Re: supported DAWs, I thought ARA is an industry standard. So basically their announcement doesn’t have to mean that those mentioned are the only DAWs which are compatible. They might work out-of-the-box with the other DAWs supporting ARA, Dreamtonics just haven’t tested them yet.
Am I right with my speculation?
Like I said above, it could be either way. It’s likely that the ones officially supported by Dreamtonics just mean the ones they’ve tested, but the fact that they say “more to be supported soon” suggests that Dreamtonics anticipates some amount of incompatibility that would require more comprehensive testing across different DAWs.
ARA is a standard, but that doesn’t mean every DAW’s implementation of it follows that standard to the same degree.
It’s likely Dreamtonics started with Cubase and Studio One partly due to their popularity in Japan, but also because they are a logical baseline for compatibility with Steinberg having created the VST format and PreSonus having worked with Celemony on the ARA extension.
Basically, it could work perfectly fine in other DAWs, but the fact that Dreamtonics went out of their way to mention compatibility when they never did so for the current SynthV Studio VST raises some doubts.
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This will be a great update to the program, and I can’t wait to use it. I am very interested in “phonetic transcription” and “detect pitch curves.” Those two features are currently possible in Ace Studio, where they work reasonably well, but Dreamtonics is adding more to the technology, with selectable options and ARA integration.
- ARA integration will be a huge time saver working in a DAW, getting things in and out of Synth-V, not to mention improved synchronized playback and viewing DAW waveforms alongside synth vocals.
- Phonetic transcription potentially could customize pronunciation and allow us to have accents for British, Australian, USA Southern, or any foreign language, but we will have to wait and see how flexible and capable it is. Still, it will save time typing in at least a lot of the lyrics.
- Detect pitch curves is potentially the real game changer, and should eliminate the need for either Melodyne or Prat/Hatori in getting Synth-V to sing like a real human. Once again, we will have to see how well it works, because the video does not show the whole process of recording the vocal and hearing it first and then seeing what Synth-V did with it. In fact the video does not even select the option of detecting pitching curves or phonetic transcription. Thus, so far, we only have a demo of the more basic features of the update, and no demonstration of the two more advance features.
There must be quite some integration with ARA and/or Melodyne and Synth-V, because if you are familiar with Studio One (used in the video) you will see that the wav forms of the recorded vocal have no little green lines at first, but when dragged into Synth-V, those little green lines show up. Currently, as far as I know, the only way these green lines show up in Studio One is after the track has been processed by Melodyne. But the demo shows that Melodyne was not used, but Synth-V triggered their appearance. That is interesting.
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The green line isn’t specific to Melodyne, it’s just a pitch curve received from the ARA plugin.
The most common situation where you’d see it is with Melodyne, because it is using ARA to modify the pitch of the input audio in a moment-to-moment manner. In a sense, SynthV is doing the same, but it’s also replacing the audio in the process.
The reason it looks similar is because Melodyne also uses ARA to communicate that information with the host, not because SynthV is using Melodyne directly.
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Ok, that explains the appearance of the green lines in the video, but why would it “replace the audio in the process?” We want Synth-V to use the audio and make a file it can use to trigger singing voices, but we don’t want it changed?
All I mean to say is that SynthV Studio’s output is different from Melodyne’s in that it is a new audio signal rather than a directly modified version of the original input signal.
Ace Studio has a very cool feature that I wish SynthV had: The ability to combine deferent voices to make a new voice.
You can now try the ARA integration in the 1.11.0b1 beta. Full information here:
Please be mindful of the varying levels of DAW support. “Deep Integration” refers to the automatic association between DAW tracks and SynthV tracks, while “Bridge” refers to improved playback accuracy and tempo synchronization.
| Deep ARA Integration | ARA Bridge | |
|---|---|---|
| Studio One 5/6 | Yes | Yes |
| Cubase 12/13 | Yes | Yes |
| Reaper 6 | Yes | Yes |
| Logic Pro (Rosetta/x86) | No | Yes |
| Logic Pro (Apple Silicon) | No | No |
| Other ARA2-compatible DAWs | No | Yes* (not verified by Dreamtonics) |
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Fantastic new feature. It should improve workflow quite a bit.
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The new ARA support is wonderful, but it feels like I need to do some weird stuff to make it work.
It seems like it there needs to be an audio item on the Reaper track where you want to insert notes in Synth V. If you move the item in Reaper the notes move along with it in Synth V which is great.
Having an audio item on the track which is unrelated to the vocals feels a little weird, though, and empty items or MIDI items don’t seem to work.
Hopefully, I’m missing something, and I’d appreciate any suggestions for a good ARA workflow in Reaper.
Did you read the instructions provided by Dreamtonics?
Project Structure Synchronization
Synthesizer V Studio ARA Plugin mirrors the host’s project structure by linking note groups with the audio clips in the host. A note group will be created in Synthesizer V Studio for each audio clip in the host with the ARA plugin attached.
Q: Why can’t I enter notes into synced tracks?
A: Under full ARA mode, notes can only exist inside note groups that are linked with the DAW. To create a note, first create an audio clip in the DAW and link it to the ARA plugin, then enter the linked note group.
The link is in the news article mentioned above, but I’ll include it here as well:
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If you are trying to quickly move MIDI from your DAW to SynthV Studio, this is not part of the features listed by Dreamtonics. We can likely assume it is either not possible with ARA2’s capabilities, or that it’s a future enhancement for another update.
