codamedia

TobyC


When will Cakewalk comment on ARA??

Just a hunch, but based on three factors I'm not going to get to optimistic about Sonar integrating this anytime soon.

1. ARA is very new, and at this time is only used to integrate Melodyne
2. Sonar has V-Vocal, and is tied at the hip with Roland. I'm sure Roland does not want to see "Melodyne integration made easy".
3. V-Vocal integrates with Sonar this way already.  (although it does not work as well as ARA/Melodyne/S1 appears to work)

At the very best - this might kick Roland in the butt to do some much needed updates to V-Vocal! If V-Vocal had any sort of impact on users choosing Sonar over another DAW, they just lost that edge!

I agree very much with the above Sean.   Also - I'll add that it appears this new protocol (ARA) was co-developed by Presonus and Celemony so I doubt Roland would be willing to give them an edge by incorporating it in Sonar, which would also diminish the value of their own V-Vocal.

VVocal in it's present form cannot be compared to Melodyne. Melodyne is way ahead of VV and any other similar plugin.

relpomiraculous


Why don't you give us a few examples of why Melodyne is so essential to the music making process.

Replied to that in that other thread. Talentless paying customers. ;)

I suspect that cakewalk hears the rumbling of its restless natives and realize that the inevitable tide of reality will eventually pull them in the direction of ARA implementation [or a similar proprietary function]. Surely, other DAWS will follow the call for ARA, either before them or after them. 

It appears that Melodyne has for some time incorporated ARA technology into its software, but needed the cooperation of a DAW developer to write their own code to properly interface with its capabilities. Perhaps the growing number of Melodyne users has enticed Presonus to be the first to bring it all about.

Celemony says: "The plug-in interfaces widely used today – such as VST, AU and RTAS – still work essentially the way analog mixers did in the past: a plug-in only receives audio data from the DAW track at the moment of playback, and therefore knows nothing about the entire track – and nothing either, therefore, of the musical context.


As an extension of the existing plug-in interfaces, ARA opens an additional channel of communication through which the DAW and plug-in can exchange information about the audio file, tempo, pitch, rhythm and much more, which allows them to work together considerably more closely. The plug-in is closer to what is happening in the DAW and can therefore work more smoothly and effectively; the DAW, for its part, is able to integrate the plug-in far better and make more targeted use of it – exactly as though it were part of the DAW."


I would think that ARA will be additionally helpful to other types of capabilities even outside of Melodyne's domain, as well, and will likely open up a new range of possibilities for music creation and editing in the future.

TobyC


The reason I'm downloading the free trial of StudioOneV2 + ARA + Melodyne + the Celemony trial of the full Editor version of Melodyne is not to fix vocals, it's to experiment with the awesome things they ran through in the video, such as drag and drop of audio to midi synths and using Melodyne instead of AudioSnap to time-sync parts. Basically it looks like such a creative tool set.

If you can sit down a play in a guitar chord riff and instantly convert to midi, that would be very cool. It looks too good not to try .... so I will, and I'll try and stay open-minded until I've tested the real thing.

Yes, the time syncing is awesome and reminds me of spectrasonics groove-lock where you just drag a midi file to lock the beat down between its VST's.

> When will Cakewalk comment on ARA??
Why on earth would they?

Sad...but I have to agree, ol pal.

Having spent some time on the StudioOnePro free demo my conclusion is that although I love the intuitive and simple interface, the Melodyne integration (particularly the stunning polyphonic midi generation) and also the user-friendly stock of quality but simple midi instruments, there are a few core features missing in StudioOne that mean that Sonar remains my go-to tool-set for new projects for me for now.

Two real issues for me in StudioOne are:

a) There is no software control over external hardware synths using the equivalent to Cakewalk "ins" files.

b) I like to track songs or live recordings in real time and then allocate a tempo map, which is pretty straightforward in Sonar. This doesn't seem possible in StudioOne.

But if Presonus were to implement these features I would switch. If Sonar were to implement ARA I would probably not. I'd love to see the Melodyne integration in Sonar.

I hope this information is helpful.
Regards,

I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see Cakewalk take up ARA at some point...while it probably won't happen in the next major release cycle.  (Besides, Presonus has an exclusive on it for a bit anyway.)
 
While V-Vocal is a competing technology...I rather doubt that Roland has the corporate will to improve it significantly.  The only changes that have been made since its roll out have been bug fixes.  There have been no feature enhancements since day one.  In that sense, I'm willing to bet that neither Roland nor Cakewalk see V-Vocal as competing adequately and fully realize that both they and their customers would be much better served by integrating ARA support sooner than later.
 
I still use V-Vocal when I need to...mainly because it does the job I need it to do and it has the ease of use (since day one) that ARA is just now promising.  If Cake implements ARA, they won't lose a dime of my money, because I will have already beat up V-Vocal for years.  I'll pay for the update...and it'll likely be the tipper for some more new users.
 
This is much unlike VST3, which has spent most of its years of existance as a cure looking for a suitable disease.

Chrisma


Since Roland just recently released R-Mixx its hard to say what Cakewalk will do about ARA. One would think V-Vocal and R-Mixx would be combined and evolve into something like ARA but who knows. 

The intelligent thing to do would be to integrate it using the ARA interface so that R-Mixx could make it into Presonus user's FX folders...not just SONAR's.  On the other hand, the "Not Invented Here" syndrome still might have undue sway.
 
Coming to think of it...I'd love to see iZotope adopt ARA for RX.  Most of my current workflow favors using RX standalone...but that might change if RX and SONAR were both ARA enabled.

I wunder sumetimes. I, I really don't believe it. Why do you want ARA for? I thought you all would be asking for the development of X1 to be at it's best before implementing yet more cream on the cake! I mean, I thought you would be asking for better intergration of what is on display. Atleast ask for things to be 95% working before asking for more problems. Any I talk as some one who just sees software as a means to an end and not a god that can do everything. So really what you will get is new toys that malfunction after all machines (software is made by humans).

Stevie326


  I have been using this new toy in Studio One to create some pretty interesting stuff. The MIDI drag to instrument track is genius.

+1 to that!