Sometimes I need to tune a bit some vocal or some ethnic flute that has the basic tone not exactly well placed etc. A friend of mine recommended me to go for Melodyne that supposedly sounds much better and more natural than Auto Tune (that I was using so far).

I enthusiastically bought it - put it on a single track with simple vocal, it did ARA analysis, then I set the pitch center to 50% and the result sounds very strange - a kind of multivocal artifacts or what it is. I applied Auto Tune and it sound just normal ...

I wonder what is this and if I do something wrong? Can anyone using Melodyne possibly comment ?

Here are the sound samples Melodyne vs AutoTune

https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...usp=drive_link

Did you listen to the two files you uploaded??

I don't hear anything I would describe remotely as multivocal artefacts....are you sure it's not something weird with ARA in the DAW and you're hearing the tuned and untuned vocal together.

I can hear some difference in the tuning....the melodyne not catching some vibrato in the fades as well but likely just a setting thing.

It's been awhile but for natural tuning correction, it sounds natural! I like it.

Run Melodyne as a normal plugin, not as ARA. ARA allows you to tune in real-time, but that often results in errors, because Melodyne plugin's normal method is to analyze the whole track first (you do this by placing it on the track, click on "Transfer", then press play and let the track run..Melodyne will process the track.)

Also, upon completing its analysis, the mode should show as "Melodic". If it says it's "polyphonic", you have to press "re-analyze" and it will quickly correct itself to "melodic".

Why would Melodyne report a monophonic instrument as "polyphonic"? Because if the flute has any overtones (because the player overblew some notes, typical for flute players) then Melodyne will think it's a polyphonic instrument playing chords.

ARA is an attempt to circumvent Melodyne's needing to process a track first. But in my experience, the result is often hit or miss.

Yes, the issue is solved (as I got the message from the support):

This appears to be one of the polyphonic algorithms. Melodyne often selects the correct algorithm, but excessive harmonics, bleed, or ambience can cause Melodyne to choose a different algorithm than is correct for your audio type.

After setting the mode manually, all sounds ok ...

and in general the tuning and sound are very very natural I must say ...

Whether using ARA or as a plugin, it always processes the whole track first.

I don't know - I thought it would be the very best plugin for this purpose but so far I am a bit disappointed.

There were authentication issues all the time (wanting to deactivate it from Macbook to be able to activate on the same Macbook etc.) but hopefully fixed by the new update (let us see).

But:

I put it on a track, it does ARA processing but Melodyne window remains empty, nothing there. Playback going on but nothing inside to edit. And then, after some time or later during the day, the things suddenly appear inside. Sometimes like direct line, sometimes as tones placed vertically ... just random it seems.

Longer track - many things inside but impossible to make a sufficient zoom in ... so no details are seen.

I tried to slightly tune a simple recorder ... well ... the result is full of cracks and clicks ...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V6a...usp=drive_link

Hmm ...

Celemony website was down yesterday. My Melodyne Editor plugin suddenly became "inactivated" and I can't use it, and I can't "reactivate" it either because the website is inaccessible.

There obviously is a problem with Celemony's servers atm. But aside from that, I think this new version rollout has been something of a disaster. I've been a Melodyne user ever since it first was released, I have never seen such problems with new updates for it.
I rely heavily on it so I can't be without it for very long.

Your issues with ARA (ARA 2?) don't surprise me. ARA implementation is confusing and I personally don't think it
is anything but a work-in-progress right now, and we're beta-testing it. My advice..don't use the ARA version. Use the VST or AU version if you can.

How can I do that ? Is there any VST non ARA version to download ?

Lol. Yes, Melodyne has long been available as a VST plugin. Apparently you haven't been doing music production for very long.

You go here:
www.celemony.com

And BUY Melodyne Editor. That is the plugin.

Fair warning..Celemony's website is back up, but maybe only temporarily. They are having serious server issues at this time. I'd wait for a few more days before visiting their website.

Lol, I have been doing music production for some decades ... Just retuning needed very rarely. Somebody told me Melodyne can be better than AutoTune for occasional needs (not sure now).

I have Melodyne Editor VST. But whenever I start it, it does ARA processing.

ARA isn't a process..it's an enabler that allows your DAW to host ARA compatible plugins.

There is no "ARA" version of Melodyne.

What is your DAW? You should be able to place Melodyne as a VST plugin on the audio track you want to tune. Are you doing that?

I use Reaper. I put Melodyne on the track and ARA starts immediately. Before Melodyne I never used any ARA and even never heard about it .

Alright. Well there must be a preference in Reaper that allows you to disable ARA.

I'm sure you did the same thing but just in case I got there before you...

I disabled it. Then I put again Melodyne VST. But then it shows only empty window with tuning options buttons disabled - nothing works. Not sure how to make it working then.

Agreed - it’s the most natural sound by far. Spookily so.

I’m currently wrestling with whether to upgrade from standard to assistant, to better edit the tremolo. Anyone have any views on this?

