Melodyne and Reaper - Yes or No?

[mykrobinson]

Simply put, does Melodyne work with Reaper or no? The website says it has a VST plugin, but I've read on the forum here about ARA and it not working in reaper.

Is ARA a plugin type like VST or AU? And if the two are different, then my base question is does the latest Melodyne work with R5.

Thanks

[Melvin J.]

ARA is not a plug-in but the latest melodyne (4) VST certainly works fine in REAPER. I would probably get used to "printing" your edited melodyne track, though, as Melodyne does seem to crash Reaper more often than most VST's, and you'll lose your edits from Melodyne as it doesn't save your edits, in my experiences.

[Aph]

I have Melodyne 4 and it certainly DOES save my edits... as long as I save the project file
I think I've only had one crash with Melodyne, which I couldn't repeat.
I'm on Win7 using 64 bit Reaper 4.78.

[Magicbuss]

Works fine for me. No crashes.

ARA is not available in reaper which would make Melodyne much easier to use but it is not essential. There is an elevated feature request to include ARA at some point but I dont know if or when that would happen

Gotcha's with melodyne VST:
Melodyne records and saves a copy of the audio you are tuning to its OWN directory. Once you capture the audio in melodyne it is now no longer going to respond to AUDIO edits made within reaper. You can still edit the tuning as much as you like.

Also Melodyne DOES NOT like tempo changes post capture.


For these reasons best practice is to freeze or print any tuned tracks before further editing or tempo adjustment. Editing before tuning is also a good idea.

[Jae.Thomas]

it works really great for me, but ARA would really be a massive improvement

[Jae.Thomas]

to edit melodyne tracks, just "freeze" "up until that fx" and that kinda works. ARA would change that for the better

[Archimedes]

Works well for me. Never had issues with Melodyne/Reaper.

[Aph]

Originally Posted by Magicbuss

Gotcha's with melodyne VST:
Melodyne records and saves a copy of the audio you are tuning to its OWN directory. Once you capture the audio in melodyne it is now no longer going to respond to edits made within reaper.

Okay, this confused me for a bit until I realized I am interchanging "edit" with "tuning".
What Magicbuss is saying is that the original audio file in Reaper is copied to a Melodyne directory (which you can change, by the way. I change it for every project to a directory that's within each song directory).
Therefore, when you edit the "audio file" in Reaper, that will obviously not be reflected in the audio file Melodyne copied... until you transfer that audio into Melodyne again. So, any "tuning" edits you did in Melodyne prior to re-transferring would be lost in that case.
For example: When I tune vocals, I make darn sure I have the best performance edited from all the vocal takes BEFORE transferring into Melodyne.

[Mordi]

In my experience Melodyne is really unstable when used as a VST plugin. Sometimes it'll just simply refuse to "transfer" (there is a transfer-button that is used to get audio from the DAW into melodyne). This would happen all the time with Melodyne 2 in FL Studio as well. I now use Melodyne 4.

I bet there is a way to make the workflow with Melodyne great, but I have yet to find a reliable one. Melodyne is still very good and useful though.

Edit: To answer your question about ARA:
ARA (audio random access) is a feature that must be programmed in by the developers of the DAW, as far as I know. It's like hardcoding in the transferring-process, so that Reaper would send the audio directly into Melodyne without having to do it manually. Studio One was the first to have this, I think, and I believe some other DAWs have adopted it.

[SonicAxiom]

Originally Posted by Magicbuss

Melodyne records and saves a copy of the audio you are tuning to its OWN directory. Once you capture the audio in melodyne it is now no longer going to respond to edits made within reaper.

This is the biggest issue I have with Melodyne and is the reason why I refuse to use it as a plugin inside Reaper. I prefer to do all Melodyne editing in the stand-alone version and then re-import the edited file back into Reaper.

Used as a plugin, Melodyne forces everything put through it to be stored in Melodyne's own temp folder! Tracks from all projects accumulate there over time and are no longer stored together with all other project media - it's getting a mess really quickly, especially if you need to hand projects over to someone else and is just the complete opposite of the clear and simple project media management in Reaper where all media files are always kept together.

[semiquaver]

It basically works (with some babying). I find that you need to disable anticipative processing on mac to get the transfers to work dependably.Tempo changes can be played into the plugin though this is a little flaky..

[Aph]

Originally Posted by SonicAxiom

Used as a plugin, Melodyne forces everything put through it to be stored in Melodyne's own temp folder! Tracks from all projects accumulate there over time and are no longer stored together with all other project media - it's getting a mess really quickly, especially if you need to hand projects over to someone else and is just the complete opposite of the clear and simple project media management in Reaper where all media files are always kept together.

See my post above. Every time I start a project I change the Melodyne folder so that it resides in my project folder. You can do this right in the Melodyne plugin. That way, the Melodyne audio file travels with the project!

[Jack Ruston]

It works (the basic VST functionality) but there are some weird things that can happen - eg where you get a note playing back twice. What I would do is to transfer in big sections, whereby you're not trying to make a new transfer very closely adjacent to an existing one. Do all your tuning, print it, and turn it all off. I would avoid running it in realtime on a permanent basis. Personally I find this to be a better approach with all these kinds of plug ins that take audio away and do something with it.

The nice thing w Reaper is that the process of transferring audio out of the application (if you want to use melodyne standalone) is that you can streamline it all using custom actions quite neatly. Eg I have an 'izotope' button on my taskbar. Brilliant.

