


SpectraLayers is a standalone application rather than a plug-in, and targeted at anyone who needs to edit audio in extreme detail. We have seen a few of these kinds of advanced spectral editors in recent years, including iZotope's RX and the Iris synth, which lets you generate sound by manipulating audio spectrally rather than using a conventional waveform view. So although SpectraLayers is the same on both platforms, Sound Forge isn't. Slightly confusingly there is a Mac version of Sound Forge, but it's much newer, built from scratch and currently only at version 1. Alongside the company's recent release of Sound Forge Pro 11 for Windows, Sony has released SpectraLayers Pro 2 for Mac and PC. TLDR? Watch the video below instead for a deeper dive and don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel for more.It doesn't seem all that long since Sony released SpectraLayers 1, a powerful tool for getting inside digital audio files, editing and generally tinkering about with them in ways that aren't possible in the majority of wave editing applications.

Want to isolate a vocal track? Want to remove the drums? No problem! Stop traipsing around dodgy torrents and start taking these separation tools seriously! Its’ time to up your remix game! Now, however, thanks to recent advances in spectral analysis and machine learning, a number of tools have arrived to intuitively and impressively strip a bounced stereo audio file into separate spectral components with the click of a button. And at the end of this escapade, you’d likely end up with a clumsily EQ’d version barely concealing the drum tracks underneath while filtering out more than half the emotion of the performance! If you just needed an acapella, you would likely be forced to brave a variety of dodgy forums and torrent sites to find the vocal you were looking for. Once upon a time, if you wanted to remix a tune you needed stems supplied by the original producer to do it properly. Want to isolate a vocal track? Want to remove the drums? We review four of the best stem separation tools and focus on which is the best for DJs and live remix performances.
