Studio One and ARA

[THW]

Sharing some thoughts/questions about ARA and Studio One.

A post on VI Control got me curious about ARA (Audio Random Access). I know very little about it, and my experience with it is limited to Melodyne and RX (to my knowledge, unless there are other plugins or native S1 features/plugins with ARA under the hood).

I read in a Presonus article that "ARA was developed by Celemony in collaboration with PreSonus Software and was presented for the first time in the fall of 2011, with Melodyne 1.3 and Studio One 2 operating in tandem."

I read that as S1 being at the forefront of ARA back in 2011, and wonder what the latest is with ARA, Presonus/S1 and ARA years later.

A plugin I use quite regularly is Bird's "Rolling Sampler" for capturing audio in real time (I love it for sound design and "happy accidents")... highlight what I want and click/drag to a new track.

I get there are other priorities and interests, but I wonder, with ARA, would S1 be able to take that kind of basic functionality of rolling sampler and further develop, with fx processing for example.

In a post about ARA and RX, Izotope lists some benefits like real time processing, non-destructive editing, improved efficiency (workflow). That all sounds great to me. It also listed some drawbacks: not all daws support it, apple native silicon doesn't support it...

Curious to see where things are headed with ARA or if it's been overtaken by AI or something else I'm not tracking.

 

[Lukas]

The basic idea of ARA is this:

Normally, effect plug-ins receive an audio stream only from the current playback position.
This means the plug-in only knows the present moment of the audio. It has no knowledge of what comes next and only processes the signal when playback actually reaches that point. This is how traditional plug-ins (like VST, AU, or AAX) have always worked.

With ARA, a plug-in can access the entire audio of an event or clip instantly, without having to play through the session first.
This enables much more powerful and convenient audio editing workflows - such as those used by Melodyne (or other plug-ins that support ARA: Antares Autotune Pro, Steinberg SpectraLayers, Synchro Arts Vocalign, Revoice Pro, Izotope RX Music Reblance, RX 9 Spectral Editor etc.)

I get there are other priorities and interests, but I wonder, with ARA, would S1 be able to take that kind of basic functionality of rolling sampler and further develop, with fx processing for example.

I don't understand what kind of basic functionality you mean. S1 is just the host. But someone could develop a plug-in that can access and manipulate your audio on a track.

 

[THW]

I don't understand what kind of basic functionality you mean. S1 is just the host. But someone could develop a plug-in that can access and manipulate your audio on a track.

Hey @Lukas thank you for your explanation. That paints a clearer picture for me about ARA. I better understand regarding S1 being the host.
I also see I wasn't clear in my original post. I understand a third party could develop a plugin that could access and manipulate audio on a track.
Thinking about Presonus and Celemony's early partnership and collaboration on Melodyne, I was really just brainstorming...if Presonus had the desire/resources/time/interest, what could be done with ARA and existing stock S1 plugins, or what would be new, helpful, or desirable.

 

[Lukas]

Thinking about Presonus and Celemony's early partnership and collaboration on Melodyne, I was really just brainstorming...if Presonus had the desire/resources/time/interest, what could be done with ARA and existing stock S1 plugins, or what would be new, helpful, or desirable.

Ah, I see. Actually, S1 stock plug-ins don't need ARA because they're already part of the program. PreSonus could give them access to whatever they need. However, not all plug-ins would take advantage of the ARA functionality. Many plug-ins work perfectly well as simple insert effects, such as a delay, chorus or amp simulation. For compressors or other dynamics plug-ins, this could make more sense because they would be able to analyze the complete audio before processing.

 

[theblacklaser]

I'd just be pleased if Izotope would allow the full RX in the ARA plugin. Acoustica and SpectraLayers allow it.

 

[Lukas]

I'd just be pleased if Izotope would allow the full RX in the ARA plugin. Acoustica and SpectraLayers allow it.

Yes. RX customers have to reach out to Izotope - that's the only thing that helps.

 

[John Vere]

My understanding is that a lot of mastering plugins use what is called “Look Ahead “ which allows them to see what is coming next and process it instantly.
Like Brickwall limiters. And im pretty sure Isotope stuff. This of course is not requiring ARA they just use a buffer.
That is why these plugins can cause more latency when in use so best to disable them when tracking.

ARA can also create issues if you don’t render your editing before saving your project.

It’s actually surprising how many Daw’s don’t fully support ARA.. Many only support Melodyne and nothing else. Cubase makes you purchase the full versions so it’s not part of Elements.

I just bought Prism and I can only use it in S1 and Sonar.

 

[lokeyfly]

ARA can also create issues if you don’t render your editing before saving your project.

Not save your project. You can save all you want without rendering. I do that countless times and never experienced an issue.
You simply have to render, if you want to leave let's say audio edited with Melodyne, and then decide to detect transients. If you dont render first, you'll lose your existing Melodyne edits. Its a fair and understandable tradeoff. One process isn't complete, until stamped (rendered). The reverse from using the bend tool, then jump to Melodyne also holds true.
When audio events are black, this should be a clear indicator to (at some point) render before shifting to another form of editing. If one returned to Melodyne after saving a song, and forged ahead with further Melodyne edits, there will not be any issue.

