Audio Random Access (commonly abbreviated to ARA) is an extension for

audio plug-in An audio plug-in, in computer software, is a plug-in that can add or enhance audio-related functionality in a computer program. Such functionality may include digital signal processing or sound synthesis. Audio plug-ins usually provide their ...

interfaces, such as AU, VST and RTAS, allowing them to exchange a greater amount of audio information with

digital audio workstation A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software program on a laptop, to an integr ...

(DAW) software. It was developed in a collaboration between

Celemony Software Celemony Software GmbH is a German musical software company that specializes in digital audio pitch correction software. It produces Melodyne, a popular audio pitch modification tool similar to Auto-Tune, although the program itself is a manua ...

and PreSonus.

Functionality

ARA increases the amount of communication possible between DAW software and a plug-in, allowing them to exchange important information, such as audio data, tempo, pitch, and rhythm, for an entire song, rather than just at the moment of playback. This increased amount of information exchange, and availability of data from other points in time, removes the need for audio material to be transferred to & from the plug-in, allowing that plug-in to be used as a more closely integrated part of the DAW's overall interface.

History

ARA was developed as a joint effort between

and PreSonus, driven by the desire to increase the level of integration between Celemony's Melodyne plug-in and the DAWs using it. It was first published in October 2011 and released as part of PreSonus' Studio One DAW (version 2) and Melodyne (Editor, Assistant and Essential versions 1.3). Version 2 of ARA was announced during

NAMM The NAMM Show is an annual event in the United States that is organized by the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), who describe it as "the industry’s largest stage, uniting the global music, sound and entertainment technology commun ...

in January 2018, introducing new features such as the simultaneous editing of multiple tracks, transfer of chord track information, and

undo Undo is an interaction technique which is implemented in many computer programs. It erases the last change done to the document, reverting it to an older state. In some more advanced programs, such as graphic processing, undo will negate the las ...

synchronization with the DAW. DAWs which use ARA version 2 are not automatically backwards compatible with plug-ins using version 1. The first DAWs to support ARA version 2 were

Logic Pro X Logic Pro is a digital audio workstation (DAW) and MIDI sequencer software application for the macOS platform. It was originally created in the early 1990s as Notator Logic, or Logic, by German software developer C-Lab which later went by Em ...

(version 10.4, released in January 2018) and Studio One (version 4, released in May 2018).

ARA implementation

To allow software manufacturers to support ARA, a

Software Development Kit A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific ...

has been published by Celemony. Current software products which support ARA include the following.

Digital audio workstations

Audio plug-ins

References

{{reflist

External links

Celemony's Tech Talk video

ARA in Studio One

ARA in Sonar X3

ARA 2 in Apple Logic Pro X 10.4

Auto-Align Post 2

Video Covering Acoustica 7.4 with ARA2 support
Music software plugin architectures