This electronic download of Steinberg SpectraLayers Pro 9 Audio Repair and Restoration Software offers audio engineers a powerful set of tools to visually manipulate and process audio for a variety of purposes including noise reduction, audio extraction, repair and restoration, and sound sculpting. This latest iteration of the software adds Dynamic Spectral Processing, non-modal process dialogs, process and tool presets, Unmix Level process, improved De-Bleed processing, Apple Silicon support, an updated GUI, and loads of additional enhancements.
At the core of SpectraLayers is the spectrograph display that allows you to easily visualize and process audio events. The new AI algorithms learn patterns from your manual selections to help you perform multiple similar tasks and speed up your workflow. Also saving you time and streamlining your projects is the new ARA system, which integrates the software directly into the timelines of popular DAWs including Nuendo and Cubase, and accommodates several SpectraLayers projects at the same time. SpectraLayers Pro 9 is ready for heavy-duty professional applications—supporting up to eight channels of audio at a maximum sampling rate of 384 kHz.
What's New in Version
Dynamic Spectral Processing
Previously, changing parameters and auditioning the result was a two-step process. Now, the preview process is in real time, meaning you hear the effects of spectral process parameter changes as you work, radically increasing the speed and efficiency of your workflow. You can process more content much faster, while evaluating the most subtle parameter changes on the fly in real time.
Non-Modal Process Dialogue
SpectraLayers now features non-modal dialog boxes, allowing you to work freely anywhere in the interface, even while a process dialog box is open. You can move the playhead, change selections, switch layers, and make adjustments in the Display panel, freely moving around the interface while monitoring parameter changes in real time with the new dynamic spectral processing feature. In addition, the dialog boxes now stay open after applying processes, allowing you to easily perform multiple sequential processes without having to recall the process dialog for each one.
Process and Tool Presets
The addition of Process and Tool presets is the perfect complement to the new real-time preview functionality. You can start with a default or custom preset and work from there, monitoring process changes in real time. Save presets as you work and use them as reference points as you work. In addition, fully configurable Tool presets with a range of default options are now available, helping you to create the right tool settings faster.
Unmix Level Process
A much-requested feature, the new Unmix Level process divides one layer into two based on a user-selected amplitude split point. You can preview the high and low-level content independently before executing the process, which transfers all content below the specified dB threshold to a new layer. Unmix Level joins Unmix Stems and Unmix Components as another automated process for making global edits, which prepare your workflow for deep editing using the manual editing tools in SpectraLayers.
Improved De-Bleed Process
The AI-assisted De-Bleed process has been expanded to allow multiple bleed source layers to be applied to the target layer each time. Resulting in faster and higher quality de-bleeding, this is far more efficient than applying the process repeatedly to the same target, using multiple bleed sources. In processes such as De-Bleed and Imprint (Cast/Mold), cross-layer processing is a SpectraLayers hallmark for both repair operations and sound design.
Cursor Coordinates / Cursor Crosshair
The new Cursor Crosshair view option brings a new level of convenience, with crosshair lines that span the entire spectral graph. This lets you get a precise visual reference for all content at any given frequency before making a selection. The ability to display time and frequency coordinates next to the cursor means you can now keep your gaze more firmly fixed on the target audio as you work.
Additional New Features
- Apple Silicon Support: SpectraLayers 9 is Apple-silicon compatible which means, whether in standalone mode or running in parallel with your favorite DAW in ARA mode, you can enjoy faster AI-assisted operations, smoother performance for real-time previews, performing processing with compatible plug-ins and more on Mac computers with Apple silicon processors.
- Improved Frequency Scale Scrollbar Accessed from the View menu, this new feature gives you the option to see the frequency scale scroll bar at all times, without needing to hover the cursor to reveal it. Along with a wide range of options for adjusting the spectral view—including the Zoom tool, Hand tool, mouse-wheel scroll, and Lock Spectrogram to 0 Hz—the application will easily adapt to your editing style.
- New Look: SpectraLayers 9 has been updated with a new look that makes it easier to identify all application features and functions. The aesthetic and functional changes—which run throughout the entire interface from the buttons and sliders through to all menus and panels—conform to Windows 11 and macOS Monterey specs. There is also improved OpenGL performance for multiscreen configurations in fullscreen mode.
- New licensing system: Replacing the familiar eLicenser, we are introducing the new Steinberg Licensing system to SpectraLayers, which doesn’t need a physical copy protection device and lifts many restrictions of the past.
- Faster ARA Transfer Times: In SpectraLayers 9, the ARA data transfer rate is 20x faster, allowing you to bring hundreds of clips at once into the spectral domain, in seconds.
- Improved Generate Silence/Tone/Noise Processes: Now you can now choose between Replace, Mix, and Insert modes when generating signals within the application.
- Playback Output Gain Control: This new control allows you to set an independent program output level, specifically for spectral editing operations.
Additional Features
Smarter AI
Second-generation AI implementation in SpectraLayers includes the ability to work across multiple layers in the De-Bleed process, the introduction of AI in the Reverb Reduction process, and the addition of an alternate AI option in the Voice Denoiser. AI is proliferating quickly throughout the entire application with all-new processes, improved code in existing AI-driven processes, and supercharged legacy tools with fresh new AI implementations.
