It’s also great for cleaning up audio recorded on location that might have been marred by a siren or airplane passing overhead. Because the software allows for non-contiguous selection, it’s easy to select only a snippet of background noise or electrical hum, then eliminate unwanted frequencies in a few clicks. There are numerous uses for SpectraLayer Pro, noise reduction and repair among them. It’s super-easy to do with the Displacement Pad, a small box in the upper right corner that provides virtual joystick control up to 64 pixels in any direction. One of the coolest SpectraLayer Pro 4 features is 3D Displace, which elevates selected audio envelopes, extruding them into multidimensional space for maximum editing precision.

Layers can be grouped, reordered, soloed, or muted, and the latest version adds the ability to work on multiple projects at once with tabs to quickly jump between them. Once you’ve isolated the desired audio, it’s a trivial matter to copy it onto a new layer, which can then be assigned one of 10 colors to differentiate that sound from the rest. It’s easy to deconstruct any sound mix using layers and color coding in SpectraLayers Pro 4. A pair of other selection tools unique to SpectraLayer Pro are harmonics and frequency, which allow users to effortlessly isolate sounds in the same target spectrum by clicking and dragging. Spectral editing uses many of the same tools already familiar to digital artists, such as selection (rectangular, elliptical, and time range), lasso, magic wand, and brush. The bulk of the window allows plenty of room for a scrolling audio spectrum timeline, complete with a narrow waveform view for reference. There’s a stack of panels at right that display file information, edit history, audio channel configuration, and layers, each of which can be undocked to float above the workspace or moved onto a second display as needed.

Perhaps not-so coincidentally, SpectraLayers Pro’s user interface also echoes Adobe’s popular image editor, with toolbars across the top and left side. As the name implies, it includes an innovative layer system that allows sound to be composited in many of the same ways images are manipulated with Adobe Photoshop. This standalone software allows real-time editing with direct control over spectrum-based audio samples. Photoshop for soundĪfter acquiring most of Sony Creative’s software products last May, Magix recently debuted With support for all major QuickTime and Windows audio formats, SpectraLayers Pro 4 allows users to dig deeper into sound editing than ever before.

Spectralayers pro 8 review