The text copied from the image:

ISedkacek sorry buddy I know this isn’t your first rodeo and now you just gotta take 5mins on YouTube and teach yourself how to use it.

You can do it!

R.

1. Place Melodyne VST on an insert for the audio track you want to process.
2. Rewind to one bar before the audio in the track begins.
3. Open Melodyne's window. In the upper left corner, click on "Transfer".
4. Start playback of the audio track and let it play all the way through until it ends. Then stop playback.
5. You will see a clock icon showing Melodyne is processing the audio.
When the clock disappears, processing is done.
6. Rewind to the beginning of the track. Keep the Melodyne window open.
7. You should now see all the "blobs" representing the analyzed audio. You can now use the edit tools.

Thank you very much ! I tried quickly (we are now 300km above polar circle in minus 27 degrees and it seems that it works.

So you think it it better to do it like this than ARA ?

WAY better. ARA is a solution to a non-existent problem, as far as I'm concerned. I don't use it, never have, never will. It makes my production workflow more complicated.

Using it as a VST, Melodyne works in the way it always has - it takes time to process the audio first, then you do your editing. I suppose ARA does away with this and allows Melodyne to process in real-time, as the track plays, I don't know for sure.

This non ARA seems to work well (all tones are appearing in the window etc.)

There is just one thing that unlike in ARA processed window, here you cannot just move the cursor within Melodyne window on another spot and start playback from there - you have to do it in the DAW track.

May I have 3 more small questions?

1) Is Melodyne able to tune well stereo sources ? (instrument recordings - flutes, violin etc). When transferring or processing it always shows "monophonic detection" on the clock which confuses me a bit.

2) when you do some special editing for selected tones and then deselect all again - how can you see later the overview of all the spots where you did something extra?

3) in preferences there is an unselected option "detect audio after transfer" - what does it mean? Is it better to select it or not?

Answer to 1 - When you see 'monophonic detection" that means Melodyne thinks it is a solo instrument or solo vocal. If it analyzes something like a guitar rhythm part, it will report it as "polyphonic" detection. It doesn't matter if the source is a stereo track, that has nothing to do with what Melodyne reports the audio as.

Answer to 2
Once you deselect something, you're done, there is no way Melodyne will remember what you did, other than undo all your steps. For example, if you selected a blob, then adjusted its gain, then pitch corrected it, then lessened some vibrato, and then stretched or shrank it (in that order), then hitting "Undo" will always revert you to the previous step, which you can also undo, and then undo the next step, and so on and so forth until you reach the point where you started editing. Melodyne doesn't give you a "readout" history of editing steps, though.

Answer to 3 - if it is unchecked at default, just leave it unchecked.

This is nonsense. Whether you use the normal AU/VST/AAX version or ARA, the analysis Melodyne performs is identical. The only thing that changes is the transfer method of the audio into the Melodyne instance: For ARA, Melodyne can have immediate access to all audio on the track independently of the DAW transport, while with the regular plugin version, real-time playback of the entire audio is required to transfer the audio. So, if you wanna waste a bunch of time and make your workflow worse, then sure, don‘t use the ARA version But it doesn‘t change anything about the way Melodyne analyses or treats your audio.

Whatever floats your boat, man. ARA complicates things for me and for other people I know, who call me up and ask how the f..k do I get this ARA thing to work? It is different for each DAW as well. In Digital Performer, my DAW, you have to open the sequence editor (not the mixing board) and there is an ARA tab for each audio AND Midi track. Huh? But say it's an audio track with audio in it. Selecting the ARA tab doesn't load any plugin to the track's insert. It doesn't make sense to me.

But all that aside, the OP was having trouble with Melodyne, which in ARA mode was giving him some errors, so I suggested going back to the old-fashioned way and that did work for him.

What did we do before ARA? We put the plugin on an insert slot for the audio track. It's not like that wasn't working just fine..so it takes Melodyne longer to process the audio, so what? It's only a few minutes.

Here's the thing...ARA still strikes me as a gimmick, a solution in search of a problem. Like the way the latest iOS "intelligently" organizes your incoming email into three separate folders, and ends up putting critical
emails in the "offers" folder. Apple provided a "fix" for a nonexistent problem and made things worse for users.

If you can give me a one-sentence guide to how to use ARA in Digital Performer, Logic, and Pro Tools, I'd love to read it. And I'll eat my words. But it's gotta be one sentence.

I love Melodyne. I can get better, more natural results than with anything else but I would never use it with automatic settings. The Tilt tool for pitch is a lifesaver.

Also - I still manually separate sibilance and other non-tonal mouth sounds to avoid artifacts.

All that said, it's been pretty unstable recently (random crashes M1/Logic 11.1/Current Melodyne) and I'm annoyed that they still haven't figured out how to make ARA work with Logic.

The best trick I've found for quick transfer of audio is to add Melodyne to a track, press the Transfer button and then Freeze (blue freeze button) the track. Immediately Unfreeze (the freeze process will have transferred the audio faster than realtime) and then select the algorithm in Melodyne that you want to use. It takes a few steps but it's 20 seconds instead of 4 minutes.