Anderton

bladetragic
@forkol
 
Well stated.  The stair/elevator analogy was spot on.

I disagree. It's not that there's the choice of either you use a particular elevator or you use the stairs. You can use the VST elevator instead of either one.

No, in this case, now you want me to pay to install and use my own elevator, or just be content using the stairs, when other buildings the same height on the same block have a operable elevator that I can use without extra cost. Again, and I don't know how many times I have to say it, but Sharke pointed it out exactly:  VST/VSTi does not address integration/workflow.  I have Geist, and although it's useful, you still can't do an operation like, auto split beat at transients, and load into Geist from a audio clip.  Why did Sonar develop/use ARA?  Look at the integration between Melodyne and DrumReplacer using ARA.  That's the same kind of integration that would be very useful with a Sonar Sampler.
 

forkolI have Geist, and although it's useful, you still can't do an operation like, auto split beat at transients, and load into Geist from a audio clip. 

I'm not sure what you mean by this but I think you'll find that Geist excels at these very things - you can auto slice a beat either by transients or by beat division (and you can adjust the sensitivity of transient detection or even just place slice points manually). When you click "OK" on the slice operations then it will load your slices onto pads, layering them if necessary, and will also replicate the original beat in its pattern sequencer, applying any necessary timing offsets to each step. 
 
You can get audio into Geist either by loading a sample, or by using its inbuilt sampler into which you can route audio from anywhere in Sonar by using the splitter plugin. 

forkol
Why did Sonar develop/use ARA?  Look at the integration between Melodyne and DrumReplacer using ARA.  That's the same kind of integration that would be very useful with a Sonar Sampler.

ARA is relatively simple concept, useful for particular purpose like MElodyne. I can try to explain (how I understand it, may be I am wrong then correct please):
On a track we have an waveform. It can be real "WAV file" or it can be some "production" from this file, processed by FXes. The key point here is that we have it PRE-RECORDED. In other words, since we have the original waveform, we can produce "waves" for any time for which this waveform exists, not only for "now" time. To simplify things, lets assume we "freeze" all effects, so we have complete fixed waveform for the whole period (and lets call that period a REGION).
 
A DAW has access to any place in that waveform since the DAW defines all rules how it works with waveforms in files. But VST is limited by VST API which is a set of "functions". It happens that there is NO function in VST to ask DAW "please give me the waveform from time X to time Y". Only DAW can ask "please process this part of waveform" ("this part" is  your "buffer size" samples in size), there is no other direction foreseen.
 
What happened in case effect need more then one buffer to produce the result, when it need "future" information? That is what "mastering" plug-ins do: they accumulate MANY buffers BEFORE then return result for the first one! The effect is DELAY, the subject to compensate with "Plug-in Delay Compensation". It does not come from the "slowness" of some plug-in or computer (there are people which think so), the plug-in still has to process each sample within the time of that sample, otherwise there will be "audio dropout". Mastering plug-ins allow to "delay" up to 1 second.
 
But what if some "plug-in" want the WHOLE REGION before it can return the result for the first sample in that region? In VST mode, Melodyne are forcing user to "play" the whole region first, so it can internally "record" the whole region. Then, when you start to play again, Melodyne can use the WHOLE REGION right at the beginning, it has it internally.
 
DAW HAS access to the WHOLE REGION, Melodyne WANT have access to the WHOLE REGION. Why not define a "function" in DAW so Melodyne can request that region? And here we are - that "function" is ARA.
 
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And now if you can explain how you see ARA can help some sampler, and/or which other function will be nice to have in SONAR so a sampler can be "integrated" better, I will apologies, take all my previous words back and agree that this mega thread deserve the title it has.
 
Note that if you want put some Sonar clip into sampler, you can just "drag and drop" it, you do not need ARA for that.
 

sharke

forkolI have Geist, and although it's useful, you still can't do an operation like, auto split beat at transients, and load into Geist from a audio clip. 

I'm not sure what you mean by this but I think you'll find that Geist excels at these very things - you can auto slice a beat either by transients or by beat division (and you can adjust the sensitivity of transient detection or even just place slice points manually). When you click "OK" on the slice operations then it will load your slices onto pads, layering them if necessary, and will also replicate the original beat in its pattern sequencer, applying any necessary timing offsets to each step. 
 
You can get audio into Geist either by loading a sample, or by using its inbuilt sampler into which you can route audio from anywhere in Sonar by using the splitter plugin. 

Sharke,
 
Let me clarify:
In quite a few DAW's, you can highlight on an audio clip, with transients already set, right click which pulls up a menu and say "Split on transients and load into sampler", and it does it automatically, already mapped and ready to play.  I am very aware that you can load a sample into Geist or use Spitter then set the transients and split there, but that's more work to set up, it's not automated. Also, I prefer to work in DAW rather than a Geist VST  audio window, mainly because Geist does not have as large of a VST window as I would like (but Geist 2 is now re-sizable, but I have yet to upgrade).  Also, would be nice to have the MIDI dumped directly into Piano Roll View, rather than have to extract it back out of Geist.

azslow3
 
[Clipped for brevity...]
And now if you can explain how you see ARA can help some sampler, and/or which other function will be nice to have in SONAR so a sampler can be "integrated" better, I will apologies, take all my previous words back and agree that this mega thread deserve the title it has.
 
Note that if you want put some Sonar clip into sampler, you can just "drag and drop" it, you do not need ARA for that.

Okay, maybe it's not ARA that's needed.  The integration that I would like to see would be a souped-up Loop Construction View with integrated Audiosnap.  You could use Audiosnap to set the transients, then when you were ready, you could have a menu that would 'Split transients and map to new Sampler track' and it would create an Instrument Track (or Sampler track) with a Sampler built in and Midi already mapped to play the mapped beats.  I would think you need some way for Sampler to access the audio clip.  I don't think there's a way to do that using a VST/VSTi.  This would be an integrated tool that had direct access to the audio clip, so it would have to be integrated into Sonar.
 
As in Geist, you can possibly drag and drop, don't know if I have ever tried that and see if it works directly. But as I mentioned before, sometimes it's better to work in DAW space than VST/VSTi space.

@forkol  IS there something that actually does what you describe or is this a wish list?

Um, unless I missed something, that is what Geist does. It can be done even in standalone mode for composition purposes. As a VSTi, drag/drop to/from the SONAR browser has naming issues (defaults to "clip1" IIRC so must manually rename clips doing that).

wow.
Beatscape in 64 (jbridge latest version) - Sometimes, I have to 'panic' it, then it works just fine
Vsampler in 64  (Jbridge latest version) - very stable - a very capable, in depth sampler
even the old school dr-008 in 64 (jbridge version) - drum sound designing and sample trigger
All working Stable @6 projects in...
 
The only problem I have with both Rapture and Dimension are the fact that my hi-hats don't hold properly and it is too much effort to bounce to a sfz editor, only to have to bounce it back and re-load/save/re-name all over again.
 
Been with Cake since Pro audio 5 (Almost 20 years), and I wish that there was an 'in house' sampler/chopper (whatever else you call it).
but with my trusty jbridge, I'm good!!

I've heard a lot of good things about jbridge.  And I happen to have VSampler ...
 
Thanks for the tip and reminder.

ampfixer
@forkol  IS there something that actually does what you describe or is this a wish list?

Yes, there are DAW's that actually have this as a feature, it's generally called "Auto Slice to sampler" or "Slice to MIDI".  Live, Logic, FL Studio, and Studio One 3 support it.  Cubase and Protools it is not automatic, but you still have Groove Agent One or Structure to drop the samples into manually.