Sound Forge 12 and SpectraLayers 6 (Steinberg) Linking

condex wrote on 7/4/2019, 6:22 AM

For some years under both SCS and MAGIX, Sound Forge Pro has had the very useful option under Tools of sending the audio clip - or just a highlighted section of the SF timeline - to SpectraLayers Pro. Even if SL was upgraded to a newer version, SF would automatically detect that newer version and automatically link to that newer version when linking through the Tools option.

However, now that SpectraLayers has moved to Steinberg, it does not seem that the linking process from SF to Steinberg's SL 6 release functions at all. I have Sound Forge 12, and having now installed SL 6, the SF 12 link to SL under Tools still only deploys SL 5, not SL 6. When accessing Options/Preferences/Internal in SF (hold the Shift key when selecting Preferences), there is no selection to remap the SL .exe file to another SL version, and nor is there any other Preferences tab to do that as far as I could see.

Why is this so important to me? Often I open SF from an audio event on a Vegas Pro (16) timeline (where SF is selected as the preferred audio editor in VP). If, as is mostly the case, that audio event is a trimmed down audio event (say, only 5 seconds on the timeline where the entire audio event is 20 seconds), the whole audio event is opened in SF, but the trimmed selection is highlighted on the SF timeline. When opening SpectraLayers from Tools in SF, only that highlighted selection opens in SL.

If the preferred audio editor in VP is set to SpectraLayers 5 or 6, the entire audio event is opened, not the trimmed down audio length.

I imagine that this may not be a problem in Sound Forge 13 as it has ARA 2 support, and SL6 also caters for ARA 2, but if you have SF 12 and opt for SL 6, it seems that the SF/SL link for SL 6 isn't available if your workflow involves SF/SL linking.

Perhaps, somebody may know of a workaround to get SL 6 linking from SF 12 as SL 5 links from SF 12.

Comments

condex wrote on 7/13/2019, 6:40 AM

Update: After installing SF13 (b76) trial version, it looks like that ARA 2 is limited to Melodyne and no other ARA 2 compliant app/program like SpectraLayers 6 is accessible in SF13. SF13 user manual mentions ARA 2 only in What's New - there's nothing anywhere else in the user manual about ARA 2 based on the search facility.

Overall, there seems little difference between SF12 and SF13 other than some added plugins and a new GUI, the latter of which is admittedly very, very good-looking and useful in terms of being much easier on the eyes and making the items in the tool bars more identifiable. I'm not sure that this alone makes the upgrade all that attractive given that a link to SpectraLayers 6 appears to be unavailable (it's still only the last MAGIX SL version 5).

Former user wrote on 8/21/2019, 5:42 PM

1. Write a simple VEGAS Pro Extension or Script to open the file in SpectralLayers. Still don't understand why MAGIX hasn't allowed us to set more than one Audio Editor (ACID has this option, for example) in VEGAS Pro or SOUND FORGE.

2. More easily, you can set SpectralLayers as the preferred Audio Editor in VEGAS Pro, and if needed, open the file from SpectralLayers in SOUND FORGE Pro, as it allows you to set and use multiple external editors. That will get you the preferred behavior, you just have to "go through SpectralLayers to get to SOUND FORGE Pro," but at least your work will be saved and updated in the VEGAS Pro NLE.