I guess we can give up on the Melodyne DNA Plugin

[Richard Rupert]

Hi guys,

I've had several e-mail communiques with Melodyne and now feel that we're SOL on getting DNA to work in SAW unless Bob somehow figures it out. Here's my message to Jörg at Celemony:


On Dec 4, 2010, at 6:38 AM, Green Valley Recording wrote:
Hello Jörg,

Thanks for your timely reply. And thank you for a path to the old version.

However, you are missing my point-- the reason I bought the plugin in the first place was because I wanted the DNA feature which was promised to be available within a year of my purchase. It's finally here but I can't use it. I have two other pitch correctors that work fine... Antares and now iZotope. What I need from you is DNA, a brilliant solution to polyphonic pitch correction.

To make that happen, you have to open a dialogue with Bob Lentini.

I will tell you that I spent some time last night working with the Editor plug-in and found that it will create the note separations, but the problem is that the changes are not audible until you close the current edit file and re-open a different project, then re-open the Melodyne project... then the changes are heard. As you can certainly understand, this prevents hearing what you're doing while you're working on the project. I believe there must be a fairly simple cure for this if you would be willing to contact Bob.

My SawStudio colleagues and I would be most appreciative if you'd make this effort. Bob's e-mail address is:
tech@sawstudio.com .

Thank you Jörg.
Richard

... and his reply:


Dear Richard,
I rather be honest with you. We are a fairly small company and we currently do not have the manpower to expand the base of supported music programs beyond what we currently support. If this ever changes, then this obviously is an option. Right now we simply can't.

Best wishes,
Jörg Hüttner

So some of us have invested in a plugin that promised an upgrade to DNA and now it's broken and the company has no intention of fixing it; not even to the extent of a contact with Bob. :mad: Luckily, RML is an enormous company and can take care of us when something in SAW or SAC breaks. :rolleyes:

[Tim Miskimon]

I don't know and maybe I'm wrong but it seems to me that a small company would want to make sure that their program runs in as many DAW as possible -especially since the last few plug in versions have worked fine in SAW STUDIO up until this most recent release.
Something in their new code is broke and they are too lazy to find a fix.
So what does this mean?
It means potential customers like me and many others will keep using the old version and in return they lose money - very good customer relations there...:rolleyes:

[Rabbit]

Ok.. Melodyne crossed off my new plugs list... done

[Angie]

Ok.. Melodyne crossed off my new plugs list... done

Mine too. Was waiting for DNA. Glad I didn't jump on it.

[Carey Langille]

I guess its a 2 way street really, there are also many other vsts that work fine in other platforms that dont work well or at all in SS , but we dont have bob fixing it in SS..... I think its more an understanding of the VST spec it comes down to and how each company implements it into the host thats the issue.... i have a few steinberg plugins that would fine in 3 other systems but not SS.. so should they fix it to work in SS or should Bob try to figure it out?? Interesting question i guess but Bobs companmy is also small.. Time is better spent on other things ? Maybe? Im not sure anyone is to blame.....Just some thoughts..

[Dan Hauck]

Personally, I think my energy is better spent working with people who can sing on pitch, tune their instruments & play in time. I wonder why these are such esoteric concepts? I'm growing tired of turd-polishing.

[Rabbit]

I guess its a 2 way street really, there are also many other vsts that work fine in other platforms that dont work well or at all in SS , but we dont have bob fixing it in SS..... I think its more an understanding of the VST spec it comes down to and how each company implements it into the host thats the issue.... i have a few steinberg plugins that would fine in 3 other systems but not SS.. so should they fix it to work in SS or should Bob try to figure it out?? Interesting question i guess but Bobs companmy is also small.. Time is better spent on other things ? Maybe? Im not sure anyone is to blame.....Just some thoughts..

I seem to recall Bob working with a few plug in vendors over the years to solve compatibility issues from time to time. I'm inclined to think there isn't much Bob can do to get something working unless the vendor is willing get involved, unless he sees an obvious problem he can address is SS. Clearly in the case of Melodyne the willingness to engage RML is absent. One issue could be Melodyne's implementation of the "standard" for VST, I'm not a dev but as I understand it different vendors can implement it in different ways which can be a problem for host applications.

[Rabbit]

Personally, I think my energy is better spent working with people who can sing on pitch, tune their instruments & play in time. I wonder why these are such esoteric concepts? I'm growing tired of turd-polishing.

Hard to argue with that one. On the other hand it's seldom a perfect world is it?

[Grekim]

You guys should try exporting without mixer processing, pull the file into Melodyne standalone, edit pitch and save, import into SAW. Then I think both programs will access the same file so that a Melodyne change (with save) should be audible immediately in SAW.

Look, it makes sense to me that you'll find the most compatibility in the host program the plug-in format was designed for. SAW was not designed around VST, which is predominately a VERY good thing. I wouldn't want to compromise how SAW runs just to have a few extra VST plug-ins. It's just unfortunate that we don't seem to have a graphical type of pitch editor. Of course if people could actually sing and play in time we wouldn't need pitch shifting and time expansion, etc.

[Bob L]

What is odd though... is that SAWStudio worked fine with the older Melodyne plugin... nothing has changed in my code... something is obviously quite different in their new interface code... it would be nice to find out what... then maybe I could make an adjustment to solve the issue... or they could.