It’s actually surprising how many Daw’s don’t fully support ARA.

True, and I'm not fully sure why, but when I pitch change in Studio One, even complex audio chords as in guitar phrasing, the resultant changes are nothing like I've ever heard in any other DAW. I can only suspect it has everything to do with how Studio One flexes its ARA2 power. I'm always amazed. Its not just pitch shifting. Its possible to change an F#, to a Em7 with absolute clarity!
Go ahead, Pro Tools, try that! I'm your huckleberry.

 

[John Vere]

I have only opened Melodyne a few times in Studio one but what was most noticeable was how fast that was for a 3 minute audio file. A guitar track takes a tiny bit longer but I’m tempted to run test and open the same track in a few other Daw’s and time it.
In Sonar I never bothered opening full tracks. I always broke them up so it would open faster.

I really like the very obvious Render button.

I recorded a simple song yesterday and tried my fretless acoustic bass for the time.

Being a fretless instrument playing one is exactly like singing. You slide into notes a lot and add vibrato.
But just like singing, sometimes you miss by a tiny little bit.
Melodyne was brilliant and because I know my way around pretty good now, all I did was use the pitch slider tool and pushed it to about 75%. Just the top slider. That was all. I also copied pasted one flubbed note.
Then I added the Presonus compressor and pushed the threshold until I was getting a nice squish. Didn’t even seem to need EQ.

Im not easy to impress but this worked beyond my expectations. That was just plain too easy and now I can proceed with my plan of recording around 100 of my favourite songs I have sung over the past 60 years!
Next is going to be sorting out recording acoustic guitar. So far Im not impressed and might be facing purchase of a much better guitar.

 

[Davey]

The Melodyne integration in S1 is simple top notch. ARA2 at it's finest.

 

[freddiphin]

Curious if anyone here is using SpectraLayers in S1/SP with ARA. I am (SpectraLayers Pro 11) and find it still a bit glitchy in the interface department, mostly with display issues (especially when moving the SL window betwixt multiple monitor/screens. But also it seems pretty slow to respond with playback and edit cursor movements. It is definitely not as fluid in S1/SP as Melodyne with its user experience, to the extent that if I'm really needing to get some Spectra Layers-proficient workflow done on a clip/event in my Session, it is usually more efficient to export the clip, do it in the SL stand-alone, and bring it back in.
I'm assuming this is a Steinberg-ARA-compliance issue and not PreSonus, but I don't know....

 

[Gray Wolf]

I've seen SpectraLayers cause a major on macOS with Studio One. It would literally prevent the DAW from launching until you either turned off ARA or removed the plugin from the VST3 folder. Not sure if that's different now or not.

 

[Rambler]

Feature Request:

I would really like to get an option to apply ARA track based (as opposed to event-based). In Studio Pro you have to press „CMD-M“ for every new event on a track. In Pro Tools, Cubase, Reaper and Logic the way ARA works is track based - every new event / new comp gets automatically analyzed in Melodyne (or any other ARA plugin) once the plugin is loaded onto the track.

 

[freddiphin]

I've seen SpectraLayers cause a major on macOS with Studio One. It would literally prevent the DAW from launching until you either turned off ARA or removed the plugin from the VST3 folder. Not sure if that's different now or not.

Nothing as bad as that here. I'm on Windows, tho, and the latest versions of SpectraLayers (actually 12) and now Studio Pro 8, and it's just....... sluggish. And with definite display issues.

 

[freddiphin]

.... For what it's worth, I have to update my perspective on SpectraLayers ARA in Studio Pro, based on much more attempted use now, to say that it is inconsistent at best and really basically unusable most of the time. It's "sluggishness" is really a dysfunctional breakdown of the interface between it and Studio Pro altogether. It (SpectraLayers) works beautifully in stand-alone, but only does its best to simply "show up" in Studio Pro.
I wouldn't know on whose side of the fence that the responsibility for this issue falls. Obviously PreSonus and Celemony have it figured out. I would think Steinberg would be up on it, but haven't gotten any useful help from Support there. I would also think that creating a "standard" (ARA) would mean that the interface/behavior would be consistent, certainly by this point and the ARA2 status of the protocol. But I am not a developer by any stretch.

 

[Jens]

I don't use SpectralLayers but "sluggishness" is usually a graphics issue and not a protocol (ARA) issue since the same problems can happen for VSTs as well.

A quick Google search showed that SpectralLayers used OpenGL for versions 6-10 and then switched to Metal (the OpenGL successor) on MacOS. S1/SP uses OpenGL on MacOS. Ujam pointed out that multiple OpenGL apps (host/plugin or plugin/plugin) can "fight" each other for shared resource usage. A standalone SpectralLayers obviously won't show these problems.