Ambience Matching
Register a selection anywhere on the spectral graph as a room tone or background texture and apply the sound anywhere in your project. Try this feature in ARA mode on the Cubase and Nuendo timelines for effortless sweetening in post.
EQ Matching
Register a selection anywhere on the spectral graph as an EQ profile and apply the profile across layers to achieve sonic conformity. Use this adjustable algorithm at the tracking and mastering stages in music, as well as to establish uniformity in post.
De-Bleed Process
De-bleed drum-kit tracks and other isolated instrument tracks with AI-driven accuracy. But don't stop there; try this new algorithm on other tasks where one layer can serve as the selection basis for operations on another.
AI-Assisted Reverb Reduction
Originally launched in SpectraLayers Pro 3, Reverb Reduction is now an AI-fueled process. Identifying and attenuating room resonances has never been cleaner, smarter, or more effective.
Improved Voice De-Noiser
Perfect for cleaning up location interview recordings, the Voice De-Noiser is trained to recognize and isolate the human voice. SpectraLayers Pro 8 now features two AI algorithms to choose from. Together they cover all the bases, from spoken word to sung vocals.
Improved ARA 2 Integration
ARA 2 integration in SpectraLayers 7 and Cubase Pro 11 introduced the ability to drag and drop layers directly on to the DAW timeline. SpectraLayers 8 streamlines the ARA 2 workflow even further by allowing multiple independent SpectraLayers projects to exist within the DAW project.
Pattern Finder
Select a target sound, and then trigger a search to automatically locate and select every other similar sound in the spectrum. New in SpectraLayers, multiple complex selections can now be saved with projects and recalled for later use.
Workflow Enhancements
- Improved clip repair
- Automatically select harmonics
- Improved eraser, amplifier, and pitch-shifting tools
- Dynamic visual preview of selections while drawing
- Save multiple selections
- Interchannel copy/paste functionality
- Work in sample rates up to 384 kHz
Artificial Intelligence to Assist Your Workflow
Just as audio engineers focus on separating increasingly fine details in sound, the AI in SpectraLayers Pro 8 uses algorithms to learn from the data flowing through its built-in neural network. In the same way that these algorithms can accurately determine how to apply color to a black-and-white photograph, the AI in SpectraLayers Pro can sense discrete events in a sound field and isolate them on independent colorful layers for processing.
Separate Tracks into Stems
This AI-assisted process in SpectraLayers Pro scans the finished file of a song, allowing you to unmix and extract the different instruments to separate layers with default settings for vocals, piano, bass, drums, and more.
Unmix Components
Unmix stems into tone, noise, and transient component layers. Reconstruct missing noise hidden by tones and transients. Comprehensive learning algorithms clear the path to clean extraction.
Pattern Finder
SpectraLayers Pro's advanced pattern recognition lets you select a target sound, and then trigger a search to automatically locate and select every other similar sound in the spectrum.
Voice De-Noiser
Perfect for cleaning up location interview recordings, the Voice De-Noiser algorithm is trained to recognize and isolate the human voice. You can automatically attenuate everything but the voice, for maximum intelligibility.
De-Esser
Spectral de-essing is the most precise and least invasive way to tame and shape vocal sibilants. Manual de-essing in SpectraLayers Pro has always been quick and easy, and now the new automatic de-essing feature makes it even easier and more accurate than typical waveform-based plug-in processing.
Repair Processes
Hum Reduction
This automatic process detects and eliminates unwanted hum as well as higher harmonics generated by the fundamental tone. Hum harmonics can be independently attenuated to the level you choose.
Clip Repair
Clipped peaks come in many shapes and sizes. The AI in SpectraLayers Pro 7 evaluated 32,000 of them to know exactly what to look for and how to automatically apply the best repair.
Click Repair
Automatically detect and repair clicks, crackles, and pops. Invert the process to audition problem sounds in isolation, then execute the repair after you've dialed in the fix you need.
Improved Healing
Better interpolation and faster performance, now assisted by AI, looks more closely at noise, tones, and transients, making this easy repair process more versatile and precise than ever.
More Features
Playback VU Meter
This small, unobtrusive meter shows the mix output level to help you avoid clipping while producing and mixing multiple layers.
Single Layer/Group and Mute/Solo
Limit soloing and muting to one layer or group at a time.
Avoid Unintended Selections
A four-pixel drag is now required to create a selection, resulting in less unintended selections.
New Cut, Copy, and Paste Options
You can create new layers or transfer selections to existing adjacent layers. Simply reposition Layers in the Layers Panel to set your paste destination.
Export Layer Audio
This option is now available in the File menu. Render a selected layer directly without needing to isolate it first in the mix.
Rapid Tool Toggling
Use any tool's shortcut to cycle through its tool options.
Customizable UI Luminosity
UI luminosity is now configurable, so you can provide the brightness level that best suits your monitor and workplace environment. Set the control to optimize your spectral view and avoid screen fatigue, day and night.
Special Tools
- Transform tool
- Transform selection
- Playback tool
- ARA 2 layer management
- VST3 plug-in support