I’m using SLP-8 in Cubase 11. I need to learn more about file management.
Specifically, if I bounce all processed files after editing with SLP8, I would guess I could remove (newly) unused files in the Cubase pool, empty the trash, and even remove these files from the drive. But what can I safely delete among ARA folders, edit folders, or other locations?
More generally, how do I reduce the size of the Cubase project to get closer to the size of the project prior to SLP8 processing?
Hi @Barryjam , you’re right if files are unused in the Cubase pool you can safely dereference them and remove them from the drive.
The Documents/SpectraLayers Edits folder contains files generated by SpectraLayers when you drag and drop a layer from SpectraLayers back to Cubase’s timeline. SpectraLayers then generate a file there and it’s then up to you to decide what you want to do : either keep that generated file as-is in your project, or make Cubase do a local copy (there’s a dialog with a checkbox for that).
If you make Cubase do a local copy each time you do a drag and drop, you can safely delete all files in Documents/SpectraLayers Edits. If you didn’t do a local copy you should keep them as they are probably referenced in some of your projects.
Another folder you can safely clean (it should be auto-cleaned, but some files may stay by accident) is the path referenced in SpectraLayers when you go to Preferences > System > Cache Path.
By default every residual files there are cleaned every 5 days.
These are the 2 folders SpectraLayers generates files to. There might be other folders managed by Cubase, but that’s all I can say about it 
Thank you. I will look at these procedures and report back.