Steinberg are offering 40% off SpectraLayers 12 for a limited time. There are deals on other Steinberg products too.
- SpectraLayers Pro 12 – $349.99 to $209.999
- SpectraLayers Elements 12 – $89.99 to $53.99
SpectraLayers 12 raises the bar once again, with new music and sound unmixing algorithms, fresh speech processing options, sharpened selection tools, simultaneous multi-layer processing, and much more. System-wide improvements come together to form the most complete spectral editing solution for music production, post-production, creative sound design, and audio restoration work.
New and Improved Unmix Modules
Improved Unmix Song Module
Unmix Song now delivers significantly improved quality across the board, with dramatically better vocal separation, major enhancements to drum, bass, and sax/brass unmixing, and subtle improvements to guitar and piano unmixing. This means cleaner stems, less time spent on corrections, and more professional-sounding results right from the start. The Unmix Song dialog now includes an option called Unmix Sax & Brass before Vocals. When enabled, the module focuses on sax and brass unmixing before addressing other stems. It is worth trying both modes to find the best separation for the track.
Improved Unmix Drums Module
Unmix Drums now features updated algorithms and can extract toms, hi-hats, ride cymbals, and crash cymbals, for a total of six discrete kit pieces. This process is designed for isolated drum kit tracks: applying Unmix Song first, then using Unmix Drums to separate the kit components. This gives more precise control over individual drum elements, making it easier to rebalance, process, or replace parts of the kit with greater accuracy and less manual editing.
New Unmix Instrument Module
Unmix Instrument isolates and extracts user-identified instruments. Select up to ten seconds of the target instrument to be registered in the module dialog, and then run process. The Sensitivity parameter allows the separation to be fine-tuned for optimal results. This new feature provides the flexibility to extract custom elements from mixes, making it easier to rework arrangements, apply targeted processing, or create stems for remixing and restoration.
New Unmix Soundtrack Module
The Unmix Soundtrack module separates audio into dialogue, effects, and music layers. This module is especially useful for post-production workflows involving mixed content such as film soundtracks, trailers, and radio broadcasts. By isolating the core audio components, it enables more precise dialogue cleanup, music replacement, and effects enhancement. Whether localizing content, restoring archival material, or preparing stems for remixing, Unmix Soundtrack gives the control and flexibility needed to meet professional delivery standards with greater efficiency.
Improved Unmix Noisy Speech Module
The Unmix Noisy Speech module has been significantly improved, delivering much clearer speech/noise separation along with a substantial reduction in artifacts. This results in cleaner dialogue tracks, enhanced intelligibility, reduced listener fatigue, and easier preparation for broadcast or post-production work.
New and Improved Voice Processing Modules
New Voice Enhance Module
The Voice Enhance module uses generative AI to literally reconstruct poor-quality voice recordings. It can correct issues such as clipping, limited bandwidth, compression artifacts, excess reverb, noise, and more. Voices are intelligently processed to address these problems, resulting in clearer, more natural-sounding speech that improves intelligibility and overall audio quality, while preserving the speaker’s unique identity.
New DePlosive Module
The DePlosive module automatically eliminates distracting plosives in speech recordings. Adjustable Threshold, Frequency, and Reduction Ratio controls let the process be fine-tuned for optimal results. This module can be combined with the precise control of the Eraser tool, to take full advantage of the seamless integration of automatic processing and manual editing. This is a hallmark of SpectraLayers, which sets it apart as a uniquely powerful application.
Improved Voice DeNoise Module
The Voice DeNoise module has also been substantially improved, providing exceptionally clean results whether the background is noise or music. This versatility makes it ideal for diverse audio restoration and post-production tasks, delivering clear, artifact-free results across many use cases.
Improved Unmix Transcription Module
The Unmix Transcription module has been greatly enhanced, resulting in transcription quality that is twice as accurate and supporting twice as many languages. A high-quality mode is now available across all languages, enabling more reliable and precise transcriptions for a wider range of projects and multilingual workflows.
