I ask because I noticed after poking around with a whole song in Cubase plus SpectralLayers that the *.cpr was 180MB !!! It was nothing that was meant to be saved so I tested to remove the files from the project and disconnect it from ARA etc and the project now was 3MB.
Shouldn’t the audio files be linked and not be baked into the project file you think?
This is due to the ARA protocol : ARA plugins have no knowledge of where the project and its files are, it only receive and send audio buffers. So when archiving data, an ARA plugin is supposed to provide the DAW the data to store, and the DAW is supposed to store it inside the project file.
That being said I hope that a future evolution of the ARA protocol will allow ARA plugins to have more knowledge about the files location, but right now that’s how it is. If you really don’t want the ARA audio data to be stored in the project file, I suggest you bounce your audio clip once you’re done with ARA editing. This will save your edit into an external file and remove the ARA plugin.
2 Likes
Well, good enough! 
I was just wondering.
I figured out last night I can bounce the file if it was a real project. I tend to do that anyway to keep the stuff hanging in mid air in a project to a minimum. Like commit to tape and be done with it and better safe than sorry.