So.... ARA?

[jens]

The Reason 12 release and looking at the new FL Studio update today (FL has matured quite a bit, I must say) made me think again about this:

When did Celemony come out with DNA? And so far it seems no other company managed to solve that riddle - and one would think they really had enough time to make up their mind about it now. Can they also do it, or not?

When people ask about ARA-support in Reason a typical reply appears to be "What's wrong with the internal audio-editor?" Well, genius, it isn't polyphonic, that's what wrong with it.

Quite a while ago Celemony developed (together with Presonus and Cockos too if I am not mistaken - and potentially others as well?) ARA 2 , which basically seems to serve it to developers on a silver plate, and yet they (the Props, Image Line, and whoever else) have the cheek to keep coming out with host updates with ARA support nowhere in sight.

So which is it? Are you gonna crack the code yourself and deliver polyphonic pitch-detection to your users or are you gonna support ARA? Oh, so none of that, huh? Why the f**k not?

I'll gladly donate a sufficent amount of tar and feathers to give every single one of them lazy buggers the proper treatment.

So this thread shall be the place to call out and rant about all these host developers who basically flat-out deny their users the ability to use polyphonic pitch detection, a decade after its invention.

[andypryce]

Ableton might add it with Live 12 and all youtube comedians might hype it like Live is the first DAW ever to include ARA2

[ahmadfarihan]

Bitwig Devs..... pleaseeeee...

[SLiC]

ARA is great and I think it's an easy 'option' to add it to most DAWS- 'but' you will need to shell out a lot more money (probably more than the DAW cost) to get the benefit of Melodyne polyphonic editing....The polyphonic version of Melodyne starts at €399 list...all ARA does is open Melodyne and pipe it through the DAW, you still have to buy the programme (and the free version they often bundle is just a gateway drug, its very limited!)

I use Studio One and have Melodyne Studio, ARA is not 'that' integrated in my opinion, it still feels like I am leaving S1 and going to a different (weird) GUI...Reason, for example is a lot simpler and faster to make a quick tweak and more far more 'integrated' as part of Reason, it's all I need 99% of the time.

[jens]

Sure it's more integrated, but my point is that if they can't figure out how to do polyphonic detection they should grow a backbone and admit it and thus implement ARA instead. How well it is integrated is 100% irelevant if it simply does not do the job at hand. Melodyne does - Reason doesn't.

[pdxindy]

I'd be happy with native monophonic pitch editing in Bitwig.

[SLiC]

Sure it's more integrated, but my point is that if they can't figure out how to do polyphonic detection they should grow a backbone and admit it and thus implement ARA instead. How well it is integrated is 100% irelevant if it simply does not do the job at hand. Melodyne does - Reason doesn't.

Would you pay 400E extra for it?

[jens]

What could be your point? Of course it is only relevant to those who either already own or plan to own Melodyne - do your think you are Celemony's only customer? I believe they are doing fine.

[dellboy]

I understand monophonic pitch correction, but what's the point of polyphonic ?

To correct a guitar sting that was not tuned properly ?

[CinningBao]

.. or the timing of any of the notes

[ozinga]

I understand monophonic pitch correction, but what's the point of polyphonic ?

To correct a guitar sting that was not tuned properly ?

It came handy a few times for me to change some chords when I had no reach to the guitar player.

This is a good video about it.

[jamcat]

The simple solution is to not buy any DAW that doesn't support ARA.

[apoclypse]

I guess some DAWs (especially smaller ones) probably don't want to spend the resources to support ARA2 for just one application (2 if you count vocalign). Kind of seems likes a waste of resources. Even if they do implement it there is also the matter of implementing it well.

Presonus has probably the best implementation which makes sense as Presonus was the first DAW to implement ARA and they developed it with Celemony. Logic has ARA2 support and its a bit of a travesty, especially when it was first added. It kind of sort of works, but not always like it does in S1. It takes time and resources to implement ARA support well and I don't think Reason nor Bitwig have those resources to spare (Bitwig doesn't even have AU support).

It would make sense if Ableton did it but Ableton likes to march to their own drum beat and they may not think its really that important. The same with FLStudio.

The only other DAW I saw do ARA well was Cakewalk. They even rewrote some of the internal plugins (like the drum replacement plugin etc) to use ARA if I remember correctly.

[ShawnG]

I had typed up a snarky reply to this yesterday, because, as it happens, I have used melodyne editor with Reason to manipulate polyphonic audio, and then I realized that was Melodyne 4... Melodyne 5 is only in VST3 so, no bueno these days. Now, even with Melodyne 4 the usage was the "old way" of using melodyne, which is obviously not as slick as ARA2, but it isn't THAT hard, to be frank, if you're in the same breath going to call developers "lazy". But anyway, if you only have the current version of Melodyne, it is not going to be able to be used with Reason until they add support for VST3 for the "old way" or ARA2 which would be nice, but not holding my breath.

I also wanted for the longest time for Cubase to add ARA, and they finally did, but I've never even used it since then, so there is that. There's plenty of more useful things I'd like to see in Reason prior to ARA support. (i.e. if there's ARA before we have track folders, I'm gonna be pissed)

[Tj Shredder]

The simple solution is to not buy any DAW that doesn't support ARA.

That would be the most stupid solution. Simple often doesn‘t mean smart.
ARA is a well designed workflow enhancement. Its even open sourced now and any DAW developer could integrate it if they wanted to…
But even without ARA I could do all I would have been able to do with ARA in Bitwig. I just needed to play the part I wanted to treat into the plugin. Certainly not a deal breaker…