Workflow Improvements
Edit Multiple Layers at Once
This headline feature enables tools and processes to operate on multiple selected layers simultaneously. In standalone mode, tools and processes operate vertically across layers. Events spanning multiple stems can be targeted and edited in one go — ideal for refining performances captured with multiple microphones. The feature extends horizontally in Cubase or Nuendo in ARA mode — for example when using SpectraLayers speech processing tools in post, on multiple clips located anywhere in the project. Importantly, this functionality extends to all SpectraLayers tools and processes.
Improved Cut to… / Copy to…
The “Cut to” and “Copy to” actions now allow any layer within a project to be selected as target. Once a target layer is established, additional actions can be immediately applied to it. This makes multi-layer editing of workflows faster and more intuitive, reducing the number of steps needed to move and manipulate content.
Selection Editing
Active selections can be resized directly on the spectrograph, just by dragging their edges. At the same time, selection fades can now be resized in active selections. Achieve the desired edits with a new level of ease and accuracy.
Improved Frequency Selection
Frequency selection has been improved across the board to track narrow frequencies more accurately. Additionally, frequency selections are now elastic: if you move beyond a desired point or encounter drifting in the spectrum, simply move back slightly to the last safe position to correct it. These enhancements make it easier to perform precise, frustration-free spectral edits — especially when working with fine or shifting frequency content.
Improved Harmonics Selection
Extending the improvements in frequency selection, the Harmonics selection tool introduces a new, more intuitive way to select harmonics — no parameter tweaking required. Simply drag over the most accessible harmonic in the target, then shift to an adjacent one; the tool automatically calculates and selects all harmonics in the corresponding series. No more guessing or manually setting parameters before starting a harmonic selection!
Improved Transient Selection
Transient selection is now more accurate and flexible. The tool locks onto the target with greater precision and can include or exclude surrounding spectral content, based on its power. This results in cleaner, more focused selections and reduces the time spent on manual fine-tuning.
Productivity and User Interface Improvements
New Phase Rotation Module
The Phase Rotation module allows asymmetrical waveforms to be corrected for maximize gain before clipping, resulting in cleaner, more balanced audio with improved headroom. By fixing these imbalances in waveform shape, this process reduces distortion and increases overall loudness.
Time Estimate
When applying modules, the processing time estimate now updates continuously and more precisely as the operation progresses. The user interface remains fully responsive, allowing processing to be canceled at any point, saving time and maintaining an uninterrupted workflow.
Octave Units
Frequency fading now scales by octaves instead of hertz, resulting in a more natural and consistent visual representation across the spectrum. Fades now appear smoother and more predictable from top to bottom, better reflecting how sound is actually perceived.
Improved VST 3 Effects Module
The VST 3 effects module can now display multiple plug-in interfaces simultaneously. Entire chains can be previewed and interacted with at once, improving the workflow and making it easier to fine-tune complex effect setups in real time.
Filter Panels by Typing
The view filtering options in relevant panels — including default categories and custom presets — have been enhanced by the addition of a keyword-based search option. For example, typing “noise” in the Modules panel instantly filters and displays all available noise shaping processes. This makes it faster and easier to locate specific tools, streamlining your workflow and minimizing interruptions during editing.
Improved History Panel
The History panel now consolidates successive operations from a single tool (typically a drawing tool) into a single undoable step, based on a user-configurable time window. This optimizes the edit history list and simplifies the undo process. The feature is always active, with a default setting of 1,500 ms. This helps to keep the history list clean and manageable, making it easier to navigate and reverse recent edits.
Group ARA Clips by Track
In ARA mode, selecting Group by Track from the SpectraLayers Clip menu displays all ARA-engaged clips on any selected DAW track, both as layers and as project tabs. This enables faster navigation and editing by limiting the view to clips located on individual tracks. The default clip grouping choice can be assigned as a preference, allowing you to maintain an organized workspace, tailored to your editing workflow.
SpectraLayers delivers audio empowerment by showing sounds as visual objects. You can explore, reach in, take and transform, working wonders on tasks ranging from repairing and restoring audio to freeform sound design. Unmatched selection tools developed over many years are now joined by new artificial intelligence-driven audio extraction and repair processes, making this the most significant version of SpectraLayers yet.
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