Spectralive and kicking

Australian plug-in developers Crysonic have updated their Spectralive ‘spectral vitality’ plug-in to v3, and have completely rewritten the engine in the process, bringing the plug-in to OSX for the first time. Spectralive appears relatively unique in its approach to enhancing sound, in that it purports not to add extra harmonics — the method most commonly used by frequency-enhancing technology — but to use a process called ’spectral vitality’ instead. There are few details available about how the process works (though it’s most likely to, in part, manipulate the timing and phase relationships between frequencies), but we do know that it runs with 64-bit internal precision, and includes eight enhancement-alogorithms (labelled A to H) and eight ‘processes’ (labelled one to eight) that can be combined to alter the sonic spectrum of programme material.

New to v3 is an 11-band EQ and soft limiter, and a peak limiter, which allows Spectralive to carry out the final-stage limiting of programme material, making the plug-in potentially useful for mastering music. Also interesting is the addition of a mono-to-stereo process, which includes three options for creating or enhancing stereo, including one called Atmospherics. The Atmospherics control is intended to create the life like stereo ‘wandering’ that may occur in a real acoustic space, giving both mono and stereo material a more lively feel. Spectralive NXT 3 costs $100 (around £63) for the full version, or $60 (around £38) to upgrade from a previous version.

Crysonic info@crysonic.com
www.crysonic.com