Steinberg Releases SpectraLayers 11

US Greater integration of AI and precision tools raises the bar for spectral audio editing 20/06/24

Steinberg has announced the immediate availability of SpectraLayers 11, which they say features greater integration of AI and precision tools to significantly raise the bar of spectral audio editing for music, sound design, restoration, and repair. They believe that, with more instrument categories for unmixing, much-improved voice recognition, enhanced editing, and workflow options which include process chaining, batch processing, an improved user interface and much more, SpectraLayers 11 lifts the industry standard for innovation, power, and convenience in spectral audio editing to a new level.

Marketing Manager Luis Dongo, told us, "We're very excited how SpectraLayers has evolved over the past few years and are keen to reveal the latest additions in version 11. SpectraLayers 11 delves now even deeper into harnessing the power of AI to further enhance productivity and efficiency. The results are outstanding, but you've got to see it for yourself!"

Here's more details direct from Steinberg...

Breakthroughs in unmixing and spectral repair
New breakthroughs in unmixing include an Unmix Chorus module for separating lead and background vocals on vocal-only layers as well as an Unmix Crowd Noise module for splitting the sound of a live event into performance and crowd sounds. Also new are enhanced Unmix Song AI for automated unmixing of up to seven discrete instruments, plus improved results for unmixing stems, drums, multiple voices, and more.

The new AI-powered Voice DeClip algorithm has been trained on thousands of pairs of clipped and non-clipped voice recordings to deal with clipped speech quickly and effectively, while the improved Voice DeNoise module now includes a strong noise option to address excessively noisy speech content.

Enhanced workflows and user interface
The SpectraLayers 11 user interface has been redesigned to accommodate the ever- increasing number of available processes, which are now presented as Modules in their own dedicated panel to deliver a significant uptick in workflow speed and efficiency.

Modules can be chained to add sophisticated multi-process configurations. Modules within chains can be programmed to operate on whole layers or layer selections, while processes can be diverted to other layers, repositioned in the chain and custom chain presets saved.

New batch processing allows files to be simply added or dragged into the batch process dialog, export options chosen and then rendered as either a mixdown or as independent layers.

The enhanced user interface in SpectraLayers 11 includes a new home screen and Compact Panels view, which enlarges or reduces the horizontal spectrogram and waveform displays while controls remain accessible at all times. There are also improvements to the Display, Channels and History panels, as well as the Composite Layers, Downmix Channels and Selected Layers views.

Introducing further editing and sound refinement tools
Multiple layers can be selected for editing and management, such as merge, duplicate, delete, group, and dragged directly into the Cubase and Nuendo Arrange windows in ARA mode. Layers can also be dragged directly to the desktop to quickly extract transcoded audio files.

A new configurable Transfer Brush tool non-destructively shifts content between source and destination layers in real time, while the new Transient Pencil tool allows users to draw transients directly in the spectrogram. Damaged or missing transients can be reconstructed by using this tool in conjunction with other SpectraLayers tools for creative sound design.

And there's more:

Configurable Selection Fading and Sharpening brush tool, which works at selection borders to sculpt and edit fades.

Editing selection fades is now integrated within the selection process.

New signal generator module, which merges the legacy tone, noise and silence generators and adds a transients generator.

Reverse the audio of any selection

Loop Preview facility for looping selections while working. Process chains can be tweaked and saved while auditioning the component processes.

Volume envelopes can be easily applied to Layers and Channels, with their graphs appearing in the waveform display.

New features at a glance
• Processes now presented as modules
• Module chaining
• Batch processing
• Significant new unmixing features for vocals, drums and more.
• AI-powered voice declipping
• Enhanced denoising
• Improved multi-layer workflow
• Many user interface enhancements
• New editing and selection tools
• Updated signal generator module
• Reverse audio
• Loop preview
• Enhanced volume envelope application

Pricing and Availability:
SpectraLayers 11 is available through the Steinberg Online Shop. The suggested retail price for SpectraLayers Pro 11 is 299 euros or 299.99 US dollars. An update from SpectraLayers Pro 10 to SpectraLayers Pro 11 is available with a suggested retail price of 79.99 euros or 79.99 US dollars. The suggested retail price for SpectraLayers Elements 11 is 79.99 euros or 79.99 US dollars. Updates from SpectraLayers Elements 9 and 10 to SpectraLayers Elements 11 are available with a suggested retail price of 29.99 euros or 29.99 US dollars. Prices may vary according to region.

Further updates and crossgrades are exclusively available through the Steinberg Online Shop.

Customers who have activated SpectraLayers 10 or earlier 6, 7, 8 and 9 versions from May 15, 2024, are eligible for a free, downloadable grace period update to the latest version.