In Steinberg SpectraLayers I often find myself building up complex masks progressively over time, especially when working on larger or evolving audio material.
At the moment, it seems that masks are essentially tied to individual projects and cannot easily be reused or managed as modular elements across different audio files.
It would be very helpful to have a system that allows masks to be treated as reusable building blocks, for example:
saving masks independently of a specific audio file
applying the same mask to different projects
combining or merging multiple saved masks
gradually refining a “master mask” over time
This would make iterative workflows much more efficient, particularly when similar spectral issues occur across multiple recordings or when revisiting improved versions of earlier material.
As far as I can tell, similar limitations exist in other spectral editing tools such as iZotope RX, which are also largely file-based in their approach to selections and processing rather than supporting reusable mask assets.
Having a proper reusable mask system would greatly improve long-term spectral editing workflows in terms of efficiency and consistency.
If I understand correctly, I was noticing something along these lines while working in SLP yesterday.
It would be great to have a pool of what could essentially be like media or clips as there typically is in a visual editor or even a typical DAW.
Now, I realize that we can all build these libraries ourselves, because that is what we have to do anyway. So, users would need to create jobs with the audio, which is where we stand. I’m not sure I have a suggestion on how SLP might be able to approach that…maybe I’m just talking about workflow.
In the event @AB_01 is speaking of saved selections, I haven’t had much success saving selections, it’s just a rather arduous task to save selections and then apply to other files. I stopped trying after finding the saving of selections quite time consuming.
I was originally going to suggest this but even explaining this is a slippery slope for the OP. Yes! You can use saved selections but there is a lack of control in-regards to the selections themselves. I want to help but I know that it’s very difficult to explain and articulate it so that the OP understands.
I believe this will be addressed in future updates but there is still a lack of selection selection(s) (if that makes sense) to do masking.
I don’t know what to say because the answer is there is a lack of an option to select selections based solely on partials(chunks of threshold amplitude frequencies) however there is a workaround but the workaround is not explainable.
you could give it try…penny might drop for someone
I’m not sure understand the term “masks” by @AB_01
From the SLP12 Operation Manual:
“Interface Preferences
Set interface colors, behavior and layout.
Colors
• Selection Border Color: Set the color of the selection border.
• Selection Mask Color: Set the color of the selection mask (inside of the selection).”
OK, well, these instructions essentially state the colour of selection mask. There are no other references to the term “mask” in the Operation Manual, the term used throughout the operation manual is “selection” and therefore, when users typically refer to a “selection” on this forum it is due, in part, to the terminology presented by the operation manual. Obviously, different softwares use differing terminologies.
Again, I stopped trying to set up libraries of saved selections because it was just not relevant to my work. I could see selection libraries being very effective for, say, programmed drums where the hits can often be very similar. Human voice, tho…it’s a rather random pattern. I just don’t do much music work at the moment.
Ok, sure…still, I shouldn’t think that’s going to be a training model, which is what I’m sure most of us would want from SLP. I haven’t tried that, so I’m guessing
save overall selections? but the amount of instances I create a selection and then throw it out is probably 20% of the time…that would assume we never make a “mistake” with our selections.
Won’t both things create a memory heavy SLP project?
Thank you very much for your detailed response and for your kind offer of assistance. It is greatly appreciated.
To clarify my objective, I am referring to something akin to the editable and easily understandable .mrk files utilized in Steinberg WaveLab. My goal is to allow a user to begin making precise selections for slicing or cutting unwanted frequency areas. This approach enables one to start with a highly detailed selection and systematically work through an entire, large audio file. As you may be aware, WaveLab offers a convenient option where these markers can be stored separately from the audio file itself.
In my personal workflow, I process an entire recording and perform the final cuts within WaveLab. However, it occasionally occurs that I wish to experiment with or further improve the original file. Currently, this requires me to restart the manual selection process entirely from the beginning, which is, frankly, rather tedious.
Ideally, I envision a workflow similar to that of WaveLab: one could simply copy the marker file, rename it to match the new version of the audio file, and open the wave-file. All the previously established markers would then be present, fully intact, and ready for further editing or cutting. This is a feature I find myself missing considerably in both iZotope RX and Steinberg SpectraLayers.
I should be most grateful to learn if such a workflow, or a viable alternative achieving the same result, is at all possible within these applications.
Indeed, that is how I work, therefore I do not currently save selections.
Is it not possible to save a selection at the end of your daily/ hourly session in SLP and then have that selection available to be loaded the next time you launch the .slp project? You may need to invert the selection before saving so you don’t lose timestamp positioning. Then, once loaded, the selection would need to be inverted again to continue the modifications and so on.