Personally I tend to start with a quick separation and pitch nudge using reaper before going to melodyne if it needs more. But it does work if you need it to, albeit in a rather quirky way.

J

[memyselfandus]

ARA please

[G-Sun]

Originally Posted by mykrobinson

does Melodyne work with Reaper or no?

No, not for me

[grayter1]

I use it and love it. However, it can be finicky in Reaper, so I use do vocal turning and edits in Studio One - making use of the ARA of both Melodyne and VocAlign.

In Reaper, I find the VST3 works best for me, but you have to give it a "running start" - meaning if the vocal you want to capture begins at bar 5, I star Reaper around bar 3 and begin capture at bar 4.

I used to have the issue of it capturing for 2 seconds, then stopping, but that hasn't happened in awhile.

I would love to see ARA added in Reaper. I'd probably stop using S1, but the one-two punch of Melodyne and VocAlign with ARA save me hours when dealing with big stacks of R&B backgrounds, so I do the work there.

I'd also like to see Melodyne create it's own audio folder within the Reaper project folder like it does in Pro Tools. I've moved sessions to my laptop, only to find the pitch edits didn't follow because I didn't copy the folder.

tg

[Rick O'Shay]

Most of you probably know this, but the Melodyne manual says operation can become unstable with buffer sizes lower than 1024 samples. (and I've accidentally found this to be the case) If your buffer is set to a lower value & you are having Melodyne problems try increasing it and see what happens.

[SonicAxiom]

Originally Posted by Aph

See my post above. Every time I start a project I change the Melodyne folder so that it resides in my project folder. You can do this right in the Melodyne plugin. That way, the Melodyne audio file travels with the project!

I'm aware of this workaround but I find it too cumbersome.

[mschnell]

Even more cumbersome seems that you can't move an item easily any more in Reaper once it has been modified by Melodyne. (A friend told me about this.)

-Michael

[Magicbuss]

Originally Posted by mschnell

Even more cumbersome seems that you can't move an item easily any more in Reaper once it has been modified by Melodyne. (A friend told me about this.)

-Michael

You cant move it at all afaik...UNLESS you freeze it first. Best practice is to to freeze all your tuned tracks. Any post tuning editing can be done using the tuned (frozen) audio.

[Magicbuss]

Originally Posted by Rick O'Shay

Most of you probably know this, but the Melodyne manual says operation can become unstable with buffer sizes lower than 1024 samples. (and I've accidentally found this to be the case) If your buffer is set to a lower value & you are having Melodyne problems try increasing it and see what happens.

Yeah that little caveat does make a difference. 1024 samples is fine for mixing. For recording I sometimes switch to lower latencies. Playing my guitar through S-gear for example requires the lowest latency my system will allow without glitching.

[Mordi]

Originally Posted by Rick O'Shay

Most of you probably know this, but the Melodyne manual says operation can become unstable with buffer sizes lower than 1024 samples. (and I've accidentally found this to be the case) If your buffer is set to a lower value & you are having Melodyne problems try increasing it and see what happens.

I did not know that actually. Good tip. Guess I should check out the user manual.

[mschnell]

Originally Posted by Magicbuss

Any post tuning editing can be done using the tuned (frozen) audio.

Not really fun

-Michael

[Magicbuss]

Originally Posted by mschnell

Not really fun

-Michael

How so? Tuning should only need to be done once. then i freeze and hide the original from the TCP and MCP. Typically i want the track in question edited and consolidated before tuning but you could tune first, freeze, then edit - no right or wrong way. Although if you wanted to go back and adjust tuning for whatever reason it would be preferable that the tuning took place on an already edited track.

[lolilol1975]

Originally Posted by memyselfandus

ARA please

I guess to help them develop it, maybe it would help to offer the developers a licence of Melodyne or Vocalign ?

[mehmethan]

Use melodyne on item fx instead of track fx. That way you can move your items and have more freedom on your track.

[allstar]

Originally Posted by semiquaver

It basically works (with some babying). I find that you need to disable anticipative processing on mac to get the transfers to work dependably.Tempo changes can be played into the plugin though this is a little flaky..

I had to turn anticipative proccessing off too. Otherwise the transfer would abort after a second or so.

[Xenakios]

Originally Posted by lolilol1975

I guess to help them develop it, maybe it would help to offer the developers a licence of Melodyne?

I am fairly sure the issue about ARA not making it into Reaper is not about that.

[Melvin J.]

Originally Posted by mehmethan

Use melodyne on item fx instead of track fx. That way you can move your items and have more freedom on your track.

Yes. Absolutely.

[mschnell]

Originally Posted by Magicbuss

How so?

Because it dictates a workflow not everybody might want to follow. (I can't comment further, as I don't have Melodyne.)
-Michael

[merdave]

Reaper is all about the options so I'm just as sure that isn't the reason either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BeKhlUzPUc

[raiirock]

Ara please

[db9091]

Resurrecting.

These are the issues I see with M4 and Reaper on Mac:
1) I have to start a few bars before, then click FX to open Melodyne 4, then hit the Transfer button. I can't see the plugin if I click on the Reaper background.
2) I can't start the audio within Reaper by double clicking
3) I can't resize the window more than a defined amount.
4) I can't her any MIDI notes on the piano left-side board

Are these normal? I love working with it in standalone, and I can double click to start audio, hear the piano roll, but then I don't have the rest of the audio to see if my corrections are good or not (not all audio likes perfect notes, sometimes you need to be sharp or flat for certain accents or parts in some types of music. I can't do that correctly standalone vocals well at all.)