ARA2 - error and crash on stereo tracks

[CHRIS AIKEN]

Maybe remove all plugins from your plugins folder except Melodyne, trash preferences and then try.

[noiseboyuk]

Originally Posted by CHRIS AIKEN

Maybe remove all plugins from your plugins folder except Melodyne, trash preferences and then try.

Great suggestion - sadly no change though.

Really weird. Such a consistent and stubborn fault for me, but nobody else it seems.

[noiseboyuk]

Some progress, but still not right and it gets ever more strange. I need DUC help!

Decided to uninstall / reinstall PT and Melodyne the slow way. Each step has a restart between it. I was going to install the latest version of Melodyne separately, but of course that's bundled into the PT installer. Celemony wouldn't license it initially (I have a full Editor license) - I had to first deactivate the same computer, and then activate it anew.

The first WAVs I tried behaved the same - multichannel errors. However, this time I could consolidate the files, and then it works. I then tried different WAVs - SFX libraries etc - and these imported just fine.

It could give one a complex, but every stereo file that I've generated myself produces the multichannel error, whereas other commercial WAVs are fine! I cannot for the life of me figure out what the difference is. Have tried different bit rates, depths, in Adobe Audition saved with and without metadata and markers, but have yet to find anything.

If anyone has a few minutes to spare, could you see what the following very short WAV file does when you import it into Pro Tools and try to edit it with Meldodyne? It's an old retro Space Invader computer game fire sound effect, a nasty filtered white noise thing so just watch your ears. Obviously Meldodyne would be no use on this, it's just a test file. (Hey, you can keep the effect though, it's self-generated so not subject to copyright)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/67tunio0p6...0Fire.wav?dl=0

EDIT - I've brought an offending file and an unoffending file into Sound Devices Wave Agent. Both show 2(POLY) channels, both have channel 1 as interleave 1 and channel 2 as interleave 2. Both have preserve Start TC checked at 00:00:00:00. I've eliminated sample rate and bit depth as possible culprits.

I have spotted two differences. With the Invaders Fire sample (my own), the project is set to Untitled1, whereas with the commercial effect it is blank. The second thing is there is a metadata field called Function for each channel. On mine, channel 1 is labelled L-MIX, channel 2 is labelled R-MIX. With the commercial file, these fields are BLANK. A working hypothesis is that this is embedded by Cubase on export (most of my files come from there) and is causing PT / Melodyne to fall over. Consolidating the clip strips the information.

To bolster this theory, I've just imported a stereo file I generated in PT, and that's fine, as are things I've recorded straight into Adobe Audition.

Unfortunately, removing that suspect metadata from my Cubase file has NOT fixed the problem in PT. It looks like Cubase exports are the problem, but I've yet to isolate why. BTW, my offending files load just fine directly into Melodyne standalone, it's only an issue in PT when it sets Melodyne to edit the file.

[noiseboyuk]

PROBLEM LOCATED!

In Cubase I have a checkbox ticked for "insert iXML chunk", which handles metadata such as tempo information. When this is present in a WAV, it behaves normally in PT and in Melodyne, but not in the ARA2 implementation, where it seems to misread it as a multi-channel mismatch.

Now to find a way of removing iXML from all my thousands of WAVs! Anyone know a batch processor that can do this?

[digitalecho]

Did this ever get solved?
I'm having the same issue in PT 2022.10.0 and Mojave 10.14.6

[noiseboyuk]

Originally Posted by digitalecho

Did this ever get solved?
I'm having the same issue in PT 2022.10.0 and Mojave 10.14.6

I just checked on 2023.3 and the answer is no.

It’s a shame we can’t change subject titles here - the stereo file was a red herring, the problem concerns WAVs with iMXL chunks (at least those generated by Cubase).

[Larrry Darrell]

Hello,

I, too, have had some real problems with ARA Melodyne, including corrupted files, lost data, etc...and have lost some irreplaceable work as a result.

Celemony attributes the problems to Avid and offers no solutions.

In any event, the bottom line, IMHO, is that Melodyne with ARA is not yet ready for prime time. Until it is...I suggest using Melodyne as an inserted plug-in rather than the ARA version.

Good luck!

[Fidelis]

Hi, having the same problem over here. Going back to the old Melodyne way sadly...