yevster
Thrilled about ARA! This is significant for the whole industry, as it's no longer a single-host format. Presonus&Celemony published the format some time ago, but only now does it look like a legitimate contender for broader adoption. Kudos, Noel and all.
As for VST3, this is definitely a step in the right direction (for one thing, Sonar users can now fully exploit sidechaining in Waves plugins, such as C1SC and C6). The real question is whether or not X3 includes the add-on features that VST3 enables. Listing and searching softsynth patches and presets in the browser? Multiple dynamic IO support on surround tracks (i.e. a VST3 plugin placed on a surround track would automatically process the right number of inputs and outputs)? Per-note automation for softsynths that support it? Expression maps? Ok, the last two are only applicable to Steinberg plugs and are clearly long shots. The rest are not.
It's interesting to note that sidechaining support is now ahead of Cubase. Sonar can now support sidechaining in Waves et al, but Cubase doesn't support sidechaining with VST2.x plugins, such as all of the NI/Softube compressors in Komplete Ultimate.
I would venture to say that the ARA implementation in SONAR goes even further. SONAR support true independent ARA regions - i.e you can make copies of ARA clips and edit them independently. Also the ARA editing and MIDI integration is very deep, with full drag and drop support, and integrated live preview and scrub inside the melodyne editor. Additionally we were careful to not make ARA support exclusive to Melodyne. Any plugin that supports the ARA spec will be available as a region based effect in SONAR, so the implementation is very open. I worked very closely with the Celemony team all through this year and I have to say that they were a wonderful and committed team of people to work with. There have been many fixes and enhancements to ARA as a result of this collaboration, some of which were included in the last Melodyne update.
Regarding VST3, I will publish an article listing the features we implemented later. SONAR doesn't support the Steinberg specific features like expression maps, but our implementation is goes beyond what other non Steinberg VST3 hosts do today. We chose to implement all the more important and useful features. Sample accurate automation, silent buffer CPU savings, sidechaining, plugin resizing support, automatic VST2-3 migration, hierarchical parameter organization and plugin categorization are a few that that we did. The work in this area however goes well beyond just VST3. The entire VST engine was overhauled so many of these benefits apply to VST2 plugins as well. e.g. SONAR now fully supports mono sidechain plugins both in VST2 and VST3. There are some industry firsts with general plugin management as well. Plugin scanning is now transparent and automatic so you can launch the app and start working immediately in seconds, without waiting for a boring plugin scan operation to finish. Hardcore plugin addicts will be happy to know that there are no more limits to the counts of plugins listed in menus and the browser as well :)
Talking about collaborations, Waves has worked closely with us through the cycle. I'm happy to say that we have jointly resolved *all* known interop issues with Waves plugins in SONAR.
There will be more detailed video's and tech articles on all of these topics once the product has shipped. And Celemony will also be contributing more information on ARA in SONAR on their website soon.