In the past ten years, the audio industry has witnessed an explosion of multi-track recording software that has become more affordable and accessible to the average audio practitioner. During this same time period, a number of companies have introduced recording software aimed directly at sound reinforcement engineers.
These specialized software products are tailored towards the live sound workflow. That means stripping away a lot of the unnecessary editing and automation functionality that often serves to cause confusion and slow a live engineer down. In most cases, a live engineer wants to get up and running quickly; load the software, create and name some tracks and press record. Because there isn’t a second take in live production, stability is of paramount importance.
Enter Tracks Live
Waves recently began shipping Tracks Live, a multi-track recording suite targeted directly at live sound capture applications. Waves has made some serious inroads into the live sound market over the past several years. It’s tough to find a live engineer who doesn’t rely on Waves products to polish up their mixes.
I was impressed by Tracks Live before I even opened the software interface. For one, Tracks Live is free. Waves does, however offer a $99 version of Tracks Live that includes phone and e-mail tech support, priority updates and bug fixes, and for a limited time, a free copy of its Multirack software. Another great feature of Tracks Live is that it’s compatible with both Windows and Mac. This certainly required a lot of development effort on Waves’ part, but I’m glad they took the time to make that a reality. What really struck me about the software was just how lightweight it is. I started by installing Tracks Live on my Windows workstation. The download came in at just 33.8 MB and downloaded in a few seconds. It took me under 5 minutes to go onto Waves’ website, download the software, install and open it, create some tracks and start recording.
When I first launched Tracks Live, I was prompted to create a new session, open a saved session or change system settings. From the System Settings dialog box, you can choose your audio interface (ASIO or Core Audio), set the sample rate (up to 192 kHz) and work with the I/O of the chosen interface. A Tracks Live feature I found particularly handy is the ability to automatically create tracks based on the number of inputs on the interface. Of course this is all configurable, but when I chose a two-channel interface, Tracks Live automatically created two tracks and routed the two inputs to those tracks.
There are a plethora of other settings for audio, MIDI and some general session settings. Two other settings I found useful were the “Auto Lock Timer” and the “Auto Save Timer” — both of these settings let the user configure a default time. I set the Auto Lock Timer to 1 minute, and after 1 minute of inactivity on my mouse and keyboard, Tracks Live locked out the interface and a dialog box appeared indicating that the system was locked. There is a small button that will allow you to unlock the interface and resume normal operation. This is really nice feature in a live environment, to ensure that your recording is not accidentally interrupted by any inadvertent user input on the keyboard or mouse.
Easy Sailing
Once the session settings are configured and you click “OK” to confirm, you are into the main Tracks Live interface. The GUI is sleek and stylish and follows many of the visual design cues that I’m used to seeing in current high-end software. A dark gray background color with light gray or white text and a few splashes of color make navigating the interface a breeze. There are four main views in Tracks Live. The default view is the edit window, displaying tracks down the left side of the interface, and the timeline in the middle. This will feel familiar to anyone who has used another DAW or video editor.
In the upper left-hand corner of the interface, three buttons will display the Inspector, the Mixer and the Meterbridge. The Inspector view provides detail about the currently selected track, such as fader position, pan, source input, mute and solo buttons, as well as a quick and easy to use color picker for changing the color of a track. Any number of tracks can be multi-selected in the edit view (using shift+click) for quick modifications to a group of tracks simultaneously.
The Mixer View will also be familiar to anyone who has done audio editing or mixing in the box. It provides the user with a quick glance at all of their tracks in mixer format. While Tracks Live is not intended to be a full-blown DAW, the mixer view does provide a way to do a quick mix, and export a mixdown out to a two-track file.
The Meterbridge provides a full screen set of large meters. This is something I often find lacking in other software. Sometimes I don’t need to see my timeline, I don’t need to see my mixer, I just want a bunch of big meters so I can quickly verify signal on all of my tracks. The Edit View does provide some smaller meters, but the Meterbridge is much more visible at a distance. The rest of the Tracks Live interface provides the obvious controls such as transport, select, zoom, cut, as well as some nifty sliders to zoom both horizontally and vertically on the track’s waveforms.
Finally, one of my favorite parts of Tracks Live was the powerful export functionality, which I honestly didn’t expect in a version 1 piece of software. By choosing File>Export the user is presented with two options: Mixdown or Stem Export. Mixdown allows for a two-track bounce that can be normalized, dithered and sample rate converted in WAV, AIFF and CAF formats. What I found most useful was the Stem Export function, which lets the user export all of the tracks or a selected set of tracks to the formats mentioned above for further editing.
In an already crowded multi-track recording space, Waves has definitely hit a home run with Tracks Live. The easy to use and lightweight nature of the software makes it an ideal choice for tracking in a live production environment. And the price? Well, it’s hard to beat free.
At a Glance
Free and Easy
Waves Tracks Live is a solid, multi-track audio capturing solution for live applications in an easy to use, free software program for both Mac or Windows platforms.
PROS
• Free (or $99 with phone/e-mail support, priority updates)
• Lightweight software package, easy to install
• Excellent export functionality, at up to 192 kHz
CONS
• Limited mixing options
• Few audio processing capabilities
• Minimal editing functions
Waves Tracks Live
Manufacturer: Waves
System Requirements: Core Audio/ASIO-compatible audio interface; Mac OS 10.9.5 or higher, Windows 7 64-bit or Windows 8.1 64-bit.
Price: Free download or $99 with added support and updates.
More Info: www.waves.com/mixers-racks/tracks-live.
