Logic Pro 13 splits drums into kit pieces, but its AI assistant needs a subscription

Apple announced the next Logic Pro on 27 October as part of an Apple Creator Studio update, and the release notes for Logic Pro 13.0 are now up. The headline feature comes with conditions that the rest of the update does not.

The new assistant, in beta, takes requests in everyday language. Apple’s examples include “Put the selected tracks in a Track Stack”, “Convert the drummer region to MIDI” and “Add a compressor to the vocal track”. Apple says it uses a combination of its own and third-party models, and that projects and prompts are never used to train them.

Apple’s Logic Pro page says the subscription and one-time versions have the same features. The 13.0 release notes carve out an exception: the assistant requires a Creator Studio subscription, an Apple silicon Mac and macOS 27 or later. It works in English only, you must be signed in to an Apple Account, and usage limits may apply. So a $199.99 one-time licence does not get the feature Apple leads with.

The more useful addition for most producers has no such condition stated. Stem Splitter gains a Drums (Individual Kit Pieces) preset that extracts kick, snare, hi-hat, toms, cymbals and other percussion from an audio region, grouped in a summing Track Stack. Stems now also take the gain of the original region into account. It arrives in the same week as stem tools in Cubase 16 and Pro Tools 2026.11, while iZotope Photon offers a similar five-piece drum split as a separate product.

The Browser is rebuilt too. It now brings the Sound Library, your own samples and patches, plug-in presets, Sampler instruments and downloaded Splice sounds into one place. An on-device analysis tool Apple calls music understanding finds the tempo, key and filter tags of your files, so you can search by description, or drag in a sample and choose Find Similar. Those search features need an Apple silicon Mac. Your own sample folders are added as Locations and analysed the same way.

There is also a Liquid Glass redesign, touch support on the new MacBook Pro and on an iPad used through Sidecar, and a Producer Pack from Sergio George.

Apple’s announcement spells out a free update for Creator Studio subscribers, at $12.99 a month or $129 a year. It does not say whether existing one-time owners pay anything, so check the App Store before assuming. The one-time version costs $199.99 and needs macOS 26.1 or later.

Producer’s note

Treat the kit-piece stems as material for reinforcing or rebalancing rather than as clean close mics. Cymbal wash inside the snare stem is where a split like this usually shows, so check that stem alone before you compress it.