Melodyne completely unusable? Not permanent, corrupts files

[Lorenz_o]

I can’t seem to save the changes I make to a file with melodyne if I use it as an audio extension. I literally just changed one event, and another one was changed. The audio of both events came from the same track and afterwards the original audio in the event was gone and replaced with the other one. I dont understand at all what’s going on. But you can still listen to the event once you remove melodyne.

I alsodon’t know how I would work around this:, do I need to deactivate all plugins and then render in place with the entire singal chain, or just render in place dry signal, or will the extension never be included?

The next thing is, I seemingly cant add melodyne with a key command over the menu, the button I assigned to melodyne opens some alternative window and this doesn’t work.

Also if I added melodyne to an event then delete it, cubase doesn’t let me record the track again, says audio dropout. But is fine recording on another track.

There seems to be a major issue. Furthermore events I added melodyne too, randomly will stop playing back audio.
This is so bad I would embarass myself infront of any musician in my studio so I will need to work in another DAW cos I dont see a workaround and actually need melodyne for the song I’m working on right now.

In the meantime I would really appreciate any help to sort out any errors I could have made. Otherwise hoping Steinberg fixes melodyne integration.

This is what I get when I try to make extension (melodyne) permanent:

On a further note, if I watch melodyne tutorials it always seems to work so smooth but for me it’s super laggy.

Perhaps there is something corrupted, if anyone had similar issues.

Edit: I just found out you can use the plugin as an insert instead of an extension and then transfer audio. This has worked so far. Is that supposed to be the way? seems pretty tedious

[rickpaul]

I’m not sure how helpful this will be, but I’ve only used Melodyne as an ARA extension since whichever version of Cubase first supported it (10.5 maybe?), including with Cubase 12 ( every version through 12.0.30), and generally without problems, though some aspects did seem to change in ways that slowed down my workflow slightly with Cubase 12 (I don’t recall if it was after the most recent Melodyne update, to 5.02.00006, which I installed on May 2nd).

I should note, though, that I almost always render (bounce audio clips, letting them replace the original clips) once I’ve made my changes in Melodyne. This is a habit I got used to previously when working with Cakewalk SONAR Platinum as I found there could be instability when saving projects that still had Melodyne active with ARA extensions (which I rarely did anyway, but that bit me at least once when I did it, and other users in a forum I was frequenting at the time indicated that was a regular issue they’d encountered).

I generally have not found Melodyne to be laggy, but it may depend how many clips you’re including in your selections (perhaps also if those clips are comped but not bounced?), what sort of tuning you’re doing (e.g. monophonic versus polyphonic – I’m typically only doing vocals), etc.

[Lorenz_o]

@rickpaul

I should note, though, that I almost always render (bounce audio clips, letting them replace the original clips) once I’ve made my changes in Melodyne.

How do you do this? Do you just use the render functions without any plugins rendered into the file? Does it create a new track or not? Because this could be a way for me. I have to constantly remove melodyne and then ad it again as a plugin and then I have to resize the window too every time if I want to replace a recording. Super workflow killer.

And just for understanding correctly: ARA Extension is at the top left under audio extensions?

It’s what I found very unusable. Also I couldn’t find the option to add it via hotkey which is also tedious. In case you know a way.
Edit:

This is appearently what you do - I suppose. No laggs for me either. Now all I need to know how you render that down, once you changed an event to save the changes.
Thanks

@rickpaul

I generally have not found Melodyne to be laggy

Well for some reason the extension over the menu lagged, with the new way I just found out it doesnt.

[rickpaul]

With respect to adding the Melodyne ARA Extension to audio, I just select the clip(s) I want to work on, right click on those, then pick Extensions then Melodyne from the pop-up menu. I should note that, by the time I do this, I have already comped the parts I will tune, done any fade editing, and bounced any takes to a single clip, typically at the song section (e.g. verse, chorus, etc.) level. If I am working on background vocals, I’ll be selecting the same clip range across multiple tracks so I can be working on all parts at once on that song section (or at least be referring to the other parts while working on one part) as this really speeds up the tuning thanks to being able to reference the other parts.

I don’t know if there is a way to add the extension via hotkeys, but you can select multiple clips at the same time and just do one of these right clicking operations if the right click then two menu clicks is tedious. (For me, the amount of time spent in Melodyne is much longer than the time to add the extension. I never do this with playback running.)

Once I’ve done whatever work I want to do in Melodyne, I select the clip(s) I am ready to render, right click again, then click Bounce (might be a few additional words in the menu item – I’m not in Cubase right now), then agree to Replace the clip(s) being rendered, which overwrites the original clips with the modified clips. I usually do this a song section at a time in this rendering operation, too – it just makes the arrangement more obvious in my project view…

Note that I’m tuning based on clips, not the new Cubase 12 track-level (I haven’t even experimented with that to date). Doing the bounce to clips like this does not do anything with track level plugins. If you had clip level plugins it would include those, but I don’t generally use clip-level plugins (or, if I do temporarily, such as if using iZotope RX Connect to deal with noise or artifacts, I bounce them as soon as I’m doing whatever is needed, but I’d be doing that in a separate step, probably before tuning unless I just notice something after the tuning is finished).

Maybe I’m not understanding what you mean by lag here. There is definitely some delay when adding the ARA extensions (not just Melodyne, but also VocAlign Ultra, and assumedly any others) to a clip or set of clips, but I consider that expected as there is work to be done to analyze the clip(s), create the temporary files, etc. But I don’t notice any lag when actually working in Melodyne once the extension is operative.

[Lorenz_o]

@rickpaul

But I don’t notice any lag when actually working in Melodyne once the extension is operative.

Yes appearently this is what I meant. It feels laggy when you open it but then it works after it fully loads. Using it as an extension now and then rendering in place one I made all changes. Because appearently they’re not saved upon closing\opening the project.

[rickpaul]

It seems logical that there would be some delay on instantiating the plugin, since it has to analyze the audio at that point.

As for preserving changes if you leave the ARA extensions active then close and reopen the project, it should be preserving any changes you’ve made as long as you’ve saved the project. I’ve probably used this once or twice.

The main reason I don’t do that, though, is, at least historically (no clue if it is still the case, and my early experience on using it this way was in Cakewalk SONAR, not Cubase), there could be significant instability (e.g. crashing the DAW) at times when keeping the ARA extensions active across sessions. The only reason I found that out was because, after almost always having used the destructive/rendering workflow (prior to using Melodyne and ARA in SONAR I’d been using AutoTune’s graphic mode and rendering the audio as soon as I’d tuned clips to my satisfaction), there was one time where I simply wasn’t finished working on a bunch of parts in parallel. Then the next time I opened the project, SONAR was crashing, and I was seeking help in a SONAR-related Facebook group. From the responses there, I learned this was a common thing if saving the clips with Melodyne ARA extensions across sessions. (I believe the underlying issue was addressed later on, but I prefer rendering anyway. If I ever need to go back to the unmodified audio, I can always grab it from an earlier backup of the project.)