, the purchase of Redmatica would be a nice confirmation that, at least for the time being, Apple is still committed to developing the Logic platform.

Which might also be a sign that Apple is still committed to high end desktop machines, since they have often used pro applications like Logic to market the Mac Pro, for example. With 64-bit processing, sample players like EXS24 and Kontakt can load vast amounts of high quality samples into RAM. So, you can now playback files from RAM that previously required streaming from several hard drives (or machines).

Focusing on the sample creation and playback areas of Logic Pro could well be a way to showcase the need for high end Macs running with huge amounts of RAM.