Support for Audio Random Access v2, which is an extension for audio plug-ins allowing them to exchange a greater amount of audio information. This is necessary for the integrated use of many audio tools like Melodyne, Spectralayers, and Synchro Arts’ Vocalign and and Revoice Pro.
What problem(s) would this feature resolve?
Communication of DAW state to the plugin; including offline audio transfer, undo/redo, instant update when you move/cut/edit some audio.
How does this feature fit in Bitwig as a product?
Implementation in Bitwig would follow what today is an open specification impleemnted by many DAWs. ARA2 compatible plugins have their own UI and their functionality/processing is written back to the track in real time.
Celemony released the ARA SDK under an open source license on May 2021. This allows companies like Bitwig to implement the support to the ARA specification 2.0 without licensing costs.
Is there already an alternative way to achieve this on Bitwig?
No.
Could it be implemented using Bitwig components or APIs, without Bitwig team’s support?
No.
Could it be provided by a VST or something else reasonably integrated with Bitwig?
No.
Are there other products that offer this feature?
Cakewalk by Bandlab, Studio 1, Acid Pro, Reaper, Logic Pro, Cubase, Nuendo, Pro Tools (2022.9).
This needs to happen. It’s not a smooth workflow needing to re transfer audio to melodyne if you need to make an edit in the arrangement or you want to mute a clip etc.
Pretty sure this was the highest voted thing on the old bitwig forum before they shut it down. At least top 3. It was in the thousands if my memory serves me.
What I do know is of the creative / pattern clip based daws FL studio said they are actively working with Celemony. Which means there is a high chance Ableton and maybe bitwig have also behind the scenes. Once one of the creative pattern / clip launching daws releases this the flood gates will open. Cubase has it which is cool but cubase functions sort of not like a clip / pattern daw. It’s in a different league and the pattern daws don’t care about that because their audience / demographic is electronic music makers mostly. Once electronic music makers taste this some will jump ships to the daw that does it.
Here’s a workaround (trust me get past the first few minutes of the video). This method allows a way to transfer the track over without playing it back in real time.
I know this doesn’t solve the ARA problem but damn this is bloody decent.
I just tested this and unfortunately it is sort of glitchy like it transfered the data but didn’t use the melodic algorithm even though it was on automatic. I switched it after the fact to melodic, and it sort of glitched? It could be my project is too massive idk. Somebody can try it.
Also without ARA you can’t select the time line inside melodyne and have it synced with thee arrangment, you have to always select the position inside Ableton.
Not a great workaround.
Edit: Was using Ableton but the tutorial is for Ableton and Bitwig.
Final update, sorry for bombing this thread. I tried again in ableton and the data does transfer after a freeze but for some reason (the blobs in melodyne only shows on the stroll bar area otherwise the window looks empty) i have close and re-open the melodyne window multiple times before the blobs show and eventually show the melody. Again it was on a a bigger project but not as big as the previous one. The blobs finally showed up.
So for me at least on Ableton 11.2 it wasn’t a smooth process but still it kind of works.
Another downside as I pointed out earlier was you can’t move to different parts of the timeline within melodynes editing window. You have to select the time frame to listen to in Ableton.
For all i know maybe Ableton 12 and Bitwig work a bit more smooth but I doubt that this process makes up for not having ARA. I can say first hand REAPER with ara is such a faster and better experience.
