DNA Direct Note Access™

Edit notes in polyphonic audio material

DNA Direct Note Access™ is the technology that makes the impossible possible by allowing individual notes in polyphonic material for the first time to be identified and edited. The unique access that Melodyne™ has long offered to the pitch, timing, duration and other parameters of notes in monophonic material is now extended – through DNA Direct Note Access™ – to include notes forming part of chords.

Like Melodyne™ itself, DNA Direct Note Access™ is a development that radically and forever alters the handling of audio. In the world of digital image processing, it has long been possible with the right software not only to correct depicted reality down to the smallest details but also, literally, to create new worlds: images that depict with total credibility something that has never existed. DNA Direct Note Access™ offers Melodyne™ users comparable freedom in the field of audio. Melodyne™ with DNA Direct Note Access™ allows you to intervene in the audio material in ways that were unthinkable before and that range from subtle enhancements to re-composition.

When at the beginning of 2008, DNA Direct Note Access™ was first demonstrated, it created a considerable stir. A few months later, a film team visited Melodyne™'s inventor, Peter Neubäcker, in his laboratory to find out more about this revolutionary technology. The result is a 14-minute interview that offers a deep insight into the possibilities of DNA Direct Note Access™.

DNA Direct Note Access™ is available with Melodyne™ studio and editor.

Interview with Peter Neubäcker after the DNA Direct Note Access™ presentation in 2008

ARA Audio Random Access™

A pioneering extension for audio plug-in interfaces.

The sound of audio software is naturally the most important thing and it’s our top priority. But user-friendliness and a streamlined workflow also contribute to the quality of the results you can obtain from an item of software. When everything goes like clockwork, you can concentrate on the musical content. In ARA Audio Random Access™, we developed together with Presonus for just this reason a pioneering extension for existing plug-in interfaces.

ARA Audio Random Access™ allows a DAW and plug-in to exchange information about the audio file, tempo, pitch, rhythm and much else besides and thereby work considerably more closely together. The plug-in is closer to what’s going on in the DAW and therefore runs more smoothly and efficiently. The DAW, for its part, can integrate the plug-in far more fully and make more targeted use of it – as though the plug-in were part of the DAW.

ARA Audio Random Access™ is not designed to compete with existing plug-in interfaces but to represent an optional extension that both the DAW and the plug-in must support. No separate installation or setting-up of ARA by the user is required.

ARA Audio Random Access™ is supported by all editions of Melodyne 5 and is continually being further developed. The expanded ARA2 is the current implementation. On the DAW side, ARA is currently supported by Avid Pro Tools, Apple Logic Pro X, Steinberg Cubase and Nuendo, Presonus Studio One, Bandlab Cakewalk, Magix Samplitude Pro, Sequoia and Sound Forge, Cockos Reaper, Acoustica Mixcraft and Tracktion Waveform. Another plug-in that employs ARA is Vocalign from Synchro Arts.

If you would like to support ARA as a developer, you will find the ARA SDK and all further information at GitHub.

Interview with Melodyne software architect Carsten Gehle when ARA Audio Random Access™ was introduced in 2011