SpectraLayers Pro opens mono and stereo audio events in Reaper just fine, but crashes Reaper when presented with multichannel audio. Is this a known issue?
SpectraLayers Pro V9, four channels.
Using that same four-channel file with:
- SpectraLayers Pro 9 standalone: works perfectly
- Acon Digital Acoustica Premium 7 standalone: works perfectly
- Reaper + SpectraLayers Pro 9: crashes Reaper
- Reaper + Acon Digital Acoustica Premium 7: works perfectly
- Nuendo + SpectraLayers Pro 9: displays, but plays no sound (sound plays with ARA extension disabled)
- Nuendo + Acon Digital Acoustica Premium 7: displays, but plays no sound (sound plays with ARA extension disabled)
However, with mono or stereo audio:
- SpectraLayers Pro 9 standalone: works perfectly
- Acon Digital Acoustica Premium 7 standalone: works perfectly
- Reaper + SpectraLayers Pro 9: works perfectly
- Reaper + Acon Digital Acoustica Premium 7: works perfectly
- Nuendo + SpectraLayers Pro 9: works perfectly
- Nuendo + Acon Digital Acoustica Premium 7: works perfectly
Happy to! Can’t share that particular file, but here’s another one. This should, (1) open and play in SpectraLayers Pro and Acon Acoustica without issue; (2) crash Reaper with SpectraLayers Pro as VST ARA; (3) work with Reaper and Acon Acoustica as VST ARA; and, (4) visualize but make no sound with SpectraLayers Pro or Acoustica via ARA in Nuendo (but play when ARA extensions are disabled).
Current Reaper version 6.71 Mac (Rosetta on M1), SpectraLayers Pro 9.0.10.
Have at it: Quad Audio File
(File size may play a part. Smaller quad files work in Reaper with both SpectraLayers and Acoustica. Files of this size and larger crash Reaper with SpectraLayers but work in Reaper with Acoustica. So it is something specific to SpectraLayers+Reaper.
As for Nuendo, quad files of any size, large or small, display but do not make a sound when using either ARA extension.)
I can repro the crash with the long quad file.
After tracing down the issue, it seems to be a limitation of the ARA SDK, which can’t handle so many samples at once. It seems dividing the ARA call into smaller chunks would work though. A fix will be provided in the next SL patch.
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Wow, that was amazing and fast! Thank you!
Regarding SpectraLayers ARA in Nuendo 12, do you know why multichannel audio produces no sound in Nuendo? You can repro this with the provided quad file (or any multichannel file, I think): only way to get sound is to deactivate the ARA extension. Acoustica does the exact same thing. After your fix, both ARA plugins will work perfectly in Reaper, but neither one produces any sound in Nuendo.
So it seems the multichannel silence problem is with Nuendo, not SpectraLayers. However, my post in the Nuendo forum got no response. If your dev teams communicate, maybe you know of a fix or workaround?
Yes it seems to be a Nuendo issue. That being said, I see the newest ARA SDK update brings better support for surround sound, so I guess the overall situation will get better when all audio software will update. I’ll get in touch with the Nuendo team about this issue.
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thanks Robin
it would be great if all parts of the Steinberg ‘Empire’ would communicate a little more (IMO).
It seems there is lots of low hanging fruit that SB could fix if there was the management will to do so.
@Thorsten_Marx @TimoWildenhain
@Thyme-Traveler Wasn’t planning to upload it yet but then I remembered it’s Christmas 
So there you go, apply to the SpectraLayers beta program here : https://beta.steinberg.net/ and once approved you’ll be able to download it.
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I did sign up for the beta program but never figured out how to get the beta of SpectraLayers Pro. My installed version is still 9.0.10.303. When will the fix make it into the official release?
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@Thyme-Traveler send me your email address in private message and I’ll walk you through the beta approval so you can get access