null.audio ALIGN and EDIT bring VocAlign and Melodyne to Live

Independent developer null.audio has released ALIGN and EDIT, two tools for Ableton Live on macOS and Windows. Live has never hosted ARA plug-ins, so VocAlign and Melodyne cannot read its clips directly the way they do in Cubase, Studio One or REAPER. null.audio runs an ARA host next to Live and connects it to the clips in the Arrangement.

ALIGN: up to eight doubles at once

Without ARA, aligning vocal doubles in Live means playing each take into VocAlign in real time and setting up the alignment inside the plug-in. The null.audio page adds that, to avoid rendering the full vocal chain, a user has to move the dub to a clean track, render it and move the result back.

With ALIGN, the producer sets a Guide clip. ALIGN then finds the takes beneath it by track name, among them Dbl, Double, Harm, BGV, Adlib and Stack. Up to eight Dubs open in VocAlign together, and nothing has to be captured inside VocAlign. One Commit puts each aligned Dub back on its own track. The vocal chain stays live on the track, and nothing is bounced through it. ALIGN works with VocAlign Pro and Standard, versions 6 and 7.

EDIT: Melodyne and other ARA editors in the mix

EDIT opens any Arrangement clip in Melodyne, SpectraLayers, RePitch, Vovious or NoiseWorks VoiceAssist, with no transfer pass. A small plug-in on the track, the EDIT Bridge, plays every edit in Live in real time while the editor is open. The audio goes through the track's vocal chain and sits against the rest of the song. Commit replaces only the edited clip. Live keeps the original as a take, and Revert restores it.

Both products are non-destructive. They write new audio files and never delete the originals, and audio never leaves the computer.

Founder Jan Rothmann said he had wanted ARA in Ableton for years. "I kept switching to Cubase just to do vocals, and every time I lost the flow of the song," he said.

A null.audio alignment engine, which would let ALIGN work without VocAlign, is in development.

Prices and requirements

ALIGN costs 29 euros and EDIT 39 euros at the introductory prices. The regular prices are 39 and 49 euros. The ALIGN + EDIT bundle is 55 euros during the promotion, against 69 euros regularly, and the promotion ends on November 8, 2026. Ableton Live 12.3 or later is required: Live 12 Suite, or Standard with Max for Live. ALIGN needs the user's own copy of VocAlign, and EDIT needs an ARA editor.

Source: null.audio