Having worked with David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails, David Byrne/St Vincent and Katy Perry among others, leading front-of-house, broadcast and postproduction mixing engineer Peter Keppler is now using Waves Tracks Live to record Patti Smith and other top acts.

‘Taking advantage of the comprehensive networking capability of the coaxial Madi interface DiGiGrid MGB, I recorded the Patti Smith shows on 52 tracks at 48kHz,’ Keppler reports. ‘For Katy Perry I ran 64 tracks at 96k, all to an internal solid-state drive. A few coax cables and one Cat5E cable are all that’s required.’

On the benefits of using Tracks Live in a live situation, he continues: ‘Tracks Live works with practically any interface out there. If you are faced with setting up a recording system very quickly, it will read the amount of inputs available on your interface and automatically open that amount of tracks – just click the Record button, and off you go. When you open a new session, it creates an entirely new folder and places all the relevant info and files from the session into that folder, so you won’t have to go chasing down audio files and other info later.’

‘Waves Tracks Live’s signal path is simple, and the GUI is very uncluttered and easy to look at. However, it does have a few features found in far more complex systems, such as easy import and export of files and time-code generation. There’s a visual indicator for how much time you have available on your record drive as well as CPU and Drive Load indicators, plus easy horizontal and vertical expansion of the waveforms. There is single-button access to either multitrack output or stereo output with a mixer, 48kHz to 192kHz sample rates, up to 32-bit floating point depth, and selectable audio file types.

‘You can also select an entirely separate metering page and even put any amount of tracks or the whole rig in Input mode to check continuity without putting the computer into Record mode. I find that most computers, while in record, are very slow to do much else, even page scrolling, so Input mode is very handy. Also, when I use Tracks Live for virtual soundchecking, it’s super-easy to loop a section of the recording so I can walk the arena and listen.’

He also appreciates the reliability and ease of use: ‘I have used a few other brands of recording software but was faced with problems such as track number limitations, routing problems and, worst of all, crashes. Tracks Live, using the MGB and SoundGrid networking, enables me to patch inputs and outputs exactly where you need them on a comprehensive patch grid. An additional crucial feature is the ease of exporting a session from Tracks Live to a DAW – the audio from Tracks Live is in its own folder, so it is very easy to find. I have transferred over 100 Tracks Live sessions’ worth of audio files into Pro Tools and never had any issues. Waves Tracks Live is absolutely reliable – I have never had a failure or crash, recording over 150 shows in the past two years.’