Prism - Getting Started

ARA Plugins - What are they?

Prism is not an effect plugin, but instead, functions as an analysis tool and works a little differently than what you may be used to when working with other plugins.  Prism requires a DAW that supports ARA plugins. ARA provides plugins with a much tighter and richer integration into the DAW.  For instance, an ARA plugin has direct access to the entire audio track so don't have to waste valuable time "capturing" the audio. 

Now, let's run through an example that associates Prism with an audio track, then analyze and converts the audio to midi, and finally we'll add the midi it generates to a track in our DAW.

Adding Prism to a Track/Clip in your DAW

You don't insert ARA plugins in the same way as you do effect plugins. Each DAW manages this process in slightly different ways so you will have to check with your DAW for details. Basically, some DAWs will apply an ARA plugin to all audio clips in a track (Logic Pro, Reaper, Cubase) while other DAWs (Studio One) require you to "apply" the plugin on a per-clip basis. 

Once you've inserted/attached Prism to a track/clip, it immediately gets to work decomposing the audio into midi notes. 

⭐For specific details on adding Prism to your DAW, check out our blog

Demo

In the following video, we are in Cubase so we go to the Extension drop down and select Prism. Notice that Prism is loaded and immediately begins processing the audio.  In this example, the audio is an entire guitar track for a 3:40 long song.

Adding the Midi to a New Track in DAW

At this point, we can drag-n-drop the midi data directly into our DAW or save it as a MIDI file.  In the following video that is what we do. Before dragging, we added a virtual Instrument track and will drag the midi data into that track.

Demo

That's it, converting audio to midi is that simple! 

 

Prism Interface

To get the most out of Prism, you'll need to be familiar with it's interface and the features and abilities it provides.

Top Bar

1) About - display version and license info

2) Track selector - if Prism has been added to multiple tracks, you can switch among them using this dropdown.

3) Follow DAW selection - when enabled, Prism will automatically switch to the track that is currently selected in the DAW. 

4) Algorithm selector - this selects the algorithm that Prism uses to determine what notes are playing and convert them into midi. Select the algorithm that best represents your audio. When changing the algorithm, Prism will automatically begin processing the audio with it.

5) Re-analyze audio - Use this if you've modified the midi in Prism's midi editor and want to go back to the original analyzed audio.

6) Snap selector - the snap setting used by Prism's midi editor

7) Loop toggle - control looping during playback

Under the top bar is the Bar track

Bar Track

You already know what this is, so the only thing I'll point out is that you can create a loop by dragging in the top-half of the bar track.

Waveform Track

The Waveform Track shows the audio waveform for all the clips in the track that Prism is assigned to, along with controls for playback and displaying content in the editor view.

1) Shows the Track name assigned in the DAW

2) The first button enables playback of the original audio. The second button enables playback of the midi notes through Prism's built-in piano sampler. The third button displays controls for adjusting the audio and midi volume levels and panning. 

These controls are useful if you want to ensure an accurate midi transcription. By disabling Audio playback and enabling Midi playback you hear the midi results re-synthesized as a piano (keep in mind that Prism's piano sampler is very rudimentary and any plugin Instruments you have will likely sound much better). 

You may find it useful to enable Audio playback but pan it to the far left, and pan the Midi to the far right--best to wear headphones when doing this.

3) The third row of three buttons control what is displayed in the edit area. In order these buttons are:

SPEC - displays spectrogram of the audio track. This is sometimes useful to get a finer view of pitch contours than midi notes and make things like vibrato and pitch bends visual.

PITCH - this is essentially a processed spectrogram that has detangled and assigned the overtones to individual notes. It is sometimes useful to compare it with the midi notes and may make it easier to find missing midi notes.

MIDI - the midi notes. These notes are fully editable, you can move, change duration, add, and delete them.

The Editor

The editor area consists of a few controls and an area to edit the midi notes.

1) "?" - This is just a handy tooltip that displays various methods to scroll and zoom within Prism's editor. (It would really be nice if there were standard agreed upon controls/keys for zooming and scrolling that every DAW would use!).

2) Drag MIDI - just click on this button and drag-n-drop it into your DAW to add the midi to your project.  Click SAVE MIDI to save the midi to an external midi file.

3) Sensitivity - this knob gives you some degree of control over how strict Prism is in declaring midi notes. Higher values make the algorithm more selective about notes and will result in fewer notes displayed, while lower values will add in more notes.

Using the Editor

The midi editor works like every other midi editor.  "right"-click to display a menu of useful midi commands for quantizing, joining, splitting, etc.

Scrolling, panning, and zooming

• Pan/grab: Ctrl + Shift + left-mouse-drag
• Scroll horizontally: mouse-wheel or trackpad swipe left/right
• Zoom: use sliders near scrollbars
• Zoom horizontally: Shift+mouse-wheel or trackpad pinch
• Zoom vertically: Ctrl+Shift+mouse-wheel or pitch
• Zoom into a specific region: Ctrl+Alt+mouse-drag rectangle to zoom into
• Play midi note: Alt/Option+click

A Bit About the Algorithms

Prism has three algorithms to get the best results for a given audio recording.  Selecting the best one is usually trivial based on the instrument in the recording.

• general - this is the algorithm to use unless you specifically have content addressed by one of the other algorithms. It will analyze both mono and polyphonic data sources and is the one to use for acoustic guitar, clean guitar, bass, keyboard type instruments, saxophone, trumpet, violin, etc. 
• dist guitar - distorted guitars are problematic due to the large variance in overtones that distortion effects generate so it gets its own algorithm.
• ac piano - use this algorithm if you are processing high quality solo acoustic piano performance. If your track contains a piano stem that has been separated from a mixed track or a lower quality piano, then general will probably give better results. 

Tips

• Prism is designed to work with solo instrumental tracks. If you don't have access to the instrument track, use a Stem splitter to generate one.
• Prism works best with clean, non-distorted sound sources. If you are recording guitar tracks, record them clean and add distortion post. 
• Different algorithms will give different results, you may find the 'dist guitar' or 'ac piano' do better than 'general'.
• Prism works on the entire audio data even though the clip may only expose a section of audio. This is done in case the clip is later expanded and any modifications won't be lost when re-analyzed. If the audio track is very long and you only want a short part of it, it is best to bounce the track before applying prism.
• if a track has many clips, you may want to bounce the track before applying prism.
• If you bounce a track, be sure the Midi play is disabled or Bypass Prism; otherwise, the bounce will include Prism's midi playback (which is not what you want!).
• For large audio files (i.e. > 30 mins), it is best to break audio file into smaller sections.