Remember, ARA was originally made for Melodyne, so its capabilities are very much tailored to analyzing and/or modifying audio clips. I expect it’s unlikely that it would allow a plugin to keep an internal piano roll in sync with the DAW’s, and further unlikely that it could update the DAW’s MIDI if a change is made in the plugin’s piano roll.
A one-click MIDI import would be a nice enhancement for sure, so by all means send an email to Dreamtonics inquiring about it, but there might not be much more they can do with modern DAW integration technologies.
Of course, Dreamtonics has given us two tools that mean you no longer have to export and import a MIDI file to get it into SynthV. By combining synced tracks and voice-to-MIDI integration we can move a MIDI sequence to the plugin more quickly.
- Assign an instrument to your MIDI sequence (I’d recommend a sine tone for simplicity)
- Bounce the clip
- Most DAWs have a “render in-place”, “quick bounce”, or “consolidate track” type of option that will make this only take a couple clicks
- I think in Reaper they call this “freeze track” but maybe that’s something different
- Most DAWs have a “render in-place”, “quick bounce”, or “consolidate track” type of option that will make this only take a couple clicks
- Use voice-to-MIDI to transcribe the sine tone it into SynthV Studio
(edit: to be clear, it is possible for SynthV Studio to export a MIDI sequence back to the DAW, but not in a note-by-note sense that keeps two piano rolls in sync. See the document from Dreamtonics for full instructions)
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Hi Claire, I hadn’t seen that document yet, only watched the video. The description matches my experience, so it seems I didn’t miss anything. Thanks for the link!
That’s not what I was trying to do. I was looking for the easiest way to insert notes into Synth V using the ARA version.
It looks like the fastest way is to create a midi item of the desired length and then bounce it to audio. The only downside is that it creates those files in my project directory where it takes a bit of disk space.
I think I can live with that. Maybe I’ll ask in the Reaper forum if there’s a better way to handle this.
Overall, I’m really happy with the introduction of ARA in Synth V. It makes arranging a track much easier.
That’s a cool idea to get midi into Synth V. I’m going to try that
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For some reason I cannot get any apparent “ARA integration” on my system (Win 10 and Studio One 6.) When I try dragging the Dreamtonics FX onto an audio track it gives me an error message saying it cannot run the bridge. I think I’m doing everything right, but is there something I’m missing?
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However can get the feature of converting an audio file to Synth-V notes another way with the beta plugin, by dragging the audio file from a folder into the plugin (the instrument, not the FX) and then right-click and ask it to make the conversion.
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After making the conversion, if I want to add or edit notes, I have to first select them and “disband group” because the conversion puts them in a group by default. I suppose this will lose some of the ARA sync features, but it I want to edit that way this seems to work.
Have you followed the instructions from Dreamtonics linked above?
You can “enter” a group by double-clicking on it. Then you can modify the group contents without disbanding.
You can “exit” the group to return to the main track by pressing the escape key or clicking the handle below the start of the group.
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Thank you Claire, that is helpful.
I could not get the ARA plugin (in FX) to drag into an audio track without getting an error message. So, on a guess, I updated my version of Studio One, and then it worked! So it seems I need Studio One 6.5 or higher, although they list that it works on any version from 5+. I was only using 6.0 with the error message, but 6.5 works. Perhaps the reinstall was all I needed, but all is good now.
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I’m having problems getting ARA working in Cubase 13
How do I get the piano roll to appear?
also where in the menus is the dialog allowing me to enter some lyrics in one go?
Which piano roll? The SynthV Studio one or the DAW’s piano roll? You open the SynthV Studio GUI the same as any other VST instrument, the ARA plugin does not change this.
(edit: Here I originally said you have to first add the original VSTi plugin before adding the ARA plugin, however this is not necessarily true for most workflows. The part that is important to note is that the classic VSTi plugin is an instrument, while the ARA plugin applies to each track individually. This means that if you have SynthV tracks that are not associated with an audio clip in the DAW, you may need to create a dummy/empty clip in the DAW for the ARA plugin to sync with, or you could add the VSTi instrument and use it in the bridged mode)
If you can see the plugin and it’s just the piano roll panel that’s missing, did you minimize the piano roll by accident?
Select the notes you want to add lyrics for, then right click and select “Insert Lyrics”. This same option is available under the Modify top menu or by pressing ctrl+L.
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The second beta for version 1.11.0 (1.11.0b2) is now available. These are the main changes compared to the first:
- Full ARA support in Cakewalk and Ability 5 DAWs
- Bugfixes for plugin stability, including desync on render in Cubase
- Improved performance and accuracy of Voice-to-MIDI conversion
- More voice database beta versions for Spanish language testing
- UI enhancements to make it more clear when the user is working with grouped notes vs the underlying track
- Various other bugfixes
Download 1.11.0b2: Synthesizer V Studio Beta Version - download > English > Synthesizer V Studio Beta Version (dreamtonics.com)
Voice database beta versions: Beta Releases - download > English > Voice Databases > Beta Releases (dreamtonics.com)
The group UI enhancements include two main changes:
- The “handle” below a group is now green, and extends across the full duration of the group.
- Double-clicking any of the notes in the group will still “enter” the group, but now clicking the handle below is a more usable alternative, because it is no longer only shown below the first note of the group.
- When editing a group, a border will indicate the editable area.
- As before, clicking the handle below or pressing
escwill return to the main track.
- As before, clicking the handle below or pressing
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I love the quick pace of major updates to the software by Dreamtonics. Way to go guys, awesome job!
Cant wait to try Spanish update for the other voices!
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