How do you use a copyrighted song as a Reference track?

[Johne1]

Hi all,
I know this is a basic question, but I've never seen the answer explained anywhere and a Google search hasn't helped.

1. What do I need to do to use a copyrighted (radio) song as my Reference track in Logic Pro or any DAW?
2. If you tell me I have to pay for it in iTunes, fine. Then how do I get the song audio from iTunes into my DAW?

I realize this is probably a basic 101 level question, but I've never seen the answer anywhere, only videos and books telling me to use reference tracks, without telling me HOW !! There must be a way to do this legally without violating copyright or performance or recording rights, but HOW ??

Thanks if advance!

[Martin Walker]

Hi Johne1, and welcome to the SOS Forums!

Well the simplest answer would be to buy the track in question, either as a digital download or on CD, and then you are perfectly free to use the track/s as you wish for comparison purposes.

You could import the track to your choice of DAW, and then toggle between your own mix and the imported reference track to compare them, but in most cases it's easier to use a suitable plugin.

For some years now I've used MetricAB from Plugin Alliance, which lets you load into it up to 16 different reference tracks, either using them whole, or marking a specific shorter section that loops round.

Then, at any point in your song, just open up the MetricAB plugin window and click its large A|B button to switch between any of your chosen reference tracks and your mix for A/B comparisons. Another single button press will adjust the loudness of all your reference tracks to that of your mix, so you can compare them more honestly.

This is greatly helped by switching between the various tabbed windows, where you can compare the frequency spectrum, stereo imaging, loudness levels, and so on. You can also filter what you're hearing, so for instance it could be useful to hear only the low end or the high end when comparing your mix with that of a reference track.

Oh, and DO wait for it to appear in the next Plugin Alliance sale - the'retail price' of MetricAB has always seemed excessive to me, but it regularly appears at a sale price of around £30.

[James Perrett]

Yes, to be totally legal you need to have bought the song in some format. Some services (like Qobuz) allow you to download songs in CD quality FLAC format which you can import directly into many DAWs (although I'm not sure whether Logic supports FLAC yet as Apple have their own equivalent, ALAC).

Hopefully an Apple user will come along and tell you how to do the same thing with iTunes and Logic.

[Drew Stephenson]

If you subscribe to a lossless streamer (Qubuz or Tidal for example) you could just match the loudness and play it through that.
If you do go down the download-and-load-into-the-daw route, make sure you set the output of the reference track to bypass any mix-bus processing.