Sad that they are not interested in having a conversation... oh well... it takes two to tango. :)

Bob L

[Dan Hauck]

Hard to argue with that one. On the other hand it's seldom a perfect world is it?

True, but in my observation there has been a marked lowering of the bar for what is considered acceptable musical performance over the past 20 years which is unfortunately probably a byproduct of the democratizing of recording technology (and I don't think I feel this way just because I'm old).

[Tim Miskimon]

Hard to argue with that one. On the other hand it's seldom a perfect world is it?

True, but in my observation there has been a marked lowering of the bar for what is considered acceptable musical performance over the past 20 years which is unfortunately probably a byproduct of the democratizing of recording technology (and I don't think I feel this way just because I'm old).

You are right Dan the bar has been lowered to the point that we can't limbo rock anymore...:)
I at least work with a lot of very talented people so Auto tune & Melodyne is only needed once in a while and I am very glad about that.
Personally I rather have the singer sing it again - I hate sitting there for hours adjusting tuning - it's so damn nerve racking.
Maybe Melodyne DNA not working is a blessing in disguise.

[Rabbit]

I think many would agree the talent bar has continued on a downward trend over the years, and I personally agree technology plays a heavy part in this. I've never used autotune and have always gone for a better take, I don't see that changing, but I can see where this tool could come in handy though it's not something I plan to use often. Oh and I'm old too....

[Richard Rupert]

Personally, I think my energy is better spent working with people who can sing on pitch, tune their instruments & play in time. I wonder why these are such esoteric concepts? I'm growing tired of turd-polishing.

Dan,
You're lucky to have that option. I unfortunately cannot choose my clients by their talent level. I run a full time studio and take all comers. Some are outstanding singers and players; but sadly most are not.

But as I said in my e-mail to Celemony, it's the polyphonic pitch shifting ability of DNA that's of particular interest to me. I've had many opportunities to save an otherwise great piano or guitar solo except for one of two harmonic notes that needed to be shifted to make the chord reference correct. No way to do that without DNA. Or in a mixed track of a quartet with a phrase or small section that could be sweetened. It's not always about "turd polishing".

At least that's been my experience. :)

[MMP]

One thing for sure that has changed is that some newer plugins expect the audio engine to be running all the time.

Even the older version of Melodyne was buggy in SS, but it has been buggy in many other DAWs. There were ways to get it to work OK.

I asked Izotope to get in touch with Bob about the Nectar plugin, but don't know if they ever bothered to do it.

Regards,

MM


What is odd though... is that SAWStudio worked fine with the older Melodyne plugin... nothing has changed in my code... something is obviously quite different in their new interface code... it would be nice to find out what... then maybe I could make an adjustment to solve the issue... or they could.

Sad that they are not interested in having a conversation... oh well... it takes two to tango. :)

Bob L

[Leadfoot]

I wonder if Pieter Stenekes would know anything about writing a native pitch correction/tuning plug-in for us. His products are top notch.

[MikeDee]

I asked Izotope to get in touch with Bob about the Nectar plugin, but don't know if they ever bothered to do it.

Regards,

MMMike, what issues are you experiencing with Nectar? I bought it and have been experimenting with it in SS (haven't tried working with it yet in SAC, though it loads fine). Thus far, it's been working fine.

Please let me know...I'll see if I can duplicate on my box.

Best regards,

[MikeDee]

I wonder if Pieter Stenekes would know anything about writing a native pitch correction/tuning plug-in for us. His products are top notch.He already has...Sonoris PitchTime (for SS).

Although...I tend to favor the Acon plugs over his. I feel that they sound more natural, especially when transposing an already-mixed tune or slowing down the tempo to 50% or less (while retaining pitch).

However, IMHO, Melodyne (original plugin and Editor [once it's tamed!]), Nectar, and AutoTune (I have v5) are superior when it comes to mono material (e.g., vocal). And AFAIK, Melodyne's DNA is the only game in town when it comes to correcting individual notes within polyphonic material (e.g., piano or guitar).

[MMP]

Some Daws can support a more Melodyne like editing function in Nectar. I was hoping Bob could add the structure to make SAW Studio compatible with this advanced mode.

Regards,

MM



Mike, what issues are you experiencing with Nectar? I bought it and have been experimenting with it in SS (haven't tried working with it yet in SAC, though it loads fine). Thus far, it's been working fine.

Please let me know...I'll see if I can duplicate on my box.

Best regards,

[Bob L]

I'm happy to do what I can if someone from the company gets me setup with a trial and the info needed.

Bob L

[MikeDee]

Some Daws can support a more Melodyne like editing function in Nectar. I was hoping Bob could add the structure to make SAW Studio compatible with this advanced mode.

Regards,

MMAah, ok, manual editing. Just saw your posts in another thread. Guess I'll stick w/Melodyne for this task for the time being....

Thanks and regards,

[Richard Rupert]

I've been tinkering with the standalone version of Melodyne Editor. I imported a polyphonic wave file, and Editor separates the notes. But... I can't hear the audio. If I select Direct X in the audio properties box, I can hear the click track if enabled, but not the wave file. Maybe it's my interface. I'm using an M-Audio LightBridge, which for me works perfectly with SAW and SAC (I know others have had problems with the LightBridge for audio, so we don't need to travel that road again). :-)

Question is, has anyone had any luck using the standalone version of Melodyne Editor to edit polyphonic files?

Thanks.