SpectraLayers 12: Lift Your Audio to New Heights

Steinberg releases SpectraLayers 12, with a powerful lineup of new features that push its technical and creative boundaries even further, helping to lift audio to new heights.

Steinberg has today announced the immediate availability of SpectraLayers 12, which includes a range of new and enhanced tools that take the unmixing and speech processing capabilities of SpectraLayers to a new level. Now even more powerful, versatile, and intuitive, the spectral precision and sonic excellence of SpectraLayers 12 ensure that, whether it’s used for music, post-production and restoration, sound design, or mastering and audio forensics, the results are at the forefront of innovative spectral audio production.

New Unmixing Modules

SpectraLayers 12 includes two brand-new unmixing modules:

Unmix Soundtrack: Separates audio into dialogue, effects, and music layers — ideal for film soundtracks, trailers, and radio broadcasts. Enables precise dialogue cleanup, music replacement, and effects enhancement.
Unmix Instrument: Isolates user-identified instruments by analysing the target before unmixing. Perfect for reworking arrangements, targeted processing, and stem creation for remixing and restoration.

Enhanced Unmixing Features

Significant improvements to existing processes:

Unmix Song: Dramatically better vocal separation, enhanced drum, bass, and sax/brass unmixing, with subtle improvements to guitar and piano.
Unmix Drums: Extracts six discrete kit elements — kick, snare, toms, hi-hats, ride, and crash cymbals.
Unmix Noisy Speech: Now delivers clearer speech/noise separation with fewer artefacts.

Advanced Voice Processing

New and upgraded voice tools:

Voice Enhance: Uses generative AI to restore poor-quality voice recordings while preserving speaker identity.
DePlosive: Removes plosives from speech with fine-tuning controls.
Voice DeNoise and Unmix Transcription: Cleaner results in noisy environments, with transcription now supporting twice as many languages and double the accuracy.

Simultaneous Layer Editing

All tools and processes can now operate on multiple layers:

In standalone mode, edit vertically across layers (e.g. across multiple stems).
In ARA mode (Cubase/Nuendo), apply processing across multiple clips on different tracks.

Upgraded Selection Tools

More precise frequency tracking with elastic frequency selection.
More intuitive harmonic selection — no more tweaking needed.
Improved transient selection with greater flexibility and detail.

Additional Workflow Improvements

Batch processing with custom naming schemes.
New Phase Rotation module for maximising gain before clipping.
Resize active selections directly on the spectrograph.
Render volume envelopes in place.
VST 3 effects module can now display multiple plug-ins at once.
Improved History panel with consolidated undo steps.
Tool and module presets now portable across computers and versions.
Native support for Windows Arm64 systems.

User Interface Enhancements

Continuous, precise processing time estimates.
Standardised volume envelopes matching DAW conventions.
Frequency fading scaled by octaves for natural visual representation.
Group by Track in ARA mode for easier navigation.
Keyword-based search to quickly find tools.
Enhanced Cut to/Copy to functions for improved layer management.

“Since we first introduced unmixing algorithms in SpectraLayers, there hasn’t been any other application that could match its quality. Now, with version 12, the clarity of the separated stems is exceptional… you could almost believe that they were never part of a mix,” says Marketing Manager Pro Audio, Luis Dongo. “This version also has a strong focus on the needs of the post-production industry, with innovative features like soundtrack unmixing and speech enhancement. Existing voice processing algorithms are constantly being refined and updated, while workflow and productivity improvements requested by our loyal users haven’t been forgotten.”

Availability and Pricing

SpectraLayers Pro 12: €349 / $349.99
SpectraLayers Elements 12: €89.99 / $89.99
Education Version: €179 / $179.99

Updates, upgrades, and crossgrades are available. Customers who activated version 11 or earlier on or after May 28, 2025, are eligible for a free grace period update.

Key New Features at a Glance

Unmix Soundtrack and Unmix Instrument modules
Improved unmixing for song, drums, and noisy speech
Voice Enhance and DePlosive modules
Enhanced Voice DeNoise and Transcription
Simultaneous multi-layer editing
Advanced selection tools
Batch processing and envelope rendering
Improved VST and UI tools
Native Windows Arm support