TEL AVIV — More artists and sound engineers have been getting their feet wet using audio processing tools and applications created by Waves Audio’s Live division, which was formed earlier this year.
The Live Division builds upon Waves Audio’s 15 years of experience in creating hardware and software tools for recording studios, with live sound inroads already established with solutions ranging from MaxxBCL, introduced three years ago.
MaxxBCL was the first Waves product to enhance the sound delivered by line arrays and other PA systems for tours, live venues and places of worship around the world. Waves Live Bundle, released in Nov. 2006, has also been used with Digidesign's Venue consoles. Clair Brothers, for example, owns and uses Waves Live Bundle, SSL 4000 and MaxxBCL.
Top FOH engineers — "Big Mick" Hughes (Metallica, Led Zeppelin), Ken "Pooch" Van Druten (Linkin Park, System of a Down, Guns N' Roses), Phil Strong (Kanye West), Cirque du Soleil's Jonathan Deans and Leon Rothenberg, to name a few — also use Waves processing.
The roster of others using Waves Live Bundle includes Daniel Green (Coldplay), Dave Wooster (Gary Moore, Capitol Sound), Danny Evans (Elbow) and Daniel Duarte-Gonzales (Phil Wickham).
Other notable individuals, such as Greg Looper (system engineer for Van Halen, Tom Petty, John Mellencamp and others), have used Waves' D-Show Enabler for various shows.
Waves' MaxxBCL users include Gerard Albo (mix engineer for Amy Winehouse) and Nigel Paul (FOH engineer for Steve Vai, Avenged Sevenfold, Megadeth, Cheap Trick and others).
Another group of prominent Waves users can be found in Music Mix Mobile. Established by industry veterans John Harris, Jay Vicari, Mitch Maketansky and Joel Singer, Music Mix Mobile is a remote recording company.
Recently, Music Mix Mobile was contracted to record and mix the "In Performance at the White House" series. The segment aired on PBS stations as "Stevie Wonder In Performance at the White House: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize."
"I've been using Waves products since they first came on the market 15 years ago," said Joel Singer, technical engineer for Music Mix Mobile. "We're big fans of the Renaissance, V-Series and API plug-ins. There is nothing better out there for vocals than the V-Series bundle. It just 'warms' up any track and we use it on almost every gig we do."
Alex Hadjigeorgiou, with U.K.-based Wigwam Acoustics Ltd., has noted an emerging Waves trend among live music professionals. "Within my capacity as technical specialist at Wigwam Acoustics, I have been responsible for preparing a large number of Digidesign D-Show systems before they leave for world tours. I have come across Waves Live plug-ins a number of times. They appear to be the high-end plug-in of choice for a number of the top engineers. I know of at least four world stadium tours that are currently utilizing the Live bundle."
Daniel Green treats Waves Live as a key part of the signal path in his position as FOH engineer for Coldplay. In fact, the band's grueling schedule has been made easier with Waves Live.
Wigwam Acoustics prepared consoles for a few recent one-off Coldplay appearances in the U.K. in the midst of the band's world tour.
"We had to replicate the systems for Coldplay's performances at the Brit Awards show and the Warchild charity gig that they did right after,” said Wigwam’s Hadjigeorgiou. “We put the Waves Live Bundle on all of their consoles, and the Waves guys helped us duplicate the plug-in setup so that when the band and crew flew in from Japan, all the systems, along with all plug-ins were already loaded and tested in the console. Due to the nature of the show, a lot of the normal outboard was not included; in fact, the only processing that was a must-have for the gig was the Waves Live Bundle. This speaks volumes as to the importance that engineers now place on such processing."
The Waves Live division continues to introduce new software for live sound, giving live engineers access to the same plug-ins heard on albums, movie soundtracks and video games. From equalizers, channel strips and reverbs, to effects, compressors and limiters, artists are now able to take the same Waves studio settings into a live performance environment.
Over 50 of Waves' plug-ins, for example, are now compatible with Digidesign's D-Show platform using the Waves D-Show Enabler. Waves TDM plug-in bundles, such as the SSL 4000 Collection, V-Series, The API Collection, MaxxVolume, and others are also now available for live sound.
For more information, please visit www.waveslive.com or www.waves.com.
