Is Spectralayers useful for anything?

[kritikon]

Got it with Cubase Artist 12 apparently. Definitely wasn't there in 10.5. I had a quick read on Steinberg but TBH it didn't make it much clearer - I know it can be used for cleaning up stuff, but does it do anything else? It says it can make creative noises etc and is great because it's visual. Really? How the f*** do you visually create something that looks like a Jackson Pollock painting? I have absolutely no idea what Spectralayers is despite reading Steinberg blurb.

[whyterabbyt]

If you could have an EQ that you could use to completely and arbitrarily modify the complete frequency mix of any region of time in a recording, frequency by frequency, would that be useful to you?

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Got it with Cubase Artist 12 apparently. Definitely wasn't there in 10.5. I had a quick read on Steinberg but TBH it didn't make it much clearer - I know it can be used for cleaning up stuff, but does it do anything else? It says it can make creative noises etc and is great because it's visual. Really? How the f*** do you visually create something that looks like a Jackson Pollock painting? I have absolutely no idea what Spectralayers is despite reading Steinberg blurb.

Think of it as an alternative to Izotope RX. You're looking at a view of FrequencyxTime, and you can basically make parts of the audio louder/quieter using the available tools, similar to how a photo editor would work. You can also copy/paste things from one place to another. It's good for noise reduction or targeting specific regions/frequencies for specific processing. It's got some features to break a mix out into stems, then if you wanted to eliminate some bleed in the processed vocal stem for instance, you could highlight regions of the audio that aren't the vocal and make them quieter, etc. If you play with it a bit, highlight some sections of audio and solo them, you quickly get a feel for how it works.

[jens]

I have absolutely no idea what Spectralayers is despite reading Steinberg blurb.

it spectrally analyzes whatever you send through it and visually displays it as a spectrogram...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrogram

so far this is nothing unusual at all and a very common audio-tool.

But unlike most other spectrometers it allows you to manipulate / alter edit the program material by directly modifying the spectrogram itself (in a similar way (i.e. using similar tools and techniques) to how you can manipulate a photo in Photoshop).

It also includes a variety of algorithms that help you to seperate the different sections/elements within the spectrometer, depending on what your objective is. I.e. it can detect sibilants within the spectrogram. That way you can reduce their power more directly than you could do with other tools. Another example is that it can also recognize different instruments within a mix. It can also recognize noise.

These algorithms get improved with new versions and they also often add new algorithms.

It is a very mighty and unique tool.

[kritikon]

Hmm...sounds potentially useful but likely a large learning curve? I guess I'll just have to have a play this week, and FSU with it.

[Sampleconstruct]

And you can audio-morph things and unman stems in SL, like I did in these videos:





Unmixing stems:

[jens]

Hmm...sounds potentially useful but likely a large learning curve? I guess I'll just have to have a play this week, and FSU with it.

Yes, it has a bit of a learning curve indeed - this is really similar to Photoshop, where you need to learn to
use the tools or you might end up doing horrible things - BUT: as with Photoshop, there are more and more algorithms who help you with it and they are getting smarter with time.

[jens]

Great examples Simon!

[DaveClark]

"Is Spectralayers useful for anything?"

There is a kind of trees-and-forest aspect to this question, i.e. individuals versus community. SpectraLayers is useful, as are Fourier methods upon which it is based, to the community. SpectraLayers may or may not be useful for a particular individual. The more one knows about Fourier methods, the more useful it is.

[Trancit]

I don´t think I missed it ever in my life

[jens]

I don´t think I missed it ever in my life

[kritikon]

Thanks for posting those examples Sampleconstruct. Gave me some idea of what it can do. Even just as a vocoder type thing that seems worth looking into, and TBH I'd never have thought about using a vocoder for transforming instruments into instruments etc...but that sounds really interesting, and I guess less limited than a vocoder. Is this the kind of tech that IRs use? So I guess vocal isolation to get acapellas is something it might be able to do (I guess success depending on the type and quality of what's put into it)? The creative FSU aspect seems more interesting to me than the technical aspects. Cheers
I have to investigate all the other new C12 toys as well but Spectralayers might have to be bumped up to the top of the to-do list.

[Trancit]

I don´t think I missed it ever in my life

Seems the temporal banning hasn´t solved the problem with you... are you now the forum police judging what is valuable or not??

Why do you not just let the OP decide if this is valuable for him or not?

Second, why isn´t that valuable information...?

Somebody asks how useful this process is and me as a person with 27 years of experience state, I never missed it in my whole (producing) life... I think that tells far more than all of your theoretical blablabla...

Let´s tell the truth... there are a few (very few) useful applications where spectral cleaning might be the best option... but do I really have to delve into that rabbit hole??

If you like to... why not... do I have to because there are no other ways?? No...never ever!
Most of responses in this thread are more likely this would be a must have and I heartly disagree...

And this was my last word directed to you as you should have been long time on my foe list... it was long overdue but now you made it onto it... bye bye!

[fairlyclose]

Let´s tell the truth... there are a few (very few) useful applications where spectral cleaning might be the best option... but do I really have to delve into that rabbit hole??

Spectral cleaning, in all its forms, is very widely used - it would be the major aspect for Izotope RX sales over the years for example. Probably not all that useful in mainstream popular music production but in many many other areas of sound production eg dialog editing it is pretty much essential

[jens]

Second, why isn´t that valuable information...?

Somebody asks how useful this process is and me as a person with 27 years of experience state, I never missed it in my whole (producing) life... I think that tells far more than all of your theoretical blablabla...

well, if you just say you never missed it (i.e. without giving any additional information whatsoever),
one has to assume that you never tried it and perhaps never even heard of it - which would by default render your statement completely random nonsense.

And if you tried it your post is still random noise without any explanation why you nonetheless don't miss it.

But do I really have to explain this? I'd think that's all pretty obvious, no?