Melodyne Studio 5 Tempo Map Integration ARA wth ACID 10

Harvey-Andruss wrote on 10/16/2021, 2:08 PM

ACID claims ARA integration with Melodyne. I have ACID Pro 10 and Melodyne Studio 5. I want to import an entire song of a live performance which was not to a click. In other words I want to generate a live (variable) click track overlay using the tempo mapping feature of Melodyne. I then want to recreate some things over it in ACID and use Sound Forge and Spectralayers (actually spleeter inside of it) to redo some of the drum sounds. ACID ARA has track, event and clip editing selections for Melodyne. I've tried all 3 and while I can get the Melodyne interface to generate a metronome that syncs with the track and generates a slightly variable tempo map (performance was pretty tight, but not perfect) I am not aware of any way to integrate with ACID. When I use the metronome in ACID it's completely out of wack and the tempo doesn't look like it even registered any change from Melodyne in any scenario (tried them all). I use one-shot, beatmapped, stretch (beat map) later, etc. None of them actually talk to Melodyne. So I was forced to do the old fashioned bar by bar manual tempo change in ACID, but that involved 128 bars either validating the existing tempo was still working or doing a slight tweak with placement of a tempo change markers in the Clip Properties. Does anyone else use Melodyne in this way but successfully. Seems like the two (ACID and Melodyne tempo map) were a match made in heaven - take live recordings, map the tempo to make a live click track, then lay on all sorts of normal grid loops on top of the live performance and chop any of the clips that all line up well as long as you have the tempo map with each clip. I assume it is a midi file attached to the wave file in each case, but why don't they transfer the midi info back and forth like ARA was meant to do? What am I missing?

Comments

sheppo wrote on 10/25/2021, 2:32 AM

I've just tried walking through the tempo map tutorial from Celemony for a different daw (Studio 1) and it doesn't work in Acid. I am able to get melodyne to detect tempos of the clip, but the information is not transferred back to Acid. I agree, this is a shame, since Acid does support clip-based tempo map-like functionality, but it's not envelope-based, as it is in Studio 1.

From Celemony's DAW support page - "Please note in the case of ARA-compatible DAWs: Since the DAW manufacturers support ARA Audio Random Access in different ways, the range of ARA functions varies from DAW to DAW.". In Acid's case I think this means Acid is able to Transfer the audio in to Melodyne automatically, but not much more of the more advanced functionality.

Harvey-Andruss wrote on 10/28/2021, 10:33 AM

The most probable reason that they do not allow MIDI tempo (timing) information transfer via ARA2 to the *.sfl file is that Beatmapper is like the core of the program and people have been doing manual beat marker style tempo adjustments for a decade from when Sony had it (aka Control T) - very quickly I might add - so adding an "automagical overlay" like Melodyne for tempo is probably not high on their priority list. But still, they make all these ARA claims, it shows up in the View (Melodyne Editor), and the right-click on a clip/event (Edit Event aka Shift M, Edit Track and Edit Project with Melodyne) and they even bundle it with the product itself. Seems like an oversight that is easily fixed..

sheppo wrote on 10/29/2021, 4:23 PM

On one hand, I'm like "hey, at least we have better support than Ableton!"... as far as I can tell you have to manually transfer your clips in to Melodyne there, and many functionality present in the Acid integration is simply missing.

On the other, this feels so close to being possible - it looks like project tempo maps are part of ARA, and Acid offers very similar functionality, as you say, at both the project, and clip level tempo changes.

Is the tempo mapping functionality of Melodyne a new thing? I don't have history of using the product at all other to try to answer your question.

Harvey-Andruss wrote on 10/29/2021, 6:16 PM

Tempo and key signature mapping for an entire live performance have been there since v4, possibly earlier (on v5 now). Each note shows as a blob that can be sliced up (or not) and manipulated for timing, pitch and I believe harmonics. Drag and drop single notes or many notes (lasso or macro select via algorithm). It can do a lot to paint different colors with the samples you work with in ACID (clips, events). More than an Autotune competitor. Not perfect, but close.