Glowing Review in Tape-Op Magazine.

FYI:

fairly poor quality review IMO - does anybody think the reviewer actually used SL6 for any length of time. And has he actually used RX.

Like many ‘reviews’ more of a reworded press release IMO

By the sounds of it, if you read the review, and by my own uses - it sounds like they did some pretty indepth work that would have taken some time.

yes, I read the review

The author talks about how much better SL is than ‘all others’. And I’m like -how-? That’s why I’m so frustrated with the lack of tutorials. So far… I have -no- idea why SL is ‘better’ than RX. It took me about 10 minutes to get comfy with RX.

I’ve tried SL about 10 times and each time I throw up my hands trying to ‘get it’. My -hope- is that SL is like Wavelab–ie. it has a serious learning curve, but once you get it, you see why it’s better. But without guidance? I’m not willing to suffer enough to find out via trial and error.

the author finds no issues or problems with SL6 - not one - zero - zilch - nada. Not even one of the many issues and inconsistencies pointed out by @lovegames himself - and apparently it’s " backed by Steinberg’s customer support" - haha wonder if he’s ever needed to use it ! Robin does a reasonable job on this forum but that’s nothing to do with SB.

I’m not criticising SL6 specially as I do get use from it and it was pretty cheap…but there’s no chance at all that it’s “better” than RX - it different and that’s fine but not close to being better. (FWIW izotope support is first rate)

and we’ve been asking for tutorials for months…I’d stop holding your breath, there seems to be zero desire to produce them

Everything takes longer than what the mind imagines, especially if you want the tutorials themselves to be good. Making proper tutorials takes time.

-Nobody at Steinberg is going to be an expert on the Software yet,
-Greg Ondo usually does the indepth tutorials and Hangout Q&As, he’d need time to thoroughly learn every aspect of the software, come up with a tutorial plan, come up with specific projects to show properly how the software works, come up with a script that is condensed, etc, etc.
-Robin is too busy coding to be doing tutorials.

Nothings easy. It’s a new product on the roster, give it time.

Although I can’t comment in details, lovegames pretty much summarized the situation. Official tutorials are coming. Meanwhile, you can refer to my unofficial intro video which contains some tutorials.

robin, without trying to be too cynical

last september (2nd !) you said on the tutorial thread

“It’s coming; unfortunately everything slows down during the holiday season…”

the holiday season you were referring to was last summer holiday - what seasonal holiday is to blame this time ?

I’ve kept quiet when the subject of tutorials has come up but often wonder what some of you would have done before the days of the internet and being led by the hand on how a product works. Back in bygone days when you stumped up a couple of grand for a synth and only got a (often badly translated from Japanese) basic user manual, you actually had to work at it. When Cubase (and PRO 24) first came out, there were no internet tutorials. Where’s your sense of curiosity? What you get out of something is often a reflection of the effort you put into it. As an analogy, if you buy a car, do you really expect the manufacturer to teach you how to drive?

Definitely too cynical.

Open up the program, and mess with it. Load in some audio, something you want to fix. download a random youtube video if need and see what you can extract or clean up, just mess with it. start with the tools, explore each of their settings.

Once you get an idea of what the tools are doing, move to the layers and explore their concept/what they can do.


https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Spectralayers

Working creatively with layers

Turning mono track into stereo

… in the eternal words of Smokey Robinson, I second that emotion!

nope I don’t expect it to teach me to drive - but then most cars have the same controls and do basically the same thing. If I buy a helicopter then I’ll probably want a pointer in the right direction…I don’t have time (or inclination) to ‘mess around for a week or two’

FWIW I definitely predate the internet and yes, I know how to read a manual. The original cubase V1 atari manual was an A5 ring bound folder - very good indeed and very comprehensive. My korg MS20 manual similarly was excellent, actually 2 manuals. One of them was full of presets and examples. I could go on.

It’s 2020 not 1978 - video tutorials are a necessity for many if not most - zero excuse for not providing them despite promising them. Could I work out every feature, nuance, shortcut…yeah, probably given time. I’d rather use some of that discovery time making some music…just my opinion obviously. If you want to fiddle your way to becoming expert that’s your call.


Also bear in mind this is Spectrallayers 6…that’s “six”…it’s not a ‘new product’

In the meantime, why not just ask your questions here, and at least give other users the opportunity to help out?

Can you imagine - that’s exactly what I did with my trial; and probably what anyone would do… unfortunately the results I got weren’t great.

So, I’m ready to blame myself of course; it must be me not knowing how to use the tool properly.!

Only, there’s no skilled instruction, no proof, no evidence from the makers anywhere, what its actually capable of…? And I mean exactly, professionally, with real-world BEFORE and AFTER audio examples…

And here we are, still waiting to see/hear those.

In summary, I don’t yet see nearly £300 of ‘value for money’ with this tool. YMMV of course.

Did you search YouTube???

I’ve paid off this program already with work by mostly using the eraser tool…


Mind you I’ve spent some time with RX7 in the past and they are similar concepts.

Guys… Even though official tutorials are coming (yes I know it’s been delayed, that’s frustrating to me too, but it’s for the best in the long term), I’m not sure I understand why you’re waiting for those ones specifically. As lovegames mentionned, there are already videos out there, and I even provided one I created recently in this very thread with a couple real examples : Introduction to SpectraLayers - YouTube - have you watched it ? It’s only 9 minutes long and covers most of the basic concepts, settings and tools using 4/5 examples.
Also check the links posted by lovegame.

To comment on the Tape Op review, it highlights (though briefly) what’s unique with SL : it’s a full-featured spectral editor, as Photoshop is to picture editing - while RX is more focused on automated processes rather than actual spectral editing. So yes, it indeed has a steep learning curve. But when you start to get it, by experiencing different tools over your spectrogram depending on the problem you want to fix or the ideas you’d like to explore, it really gives you full control over your audio recording.

Thanks, Robin. The tutorial you link was a good intro to the basic tools.







I made a links thread here

thanks for that

genuinely useful