I saw this article from Cakewalk news claiming to convert Audio to MIDI

It even makes the statement 'Converting Audio to MIDI in Sonar is easy'

I'm a bit skeptical. Has anybody done this successfully? And was it easy?

I saw that too, Trev. Looked very interesting!

Yep been able to do that since Sonar X3 as long as you had Melodyne installed. As far as easy goes, yes it does it very easy but the results can vary and sometimes a lot of editing in the piano roll is required.
Melodyne 4 has improved algorithms so this might be better now than when I tried it before.

Brian

There's something I'm gonna try... one of these days ...when I get the chance....

It's an audio to midi conversion I've been thinking sounds possible.


I'll let you know how it goes...

Yes it is very easy with Sonar Professional or Platinum and Melodyne installed. All you have to do is grab an audio track and move it to an empty MIDI track. The Melodyne Essentials that come free with Sonar only does monophonic tracks but if you upgrade Essentials to Editor or Studio 4 you can do polyphonic tracks.

I have had excellent results doing this. I have taken audio guitar tracks, strumming, picking single and double stops, and finger picking as well as piano tracks and converted them to MIDI with minimal of editing. I have also take RTs and converted them to MIDI. How much editing depends on the audio track and the track's effects. I have found it best to not have any effects on the track. This includes delays, reverb, compression, etc. If you have a lot of notes in the audio track it can be probmatic, however I have done some of JonD's piano parts played on my wife's 3/4 size upright with very little editing.

On the down side Melodyne Editor did not transcribe pitch bends. I have upgraded to Studio 4 but I have not had a chance to fully test it yet. It you think you're gonna take a CD and change it to MIDI forget about it, it ain't gonna work. But for a single instrument track it works fine. YMMV.

Thanks Mario, you went into further depth than I explained and is most accurate with my experience. I also upgraded from the editor to the studio version. I am the interested in the tempo detection, sound editor and multi-track functions. And like everyone else can't wait for the new items to work in the ARA environment.
My guess as to why Cakewalk chose now to make a video of audio to MIDI could perhaps work better with the new Melodyne engine. I will have to re-visit this feature.
Brian

The tempo extraction is very good. BobH and I played guitars and sang into one mic. I brought the 4.5 minute song into Studio 4 and the tempo was perfect for 99% of the song. That 1% was in two places in the song both of us strummed one chord then rested at the same time. Studio 4 didn't know what to do with that but it was simple to correct in Studio 4, i.e. much easier than in Sonar. I then added some bass, drums and vocal ahhs. One could bring the song into BiaB/RT to augment the audio track.

The sound editor is fantastic. I told a finger picking guitar part and tweaked it until it sounded like bells. Doubling that with the original guitar part sounded great!

I have yet to try the mult-track function.

Let's keep each other appraised of our progress OK? We should do this via PMs as not the further high jack this thread.

Thanks guys for the thorough feedback. Appreciated.

oops. I was wrong...nothing tosee here...move along.