A New Era in Unmixing and Spectral Editing has started - SpectraLayers 13 is now officially available! More than 25 new features and comprehensive improvements have made it into this new version. Many workflow additions are based on direct feedback from our valued SpectraLayers users.
This new version puts an emphasis on Post-Production, but also provides a serious stack of features for music production and sound design - such as a new “Unmix Sound Effects” module.
Here’s a list of the main improvements:
Unmix Sound Effects separates short sounds from ambient background sounds
Ambience Heal fills empty spaces in the audio spectrum automatically
Reconstruct resynthesizes selected spectral data
Attenuate module for attenuating high-amplitude content within selections
Voice DeClick removes unwanted mouth noises
Voice DeCrosstalk separates non-target voices from the primary voice
Unmix Two Voices automatically separates two voices
Level Check quickly calculates and displays a variety of loudness data
Fade functions allow you to apply fades to selections within single layers
Improved DeNoise is an improved noiseprint-based noise reduction
Improved Unmix Components module provides more accurate separation
Paste Into Selection is ideal for repeating or replacing events in the timeline.
Paste Insert let’s you easily select a selection-length period of time
Dynamic Fade-Shaping Control sliders can now be used on active selections
Resize Selection Corners allows time and frequency coordinates to be adjusted simultaneously
Disable Selection Fades allows for fades to be switched off via menu or shortcut
Disable Selection Events from History allows for more flexibility with Selection Events
Module Information Help displays descriptions of module functionality, keyboard shortcuts etc.
Search Modules by Name and Keyword quickly locates modules
Interface Layout Presets saves and recalls interface states for frequently used scenarios
New Shortcuts are now available for more than 100 functions
New Metering options with added functionality such as Display Peaks, RMS or Loudness
Pro Tools AudioSuite Bridge Plug-in supports round trip editing and multiple clip processing
Batch Process Open Projects allows for the full range of sophisticated batch processing options
•More than 128 Device Channels for audio devices with 128+ channels
•Unmix Transcription Export Options for exporting to frame rates such as 23.976
Wow!!
I’ve just watched the videos on the new features and this looks like one hell of a release.
Attenuate, the new voice separation modules (which I hope will work this time), Voice De-Click (which I also hope will work), Unmix Sound Effects (this is huge!!) and Ambience Heal (also huge!), Reconstruct (also a huge time saver!); These are amazing additions! Not to mention the very welcome QoL improvements such as dynamic selection fades and others.
Congratulations on this release, @Robin_Lobel , @TimoWildenhain and everyone involved in this! I’m upgrading immediately.
It is very good to see that post production got the attention it deserves and it is very reassuring of the path you have chosen for SL. I’m very happy with this new version, seriously. A very big KUDOS to you. And as Todd put it, thank you for listening to the community. (happy to see one or two of my suggestions made through! =) )
I’ve got my fingers crossed that this release also comes with the improvements in performance when using certain tools in high FFT situations as we talked about.
Let’s see when I test it. =) (EDIT: aaand it is largely fixed! making this release the best thing ever created since the hat.)
A new era? So there’s finally feature parity between Mac and PC versions and the MAC has GPU rendering? Has the Song Unmix algorithm been improved? I notice another upgrade price increase too and no introductory discount.
How exactly are you qualified to pass comment on something you have no direct experience of? There has been a fundamental feature disparity in the unmix and render functions between the Mac and Windows versions of SL for many years now.
Please tell me more about the “very substantial” improvements over v12? The heading says “A New Era in Unmixing and Spectral Editing has started”, I find this misleading.
There’s nothing new for those of us who want to unmix music. The spectral editing features (such as keyboard shortcuts, ambience heal & reconstruct etc)? have all been available for decades in CEDAR ReTouch.
The fact you’re posting about bugs being “largely fixed” in a paid update isn’t a good thing, bug fixes should be fixed, free of charge.
Well, ok. This is why I consider that there’s been substantial improvements over v12:
My workflow has been vastly sped up with the new capability of the reconstruct module to either amplify or attenuate the resulting audio, avoiding the need to rebalance things after the fact. You really can’t comprehend how much time this saves me.
The ability to unmix “sound effects” from constant ambiences is a HUGE workflow advantage, since now I can unmix it and rebalance the layers, without the need to manually transfer stuff or use the eraser/amplify tools, and this is a very important feature for working in documentaries or when you have rich ambiences you want to preserve and work with in fiction. (this is unmixing)
Attenuate is also an outstanding new feature, since it is very easy to tuck stuff into the background and get them out of the way without needing to clone, copy/paste, etc. It is a new way to easily control the foreground while keeping the richness of the original audio without having to worry about repetition, etc.
Ambience Heal is another great tool to speed things up, since now it is easier to fill the gaps left behind from (usually for me) unmixing noisy speech to remove unwanted voices from the backgrounds. (this is also part of unmixing).
And finally, from the quick test I’ve done, the updated Unmix Components is also much better than before, and is great for ( at least in my case ) removing noises like hums, buzzes, engines, etc.
It feels much faster and snappier to use and I can open multiple clips in ARA2 with much more stability than before, wich is also an important improvement.
Now, regarding the use of “largely”, I said that because I’ve noticed that in specific FFT sizes while having more than 30 seconds of audio visible in the spectrum, there is still some laggyness in some tools, but even then it is much less than ever before. And this only presents itself while using tools of the likes of eraser or clone stamp, and I have never needed so much audio showing up at the same time while using these kinds of tools, as opposed to selections. So IME this is now confined to some very specific cases and it doesn’t get in the way of my work at all. I didn’t upgrade because of this fix (it isn’t even mentioned), and would have considered this version a major step up regardless, but it was VERY welcome, so there’s that.
Now, if you are just pissed off because you don’t like marketing bullshit, I hear you, I hate it just as much as anyone. Marketing sucks but everyone does it, including CEDAR by the way. They say that Retouch is “the best” spectral editor. But after a look at the manual, I strongly reject that notion. I’m positive that it can’t even (re)touch what Spectralayers can do. I installed the trial but couldn’t use it. It shuts down with no warning whenever I open a wav file in it. =P
You just have to try and look past the marketing and into the true functionality and see if it works for you or not.
Regarding this music unmixing frenzy of late, my opinion is that SL is not and will never be the best tool for this. There is no way this program can be on the forefront of stem separation technology while keeping up with advances in post production and spectral editing workflows. And I hope they keep their focus on the latter.
If this is your main line of work the best course of action is to unmix in a specialized platform and bring the audio to SL to be refined and adjusted.
Now for me, that seldom need to unmix music, it is a very nice tool to have. It gets me satisfactory results in a reasonable time. If I’m hired for remixing and restoring the lost records of Lester Young, I’m probably going to go for more specialized tools for the stem separation.
I was paid one year ago for update to spectralayers 12. It was my BIG mistake. Because one main function (DeReverb) was broken… request and posts here are not helped. Now I need to pay again… just interesting, does this new version works well in this area?
- SpectraLayers 13 is now officially available! More than 25 new features and comprehensive improvements have made it into this new version. Many workflow additions are based on direct feedback from our valued SpectraLayers users.