For my use-case having SL available as a tool in Nuendo for post production work is now hard to live without. I’m still on V11 but the improved ARA integration ( processing multiple events ) are no brainer once the V12 kinks are ironed out!
My question is whether anyone can make an informed comment on what the technical limitations are on using ARA to provide integration within a DAW? As has been mentioned before it seems that currently SL appears as a ‘single instance’ within Nuendo , and all the events share layers within that instance. This means the SL grows and grows as it renders more and more processed files… unless edits are made permanent in Nuendo.
It would be very nice for SL to feel 'built into" Nuedo, and enable users to fluidly apply it to single events, multiple events, tracks, multiple tracks in a non-destructive way that keeps track of processes. Perhaps something more along the lines of selected events being handled as if they are a single SL Project. Then a subsequent selection being treated as a ‘new’ SL project. ie a ‘round trip’ approach.
But can ARA actually provide a more “granular, or flexible” architecture? Or is ARA somehow limited in the way it passes data to external applications? Obviously there’s no point asking for what isn’t possible!
If you wonder wether you can have a separate ARA instance for each Track or Part in the DAW I don’t know of any ARA editor that is capable of that; even with Celemony’s (the inventors of ARA) Melodyne all Tracks or Parts (in Cubase) will open in the same ARA editor window (allthough you can hide or show them there in an easier way than in SpectraLayers).
As I understand it the ”post people” would like to have one separate instance for each processed Part, for editing convenience like with Direct Online Processing, but afaik it’s not possible with ARA2.
Maybe when ARA3 comes…?
FWIW SL12 introduces a new “Group by track” mode in SL12, which creates a separate SL12 project tab (same window, but different tabs) for each track from your DAW.