More ARA development, the next frontier for DAWs?

[Cancel Culture Club]

Audio Random Access (commonly abbreviated to ARA) is an extension for audio plug-in interfaces, such as AU, VST and RTAS, allowing them to exchange a greater amount of audio information with digital audio workstation (DAW) software. It was developed in a collaboration between Celemony Software and PreSonus.

Could you imagine being able to swap in and out of different 3rd party software, devices, environments or whatever else, at the flick of a switch? You could integrate things like Scaler, or whatever. Will hosts start allowing the 3rd party developers to start sharing some of the tasks and opening the doors to even more flavors and ideas?

It would be cool to be able to tightly integrate a 3rd party sequencer, cv control or countless other fun and creative things. Like maybe work with Reason Studios using ARA to tightly integrate the rack instead of keeping it just a plugin.

[frizzbee]

ARA is already integrated in a bunch of DAWs but it's less spectacular than you might think. It works nicely for melodyne which needs preferably the whole audio track for analyzing. and instead of recording the track like we used to with VST2 we can now use the ARA version and it has instant access to the audio data. vocalign is also a plugin that profits from it by having instant access to the guide and dub tracks. but afaik that's pretty it.

[Cancel Culture Club]

ARA is already integrated in a bunch of DAWs but it's less spectacular than you might think. It works nicely for melodyne which needs preferably the whole audio track for analyzing. and instead of recording the track like we used to with VST2 we can now use the ARA version and it has instant access to the audio data. vocalign is also a plugin that profits from it by having instant access to the guide and dub tracks. but afaik that's pretty it.

So do you think there will be more advanced ARA development in the future?

[Cancel Culture Club]

This isn't exactly ARA, but it does show some development on the side of tightly integrated 3rd party software, or at least making it easier to configure, setup and use.

Could this be the future of software development for DAWs, or maybe just Studio one?

[andypryce]

This isn't exactly ARA, but it does show some development on the side of tightly integrated 3rd party software, or at least making it easier to configure, setup and use.

Could this be the future of software development for DAWs, or maybe just Studio one?

This is awesome.
Being one of the most used DAWs for orchestral composing you would think Steinberg would come up with something like this but their head is deep in the sand. Cubase needs a new creative director. It still has the 90s mindset for workflow. With Yamaha behind them you would have thought Cubase can have great controllers for the DAW and Groove Agent etc but nothing.
Studio One team really knows how to get an idea and make it as easy as possible. First ARA, now this, Atom, Fader Ports...Impressive. If they add more scoring and video features it might be ''The DAW'' of orchestral composing.

[apoclypse]

I believe that Cakewalk was using ARA quite extensively for even some of their native plugins like the VocalSync and DrumReplacer. I could be wrong on that but I think I remember reading something like that on their product page. I'm not sure why they would need ARA since native plugins should already be able to access random data in memory from the DAW, but I think that's how they chose to implement those.

People have a misconception on what ARA is. I remember getting into an argument with someone who was trying to shoehorn ARA into every plugin imaginable. ARA is made specifically to access audio data from the DAW without having to recache it since most plugins can't access that data directly. It's an extension to the AU or VST format, but it's not made for midi (since plugins already access that data directly) nor effects (like reverbs etc). Anything that has to cache audio in-order to do something then yes. The point is to have direct memory access to what the DAW already has cached and then be able to randomly access as needed.

I can definitely see it used for other audio processing plugins, but a lot of DAWs already have that stuff built in so really the only real usage is Melodyne and VocAlign at this point.

[Cancel Culture Club]

I believe that Cakewalk was using ARA quite extensively for even some of their native plugins like the VocalSync and DrumReplacer. I could be wrong on that but I think I remember reading something like that on their product page. I'm not sure why they would need ARA since native plugins should already be able to access random data in memory from the DAW, but I think that's how they chose to implement those.

People have a misconception on what ARA is. I remember getting into an argument with someone who was trying to shoehorn ARA into every plugin imaginable. ARA is made specifically to access audio data from the DAW without having to recache it since most plugins can't access that data directly. It's an extension to the AU or VST format, but it's not made for midi (since plugins already access that data directly) nor effects (like reverbs etc). Anything that has to cache audio in-order to do something then yes. The point is to have direct memory access to what the DAW already has cached and then be able to randomly access as needed.

I can definitely see it used for other audio processing plugins, but a lot of DAWs already have that stuff built in so really the only real usage is Melodyne and VocAlign at this point.

There's always the possibility of further developing it into a more advanced version of Rewire for inter-DAW connectivity. Like I mentioned, having Reason Rack synced with another host, all the way down to the audio, cv type level would perhaps open the door for a lot of new devices for ARA hosts.