Feature Request / Feedback

SpectraLayers
1

While visiting I had the opportunity to try this program out for an afternoon (a friend has purchased a copy) and I am impressed, especially with the unmix feature.

However I would like to provide genuine feedback and a feature request…

It is hugely CPU hungry and I mean its a beast. The computer I was using this on is a modern extremely well specified machine (a studio DAW) running up to date Windows 10 64 bit and at times it struggled with Spectralayers. As for running as a ARA inside Cubase that almost brought the computer to it’s knees.

It is a crazy good program but it is far too CPU intensive for most computers - please can you remedy this?

A glaring omission that I fully expected to find in a premium application is the ability to save all extracted layers (export all stems) with one click as well as current option to save them one at a time - this current (one at a time) option is somewhat tedious especially if a user is working with multiple files.

What would really be useful would also to be able to select which stems you wish to export, either by muting the ones you do not want or by solo’ing the ones you do want and then being able to export all with one click.

Given I only had a few hour to try the program out I may not have discovered the feature I am about to suggest but I was unable to find any way of adjusting the sensitivity for detecting and extracting each channel (stem). While it performed beautifully on vocals accompanied by a piano I put through its paces by trying a loud and busy rock track and a well produced dance track and the results were rather disappointing.

In both cases all stems had a lot of smearing, especially prevalent on the vocals, making them unusable.

As the ability to extract stems is a massive selling point so perhaps instead of the means to change the sensitivity you could provide templates or presets optimized for different genres and/or styles of music to give the user a place to start from.

The lack of these features is enough to prevent me from purchasing Spectralayers which is a shame as I can see a use for it but it would have to suit my needs and workflow.

Thanks Steinberg,

2

Glad you enjoyed it!

While I’m not sure much can be done regarding the use of CPU (spectral editing can be power hungry), here are a few hardware tips that can definitely help:
-a good GPU can speed up the display (it’s often a neglected aspect of audio workstations) with up to date graphic drivers
-a SSD helps, as well having more than 8GB of memory
-an Intel CPU with AVX2 capabilities

In regards to the requested features, the two you mentioned (unmix sensitivity and stems export) are two popular requests, so they will definitely make it to the second patch.

3

what spec PC were you using ? I’m not having CPU issues here and I use it in ARA mode on largish projects ?

4

Hi Robin and thank you for kindly replying.

I very much enjoyed it and I am due to visit my friends studio again later this week as I am doing some production work their and I am going to take a couple of different tracks (genres) over with me and if I get a chance I am going to put Spectralayers through its paces on them. From the small amount of time I had to use it last time I can say it is a really unique program. I own RX 6 and Spectralayers just blows it away so I am excited to both spend more time with it and to hear that the unmix sensitivity and stems export are popular requests.

Thank you again for your reply :smiley: