Dear forum members,
Today is the day, we’ve been looking forward to for a whole year.
I’m very excited to announce the immediate availability of SpectraLayers 10, an absolute landmark release and the - by far - most feature-rich update in SpectraLayers’ 10 years product history.
SpectraLayers 10 for us is more than just a new update, it is the eptiome of audio innovation, of marrying visual audio editing, restoration and sound design with modern AI workflows. It’s feature set and technology stack is a quantum leap for everyone working in music production, audio post-production, mastering and sound design.
Check out more than 25 stunning new features and processes, ranging from Unmixing a whole song including drums and guitar to Reverb Matching, Voice-to-text transcription and more.
Here’s a video overview on the new features:
Update prices start at $/EUR 79.99, the new version
is already available in the Steinberg Download Assistant.
Does this version have a trial version? I only see a trial for version 9 available. Right now I am evaluating HitnMix Ripx suite. My budget has only room for one product and want to make sure I get the best one.
Also a question, if one wants to convert a stem to a MIDI file, is there a native feature in SepctraLayers or does one use Cubase for that?
Another happy early adapter. I have some old stuff with some good stuff in between the bad stuff and now I have SpectralLayers 10 finally being good enough to get in between the noises and separate them to my liking. It’s a game changer, actually. “Other” and “Non-unmixed”, the names are great but what they do is kind of mind blowing. If you take the time to get this thing and it’s powers to be second nature you have a dream machine under your finger tips, BUT … you probably need to love poking around with soundwaves to begin with and having some kind of experience with if nothing else audio editing in Cubase or any ARA2 DAW for that matter. It’s not a program full of magic buttons and you gotta learn a lot of jargon if you don’t know it already if you want to get the most out of it.
But if you do the sky is no limiter … then you can rip things apart, make selections, combine some layers while removing others, remove parts of the wave with phase switching, rip a mix apart in several takes maybe to get the ultimate vocal out first run, then the drums etc. And it’s of course the ultimate tool for remixing and removing the backing tracks in Cubase and add your own. And when you’re done in SpectralLayers you pull out the channels on separate tracks in Cubase and keep working until the cows come home.
I think the main difference isn’t any particular feature standing out, although there are a few but it’s the whole package that’s just BETTER. I have just opened SL 10 Pro and been at it for a few hours and I wouldn’t want to go back to 9 which was very good but not great. 10 is a quantum leap forward in a context plagued with the law of diminishing returns sort of, if that makes sense. The isn’t a huge difference because it can’t be, but what is there is really useful and totally worth it.
One of the first things I tried was an old track with just drum and bass loop plus a guitar improvisation that for some reason came out almost like a song with an improvised section in the middle I’m very happy with. The sound sucks though and I’ve tried it in SL8 and SL9 and I had to bend over backwards to make the guitar get untangled from the drums and bass. It wasn’t pretty! Now first run through I was just amazed of the result, This works! Now I can build a proper background around the guitar and also since I haven’t hardly started there are lots of other things to try. I was for example yanking the whammy bar a little too much in the improvised section so SpectralLayers thinks it’s vocals in two blobs. I can combine the guitar and the vocal layer and Bob is your aunt’s husband. And it’s only the beginning, it’s the first day! Great upgrade!
Shame a lot of the bugs in 9 are still there in 10.
Moving layer up 1 slot ends up moving it up 2 slots. (moving down works correctly though)
Windows Tablet Mode does nothing on a Touchscreen PC Tablet
ASIO disconnects end points when playback is Stopped and reconnects when playback is Started. This is fine if you’re always connecting to Channel 1+2, but not all of use use ASIO I/O like that. e.g. my stereo goes out on 15 & 16 so every time I stop playback it ends up coming out on Channel 1 & 2 when I next his play, I’ll also use ASIO Routing like JACK2 or DANTE and it breaks those connections on the transport playback unless I reconfigure SpectraLayers to only use Channel 1 & 2. Even setting JACK to ignore SpectraLayers connecting itself, it ignores that.
Still no ability to copy a selection using simple ctrl/alt+drag like pretty much every visual editing software out there allows.
SL doesn’t have an “export as MIDI” function like RipX, however the results you can get in Cubase, while more work, are way better than RipX’s or Melodyne’s, the both offer the feature, but neither actually perform that well.
I suggest you wait for the demo before deciding, but SL and RipX are quite different applications, that happen to share some features which each implements differently. If all you want to do is create stems, there are free options. If you want the additional functions, that’s where you’ll have to do the testing, as only you know what your specific requirements are.
It’s a bit like when someone asks me to recommend a laptop – the first question is “what do you want to do with it”?
Thanks for the reply. Great to read your perspective on the “export as MIDI” function.
I probably edit MIDI differently than most people, I use the score editor. I rarely use the key editor and that is how I see many people edit MIDI. So you are right, the MIDI output from RipX is noisy, it is noisy in the key editor so you can imagine the mess it creates in the score editor.
That being said, there is one interface feature of RipX which AFAIK isn’t as easy in SL. When you see MIDI events on RIpX, it is much like the key editor on Cubase, and there is a piano keyboard which has the pitch on the right of the screen. So for my purposes, that is a very useful interface. I like to transcribe recordings, so I can get to the pitches in the rhythm section very quickly in RipX.
I will have to see how cumbersome it is to get the audio stems from SL over to Cubase and how it looks converted to MIDI in the key editor. ( The Score editor I am sure will be a mess requiring a lot of quantization to clean up). So there are more steps I would have to deal with
Anyway, I hope I can start looking at a trial version of SL 10 soon.
Thanks for your help, you provided very useful information.
I must apologize if this question has already been addressed elsewhere, but I’ve been searching around and haven’t quite found the information I’m looking for.
I’m considering buying SpectraLayers 10, which seems to be an excellent tool, but I have a couple of questions that I hope some of you might be able to help answer.
First, I’m wondering about the standalone capabilities of SpectraLayers 10. Do I need Nuendo or Cubase to run it, or can it operate independently? The flexibility of using it as a standalone application would be a big plus for me.
Second, I’m unsure whether to go for the full Pro version or to start with the Elements version. Can anyone provide some insights into the main differences between these two? I’m trying to balance the features with the cost and could use some advice.
Thanks in advance for your help. I’m looking forward to delving deeper into the world of SpectraLayers!
SpectraLayers is a standalone application, you don’t need a host such as Cubase or Nuendo, but it does integrate beautifully with both via ARA2 technology.
The comparison chart for SpectraLayers editions is here.
I just did the update. Spectralayer 10 is totally amazing. I am currently working on the mixing of a feature film. during filming a scene included several actors. 4 people were talking at the same time. alas, one of them had to scream a line. The lavalier microphone of the shouting officer who is next to the 2 other soldiers has therefore saturated. I was wondering the following question. spectralayer will he be able to demix the voices?
will be able to desaturate the “officer” part. will the rest be impacted and therefore saturated?
the answer is this.
spectralayer has demixed all the voices.
voices with a lower level have not been saturated.
the officer’s voice was then unclipped and miraculously the entire take is validated and super qualitative.
congratulations to the team for this incredible work.
the only small defect that persists is the possibility of listening in the editor which does not always work for reasons that I do not know.
as long as I use the headphone or L+R monitoring outputs, everything works. when I use the control room, individual solo listening to each unmixed part is no longer possible.
so I drag and drop and get each track in the arrange window.
but I’m sure it will be fixed. for the rest spectralayer is a total success at an affordable price unlike some competing software that I also own.
another point the voice recognition in 9 languages and the possibility of exporting the sentences and words in csv file !!! it’s just fantastic. for ADR it will be an incredible time saver.
I am really impressed with this work. a thousand bravos are not enough!
Je viens de faire la mise à jour. Spectralayer 10 est totalement incroyable. je travaille actuellement sur le mixage d’un long métrage. lors du tournage une scène comportait plusieurs acteurs. 4 personnes parlaient en même temps. hélas l’une d’elle devait hurler une réplique. Le micro cravate de l’officier qui hurle et qui se trouve a coté des 2 autres soldats a donc saturé. je me posais la qestion suivante. spectralayer pourra il demixer les voix?
pourra désaturer la partie “officier”. le reste sera t’il impacté et donc saturé?
la réponse est la suivante.
spectralayer a demixer l’ensemble des voix.
les voix ayant un niveau plus bas n’ont pas été saturée.
la voix de l’officier a ensuite etait déclipée et miracle l’ensemble de la prise est validée et super qualitative.
un grand bravo à l’équipe pour ce travail incroyable.
le seul petit defaut qui persiste est la possibilité d’écoute dans l’éditeur qui ne fonctionne pas toujours pour des raisons que j’ignore.
tant que j’utilise les sorties casque ou monitoring L+R tout fonctionne. lorsque j’utilise le control room l’écoute individuelle en solo de chaque partie démixée n’est plus possible.
du coup je fais un glisser déposer et récupère chaque piste dans la fenêtre d’arrangement.
mais je ne doute pas que cela sera corrigé . pour le reste spectralayer est une réussite totale à un prix abordable contrairement à certains logiciels concurrents que je possède aussi.
autre point la reconnaissance vocale en 9 langues et la possibilité d’exporter les phrase et mots en fichier csv !!! c’est juste fantastique. pour les ADR ce sera un gain de temps incroyable.
je suis vraiment impressionné par ce travail. mille bravos ne suffisent pas!
I kind of suggested that feature already but more on the pitch side of things**(real-time transformation)** and not the note side of things. Both ripx and Spectralayers have their strengths and weaknesses and I dont believe one application should copy another, however I do believe that spectralayers should improve where its weaknesses is. As of right now, Spectralayers weakness is the transformation functionality and it is so far behind in terms of other technologies out there (like the Elastique Pro 3 algorithm). I believe if Spectralayers improves the whole transformation process, to where all transformation that takes place is done in real-time then it would put it far ahead of ripx. If Spectralayers does transformation in real-time then the only thing it would need is a pitch grid and it would be much more capable than other applications out there.
