Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]

Lord Tim
Will DR have this kind of functionality? The threshold sensitivity automation is something I could see being indispensable.

Not in the first cut unfortunately since ARA plugins don't expose automation in SONAR yet. We may enhance this in a future version however. Feel free to submit a FR once you get DR :)

Cheers, Noel - looking forward to giving it a good workout! 

mudgel

bvideo
One very clever and helpful bit was to wrap ARA around VVocal.

How can that be.

VVocal itself was not modified in the release that brought ARA. It wasn't even included. On the other hand, it has a similar high-level architecture, such as an editor and direct access to the audio file, and it produces a new audio file for playback. But someone had to make some kind of software adapter to mate VVocal's older implementation with the ARA api. I thought that was clever and helpful.

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
It has some creative applications even outside of the primary drum replacement function. You can use it on any percussive material to fatten or add another percussive voice to it. Imagine taking a guitar part and adding automatic percussion hits to the accents or even blending in a new attack sound with it. Or you can drag out MIDI from a DR clip and send it to a synth...
 

Makes me think of TNT Wisdom!
https://youtu.be/amI1yzyxd14?t=34m25s

Thanks Sonar crew! I'll be using this today on live drum tracks recorded last night. Seems to work very well. Lord Tim's suggestion is a good one...but I'm very happy to have this quick and simple UI today. The features you've included are well thought out, practical and convenient. What was once a very laborious and tedious process is now quick and easy. I'm one very happy producer/engineer.

VVocal doesn't use ARA. We did that more than 5 years before ARA was available. 
However the VVocal API is very similar to ARA in some ways especially the random access part. However ARA implements a bunch of other stuff which is used by Melodyne. Document management and editing, transport control etc. The fact that we already had the basic framework for doing random access audio in SONAR is what made us choose to adopt ARA. 
Internally we don't have an adapter for VVocal - it uses its own API which is way simpler than ARA. However all the commands that create region effects etc use the same code for both ARA and VVocal. So it definitely helped to have that in place already.
 

bvideo

mudgel

bvideo
One very clever and helpful bit was to wrap ARA around VVocal.

How can that be.

VVocal itself was not modified in the release that brought ARA. It wasn't even included. On the other hand, it has a similar high-level architecture, such as an editor and direct access to the audio file, and it produces a new audio file for playback. But someone had to make some kind of software adapter to mate VVocal's older implementation with the ARA api. I thought that was clever and helpful.

Just checking back in... I used Drum Replacer on a session last week and it work very well. I had to make the 32 bit / 64 bit rendering adjustment but other than that...it never crashed and worked as advertised. Highly recommended.