Celemony has announced that its ARA Audio Random Access interface extension is now available to all software manufacturers. ARA allows for the improved integration of Melodyne and similar plug-ins into digital audio workstations (DAWs).
As an extension of existing plug-in interfaces such as VST or Audio Unit, ARA opens an additional channel of communication through which the DAW and plug-in are able to exchange information about the audio files and their placement in the song, as well as over their tempo, pitch, rhythm and more. The plug-in is “far closer to the action” in the DAW and therefore works considerably more efficiently; the DAW, for its part, is able to integrate the plug-in and take specific advantage of its strengths, as though the plug-in were part of the DAW itself.
ARA has been implemented in Presonus Studio One as well as in Melodyne editor, assistant and essential since the end of last year. The ARA-facilitated interaction between Studio One and Melodyne leads to a user-friendly workflow that goes far beyond anything previously afforded by plug-in interfaces and allows a still more effective use of Melodyne.
Here’s the official intro video for Celemony ARA:
With the ARA Software Development Kit (SDK), other manufacturers of DAWs and plug-ins can now integrate ARA into their own products free of charge.
“Since Melodyne – thanks to ARA – is now integrated more seamlessly into Studio One, there are fewer hurdles and you can play with it in a far more musical way,” says Melodyne software architect Carsten Gehle. “Since we developed ARA in collaboration with Presonus, it reflects the points-of-view of both plug-in and DAW manufacturers. Furthermore, we’ve made ARA as open as possible, so that as many applications as possible can benefit from it.”
I have no doubt that this format offers clear benefits, but is another plug in format really going to succeed right now? Seems to me developers are barely managing to keep up with the ones we have now.
It isn’t a new plugin format- it is just the SDK so devs can add this to their own products.
Sure, this is about the SDK but the SDK is about implementing ARA. Which is actually an interface extension.
And with that in mind I think xtopher has a point. Too many people seem to have very big problems to adopt, use and expand on the little standards we already have and instead always feel the urge to come up with their own implementation of the “better standard”.
I think we’re better of with a few standards which are commonly used than with a wide variety of “standards” where almost every DAW uses its own selection of them.
If they think they have a good extension on commonly used plugin formats then why not try to get this adopted as an official standard? “VST 4” for example; that way everyone can benefit.
This has nothing to do with standards or VST or formats of anything.It’s just a chunk of code that someone can buy to put into their product.
It is no different than a Lexicon branded reverb becoming part of Sonar, or the Roland thingy, or whatever company licenses pitch correcting code to Abelton.
I really hope this doesn’t end up in an algorithm war – I’m sure we’d all be happy if Steinberg added this to Cubase to replace VariAudio, but I suspect they’ll start playing them off. I’ll be interested to see how the integration and upgrading of existing DAWs works