Bass Isolation has improved greatly in SL-12 Pro

SpectraLayers
1

Some positive feedback for all the brilliant minds behind SpectraLayers.

SL-12 Pro is far superior to SL-11 Pro for overall bass-guitar isolation. There are still some ‘gaps’ that seem to appear for no reason in roughly 5% of the content I’ve processed, but 95% of the time the separation is excellent, including the higher-frequency aspects of certain bass-lines which in the past often became jumbled with similar guitar frequencies. Think of Green Day’s “When I Come Around” bass-line; bright and clear: This isolated very well straight out of the box, and needed only minor ‘clean-up’.

I want to keep this as short as possible. Some time ago, I left not-so-good feedback here in this forum regarding SL-11 Pro and its lack of decent bass isolation. That’s why this new review needs to be posted, because the SL development team really got it right in SL-12 Pro.

Just some kudos for everyone involved in SpectraLayers at Steinberg. You are definitely on the right track, and I’m personally excited to see what the next iteration will bring! :light_bulb:

2

I agree that 12 is a big step up when unmixing. I use SL in a way that is perhaps a tad unorthodox; I unmix the overhead mics for my live-recorded drums, into two layers: drums and bass. And I unmix live-recorded vocals. In both cases, the purpose is to get rid of the bleed from everything else that was playing in the room: guitar, synth etc.

Not only are the results I get with 12 much superior to what I got with 11. The whole process is also very much faster, and unmixing a 10 minute track takes about a minute.

The results with 12 are in fact so much better that I have been revisiting tracks unmixed with 11 to re-unmix them with 12.

Best,

Magnus

3

Agreed, while it does depend on the quality of the source material to a large degree, the quality achievable is approaching “magic” status, where, given a well-recorded live performance that hasn’t been subjected to lots of compression, I can hear fret noises, string buzz, slides and all sorts of nuance in the bass separation that make a performance human.