Celemony on Wednesday announced Melodyne 2.0, the latest version of its Mac OS X compatible multitrack audio recording and editing application. The update offers a wider range of integration options and such new features as the “MelodyneBridge,” that allows Melodyne to be connected to any VST or Audio Unit host.
Developed by Steinberg, the VST format is a digital signal processing (DSP) plug-in specification. Audio Units are DSP plug-ins that can expand Mac OS X’s Core Audio system architecture.
Melodyne is still a standalone application, but it can now be used as if it were an effects plug-in. Version 2.0 also implements the ReWire protocol and can be connected and synced to all ReWire applications, such as Cubase, DigitalPerformer, Live, Logic, ProTools or Reason. It can also be synced to MidiClock and SMPTE, and supports MIDI In and Out as well.
You can control Melodyne via MIDI keyboards and remote controllers (MackieControl, LogicControl, Radical SAC and others) and can send the musical content of audio files as MIDI to synthesizers in realtime. This includes velocity and pitch phrasings.
What’s more Melodyne’s mixing features have been enhanced by the addition of equalizers, insert effects, aux sends and returns, group tracks and access to both VST and AudioUnit effect plug-ins (such as Waves, Prosoniq, PSP, TCWorks and others). While Melodyne always ran on ASIO, DirectX, SoundManager and CoreAudio based hardware, the Studio Edition of the new version adds DirectIO support to enable the use of Digidesign hardware directly.
There are two versions of the product. Melodyne 2.0 cre8, which has a retail price of US$430, lets you edit 8 tracks simultaneously and supports files up to 48Khz and 24-bit. Melodyne 2.0 Studio Edition can load and edit a virtually unlimited amount of tracks and supports 32-bit files and samples rates up to 192kHz; the cost is $756. Both versions offer 500 levels of undo.
Updates from Melodyne 1.1 or 1.5 cost $108, though users who have registered since January can upgrade for free. A demo version of Melodyne 2.0 is available at the Celemony Web site.