Opening Logic 7 (and earlier) files in Lion

Indeed, it's because we trusted Apple to do the right thing, and upgraded when told, that this has happened. It's not about keeping current...it's about using material we wrote with Logic 5 years ago, if we desire.

I guess now you know the smart thing to do is to keep around older versions of software that is important to you. If you even had a backup that had L7 on it you could try bringing it back over.

VTDiva wrote:

Older files have nothing to do with Apple's business model.

This is wrong, it has very much to do with Apple's business model. (not that I'm agreeing with it)

Final Cut X is a perfect example, when it was released nearly a year ago, it did not open ANY previous version of Final Cut files, not even from the version directly preceding. Not only that, Each upgrade to Final Cut X - 10.2, 10.3 did not support the previous file structure and files had to be converted.

Apple seldom supports older versions of software, this way they keep customer "interference" to a minimum and support has to deal with only current versions. Saves a ton of money, just as these support forums save money, customers do a good portion of the support work, for free!

You can also see this pattern with their hardware... how many different types of processors, slots, external I/O formats have they supported/dropped over the past 6-7 years? If there had not been a noticeable customer backlash all recent Macs would be shipping without a Firewire port. DVD/CD drives will disappear very shortly if they haven't already. Logic would drop support for external MIDI gear if they thought they could get away with it.

Apple knows that their customer base will move forward with them regardless. This topic is a perfect example, even though several posters are inconvenienced, no one is switching to another DAW or hardware platform.

I've kept an old G4 running Tiger that has Logic 7 and 8.02 on it, I can convert a couple hundred Logic 5 files when/if necessary.

If people were 'upgrading when told' then you wouldnt have missed the upgrade to Logic 8 and this wouldnt have been an issue.. 😉

Logic 7 is already 8 years old I dont know why you would expect them to still offer support for it.. They dont even offer OS support 2 versions back either, not to mention how they drop hardware support for perfectly capable machines left and right nowadays.

Logic 8 was a pretty significant update, part of which was a change to the song file format and all of your older files had to be converted to the new Project format if you wanted to work with them. Older ones opened and played back fine but if you wanted to actually work on them and save them, they had to be saved as the new format. So regardless, you still wouldve had to actually sit down for a few days and open and convert all those old songs in order to continue working.

Quicken/Quickbooks does this every few years and people have to jump through hoops converting their old financial databases over to some new format just to keep from losing all their business records (we get this request at work alot).. Microsoft Office has done it several times as well, but Microsoft surprisingly stays compatible with all the older stuff for the most part, like theyve even done with Windows XP.

Just like the G5's came and were swept under the rug, theyve done it with legacy Logic files too, at least as far as the Project files go. The older .lso files still open up fine, and some of the ones I just opened might even be from way back in Logic Platinum 4. I dont have any project files from Logic 7 left over to check (my file dates all seem to start right after the release of Logic 8 go figure) but see if you can right click on the project file and possibly 'Show package contents', maybe the older version has an .lso file hidden inside somewhere? Its been quite awhile since Ive used it though so I cant remember if the older version of the project file is a package container or not like the new one is.

Pancenter - haha dont even get me started on MIDI support and the death of my beloved eMagic Sound Diver! At least my 10 year old AMT8 interface still works perfectly..

VTDiva wrote:

I believe you miss my point. I did "upgrade when told".

No, you miss my point... I'm saying it's a bogus policy that users are encouraged/forced to upgrade often losing backwards compatibility. I'm also saying that Apple doesn't give a $%^#$ about you not being able to convert your old files. Your only hope is one of the emagic programmers still working for Apple would feel sorry for users like yourself and write a program to perform the conversion... but I'd say the chances of that happening are less than .001%.

The only way to do this is to keep an installation of older software...

Ok, yep... sorry about that, thanks for clarifying.

Even though Logic is doing well at the app store most new users will never need to convert an older file, heck most new users barely know what to do with Logic except drop a few loops in from the loop library and call it composing.

I think folks that have used Logic for many years are already outnumbered by new purchasers, many of whom have never used a DAW system so retro compatibility is probably not on anyone's plate. This is the difference between a small company developing a few products and a large corporation that can afford to lose a few customers over what is considered minor compatibility issues... if those issues are even considered at all.

Try this solution, which I found on another post somewhere else. I just tried it (was having the same problem as you) and it worked fine. Hope it works for you!

by n6smith » Tue Dec 27, 2011 6:45 pm

Great tip Steve... I needed to do that too... and was wondering what was a quick and dirty way without needing L7..

Here is my method..

In L9... locate and click on the media icon on the far right hand side of the screen

Select the Browser tab.

Browse to the L7 project

Double click on the project and the various tracks of the project will be displayed.

Select the track and check off what exactly from the track you wish to import into your L9 project

Click on "ADD" at the bottom righthand corner

"Rinse and repeat!"

Update: Or what Steve said..................

Nigel

<Link Edited By Host>

I have found an online service that will convert your files for you.

http://elogic-x.yolasite.com

Best of luck!

Greg

@ kayak gal:

The method you described above does NOT work for older Logic songs (ie pre 7.2.x) .

You just get the message to first load the song into v7.2 or earlier.

My 5c worth on all this:

Keep a "legacy" Mac that runs OS9 and various versions of OS10 in order to load old songs (and use any other legacy apps).

It's not just Apple - all the older Spectrasonics plugins (eg Stylus original, Atmosphere etc) won't work anymore on newer Macs and OS'es. Old versions of Logic used to use VST plugins - none of these work now at all.

This applies only to "old" users like myself - I've had Logic since 1995 and I can still access ALL of my old songs, though with varying degrees of difficulty.

it worked for my logic 7.1 files... :-)

Colin Shapiro wrote:

This applies only to "old" users like myself - I've had Logic since 1995 and I can still access ALL of my old songs, though with varying degrees of difficulty.

Yep, same here.. I have version 5 on a PC and 7.2.3 on a G4, between the two I can convert pretty much any of my old files... "with varying degrees of difficulty".

Greg, this service is excellent. Turnaround time was fantastic, and the prices are extremely reasonable. Thanks for posting here. Even my ancient files were servicable, and I'm glad for it. I had discarded these files because they didn't fit the style I was working with in recent years, but having come back around to some of them, it's really nice not to start from scratch.