Cakewalk Sonar is ARA2 capable, right? Demo of promising plugin says no :/

[Ken Kasriel]

 

I came across this new polyphonic audio to midi vst, Prism. Demo video is way impressive. https://aurallysound.com/pages/prism-audio-to-midi

The product page says ARA2 is needed, and that  "Prism is known to work with Reaper, Studio One, Cubase/Nuendo, Logic Pro (under Rosetta), and Cakewalk Sonar." 

I just installed the latest version of Sonar,. It finds Prism in the list, but when I load it I get a Prism eror message, "ARA host isn't detected." I've written to Prism's dev. Meanwhile, any ideas? 

[Promidi]

According Sonar’s local Help, Sonar “is compatible with ARA 2 plug-ins”.

See Sonar’s local help > search for ARA under the “Search tab”  (Web help does not mention ARA2, local help does)

As well as writing to Prism's developers you might also want to drop a note to Sonar support.

https://help.cakewalk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

[sjoens]

Which list do you see it in?  ARAs are normally in the RegionFX menu and a clip's right-click menu.

https://docs.aurallysound.com/blog/ara_plugin_setup_daws

[Canopus]

Some alleged ARA 2 compliant plugins simply won't work with all hosts. iZotope RX 11 Spectral Editor is a good example. For instance, according to iZotope, "RX 11 ARA support is available for Apple Logic Pro in Rosetta mode, PreSonus Studio One, and Avid Pro Tools."  But Cakewalk isn't mentioned, and neither is Cubase, although they both support ARA 2 since at least five years or so. 

IDK, maybe the ARA 2 standard isn't strict enough. 

[Bass Guitar]

 It works just fine, I downloaded the demo, it was all very easy to install, it's a VST3.  But as said,  it is a Regional effect. Was very fast and I didn't read any instructions at all. There's a button says drag to your Daw. Done. I tried it on a rhythm electric guitar part, then dragged it to Strum Session  it has the typical glitches that you always get and require a bit of  editing of the midi file. 

 $100 on sale is a reasonable price,  but for me I already have this feature in Sonar, Mixcraft and Studio one.

I will still test it to see if it does this a bit better than the others. This is a feature I use a lot mostly to convert my real bass into midi.  The feature has been part of Sonar since I think X3. Even Home Studio did this. Sonar uses Melodyne. Not sure what Mixcraft and S1 use. 

 

Edited 11 hours ago by Bass Guitar

[Bass Guitar]

An update to this is I tried it in Studio one and it said that it needed ARA2 to work? 
I followed the instructions which said to insert it in the effects bin. That seems wrong to me. 
Anyhow Sonar wins the user experience contest for tonight. 
Playing with it a bit more I think that it is much better results than Melodyne. 
The only glitches are simply that guitar chords have subtle pitch bends involved and the audio to midi doesn’t do any CC bends. So changes are very abrupt. Otherwise it tracks flawlessly unlike Melodyne which doesn’t. 
So this is looking like it will require a lot less editing and save time. 
Later I’ll test a bass part as well as look into if it does drums. 

[Ken Kasriel]

3 hours ago, sjoens said:

Which list do you see it in?  ARAs are normally in the RegionFX menu and a clip's right-click menu.

https://docs.aurallysound.com/blog/ara_plugin_setup_daws

Dude! I think that's it! Not at my music PC just now but will try it ... rings a bell from when I used to use Melodyne in the old Sonar Platinum. Thanks so much ... I did look for manual with the demo but found none ... and never thought to look in a blog for that,  so well-spotted!

Edited 9 hours ago by Ken Kasriel

[Ken Kasriel]

1 hour ago, Bass Guitar said:

 It works just fine, I downloaded the demo, it was all very easy to install, it's a VST3.  But as said,  it is a Regional effect. Was very fast and I didn't read any instructions at all. There's a button says drag to your Daw. Done. I tried it on a rhythm electric guitar part, then dragged it to Strum Session  it has the typical glitches that you always get and require a bit of  editing of the midi file. 

 $100 on sale is a reasonable price,  but for me I already have this feature in Sonar, Mixcraft and Studio one.

I will still test it to see if it does this a bit better than the others. This is a feature I use a lot mostly to convert my real bass into midi.  The feature has been part of Sonar since I think X3. Even Home Studio did this. Sonar uses Melodyne. Not sure what Mixcraft and S1 use. 

 

Thanks. You say you have this in Mixcraft. I use Mixcraft 8.5, which version do you use? I was unaware of any such functionality other than via Melodyne

[Ken Kasriel]

10 minutes ago, Bass Guitar said:

An update to this is I tried it in Studio one and it said that it needed ARA2 to work? 
I followed the instructions which said to insert it in the effects bin. That seems wrong to me. 
Anyhow Sonar wins the user experience contest for tonight. 
Playing with it a bit more I think that it is much better results than Melodyne. 
The only glitches are simply that guitar chords have subtle pitch bends involved and the audio to midi doesn’t do any CC bends. So changes are very abrupt. Otherwise it tracks flawlessly unlike Melodyne which doesn’t. 
So this is looking like it will require a lot less editing and save time. 
Later I’ll test a bass part as well as look into if it does drums. 

Thanks dude!

[Starship Krupa]

20 minutes ago, Ken Kasriel said:

I use Mixcraft 8.5

The upgrade to 10.6 is a bargain, especially when it's on sale like it is right now. Check the prices on their website. It's pocket change for what you get. The Pro version is only $10 more than the standard version.

[Ken Kasriel]

8 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

The upgrade to 10.6 is a bargain, especially when it's on sale like it is right now. Check the prices on their website. It's pocket change for what you get. The Pro version is only $10 more than the standard version.

It's not the price for me. MC8.5 for me ain't broke and so doesn't need fixing; there are no new features I crave.  Also, I've read that MC10 CPU and RAM usage is much higher.  My ageing machine struggles enough as it is once projects reach a certain size

 

[mettelus]

4 hours ago, sjoens said:

Which list do you see it in?  ARAs are normally in the RegionFX menu and a clip's right-click menu.

https://docs.aurallysound.com/blog/ara_plugin_setup_daws

This has come up in  few threads, since inserting an ARA plugin as an FX bypasses its ARA functionality in SONAR (and others actually). People loading ARA plugins into the FX bin has caused issues over the years (including Melodyne), because the FX bin has no ARA functionality embedded into it (some will still function without ARA as a "real time" FX but with very limited use, but a Region FX is required for ARA functionality). Since Prism requires ARA, it cannot be supported in an FX bin at all.

The reason for this is that the handshaking that makes ARA what it is requires sending audio to the plugin when it is launched (via a clip, track, etc.). Without that, there is no way for the plugin to send changes back to the DAW host (why a "real time" FX chain fails for most functions, even if the FX bin will accept it).

[sjoens]

If it's ARA, it's RegionFX.  The fact they show up in Plugin Manager and Insert FX lists as well can be confusing.