What's the benefits of using melodyne as a plugin compared to creating a regional effect? Obviously you use the transfer feature in the plugin. Thanks

Hi. I would say none. I believe that they have the same functions used either way.
The ARA integration makes it easy to use on (smaller) clips.
Others may know better.
All the best.

As a plugin on the track it will scan the entire track.
As a region effect it will let you work on split clips within that track.
Full functionality of Melodyne for both.
That's it, I think.

Good Day
I dont think of or use Melodyne as an active plug-in or an effect, per say, but a precision editing tool for going in and correcting or changing pitch related information, modulations, formants, adjusting various timing, tempo and alignment related functions, and/or adjusting amplitudes, attack speed and/or adding harmonies, I always apply it as regionFX on a clip or section of track I want to edit, make changes, and then bounce it to clip. Id never leave it on as an active plugin (or as RegionFX) and I dont really understand a reason why it would be used as an active plug-in? (it also uses a lot memory when active). Perhaps Im not using it to its full potential but would be interested in knowing a reason why to use it as an FX plugin?
 
Cheers         

Apparently, Melodyne is used in many ways by everyone here, depending on your workflow.
 
Personally, I prefer non-destructive editing while I'm creating and mixing, then the region FX will all get rendered when ready to move on. I've noticed lots of un-rendered Melodyne clips simply makes the Sonar project file much larger. I've never had any issues with Melodyne that I can attribute to memory limitations, and when I rarely do, it must be time to render.
 
Also, If a session is really long . . . late in the evening the editing decisions are harder to discern, so non-destructive editing helps to pick up where you left off, listen fresh the next day. If you burn all your bridges, you can't get back to where you were.
 
I've never seen any benefits from using Melodyne as a plugin inside of Sonar, but have used the standalone version many times for external audio editing (I believe that's only be available in Melodyne Studio / Melodyne Editor versions)

noynekker
Personally, I prefer non-destructive editing while I'm creating and mixing, then the region FX will all get rendered when ready to move on. I've noticed lots of un-rendered Melodyne clips simply makes the Sonar project file much larger. I've never had any issues with Melodyne that I can attribute to memory limitations, and when I rarely do, it must be time to render.
If you burn all your bridges, you can't get back to where you were.

Always interested it what people are doing unconventionally.
I always clone the track Im working on at least once, to work on and have at least one working track to copy changes into when I need to, so somewhat non-destructive.
It does make projects much larger if you haven't bounced, also it accumulates a lot storage memory, even after bounced, on C: drive in My Documents/Celemony/Separations folder, for polyphonic stuff, you can delete contents if your looking for some room on a SSD you may find some here, first time I did it I think it was around 50 GB, it will regenerate saved but un-bounced polyphonic data back into folder when opening a project. You pretty much need latency set to at least 1024 samples for it to function properly, I always have it set to 4096 anyway for mixing and editing, so dont have issues either. 
Otherwise, save often, especially if your leaving Melodyne active with un-bounced edits, or you may loose all your editing work if/when it crashes un-expectantly, or expectantly, LOL.  
 
Cheers