TracksLive User Guide

What is TracksLive?

Created with and for live sound engineers, TracksLive is the ultimate multitrack recording solution for eMotion LV1. Designed to capture live performances of any kind — from the smallest gig to the largest production — TracksLive supports up to 128 tracks on Mac or Windows.

Setting up big shows with 100+ tracks is easy: toggle between recording and virtual soundcheck while the automatic multichannel re-routing engine adapts to changes on the fly.

Use Online Waves Integration to sync and update your TracksLive session so it mirrors LV1 — including routing, track configuration, channel names, and colors.

• High-track-count recording & playback with a lock-free real-time audio engine (ASIO on Windows, CoreAudio on macOS).
• Purpose-built edit tools — Move, Selection, Scissors, and Mute — for precise clip trimming, splitting, and crossfades.
• Flexible output routing — sum every track to a stereo master, or route each track to its own physical output.
• Waves LV1 integration — discover and connect to Waves eMotion LV1 (SoundGrid) mixers, and import channel names/routing.
• Interchange — bounce to standard audio files and exchange sessions via the open DAWproject format.

Sessions are saved as a folder containing a JSON .tracks file plus supporting audio, backups, and cache data — see Session Anatomy.

Getting Started

Launching TracksLive

When you launch TracksLive without opening a specific session, you'll see the startup screen with three buttons — New Session, Open Session, and Audio Settings — plus a list of your recently opened sessions, most recently opened first. The panel across the middle summarizes your current audio device, channel count, output (operation) mode, and sample rate.

Creating a New Session

1. Click New Session on the startup screen (or press Cmd/Ctrl+N from within the app).
2. Choose a name and a location on disk.
3. TracksLive creates a session folder and opens the timeline.

If you keep the default Untitled Session name and one already exists at that location, TracksLive creates a uniquely named session (with a date-and-time suffix) instead of asking to overwrite — a quick capture can never destroy an earlier one.

Opening a Session

1. Click Open Session, or press Cmd/Ctrl+O.
2. All tracks, clips, and settings load as saved.

File → Close Session (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+W) closes the current session and returns to the start screen, so you can open or create another session without quitting the app.

Missing audio files

If a clip's audio file can't be found where the session last saw it — typically imported audio whose original was later moved or deleted — TracksLive first looks for the session's own copy in the Audio Files folder and relinks to it automatically. Anything still missing is listed in a Missing Audio Files dialog: choose Locate Folder… and select the folder that now holds the files — the session reloads with those clips restored, and the recovered locations are kept when you next save.

Saving

• Cmd/Ctrl+S — save the current session. An asterisk after the session name in the window title means there are unsaved changes; after a save the title shows Saved and the time for two seconds.
• Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+S — save as a new file and keep working in the copy.
• Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+Alt+S — copy the whole session folder (including audio) to a new location.

Session Anatomy

A session is a folder on disk, not a single file:

• SessionName.tracks — the session file (JSON), holding every track, clip, and setting.
• Audio Files/ — recorded and imported audio, with a TracksPeakFiles/ subfolder of cached waveform overviews.
• Session File Backups/ — automatic backups.
• Bounces/ and Rendered Files/ — exported mixes and rendered content.

Sample rates: 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96 kHz. Bit depths: 16-bit, 24-bit (default), 32-bit float, 64-bit float.

The Main Window

The rest of this chapter walks through every region of it, top to bottom.

Menu Bar

Seven menus run across the top:

• File — new/open/close/save sessions, Open Recent, Import Audio, Import/Export DAWproject, Bounce to Disk, Bounce Selection, Quit.
• Edit — undo/redo, select all, cut/copy/paste/delete, Scissors, Mute Selection, Separate at Playhead, Heal Separation, Crossfade, Clear Selection, Undo History.
• Track — Add Track, Delete Selected Track, Remove Unused Tracks.
• Zoom — Zoom In, Zoom Out, Zoom to Entire, Zoom to Selection.
• Options — Page Scroll to Song Position (auto-scroll the view to follow the playhead during playback).
• System Settings — Audio Settings, Online/Offline Waves Integration, Preferences, About.
• Windows — open Markers and the Audio Pool.

Transport & Toolbar

The toolbar strip sits directly under the menu bar.

Status readouts (far left)

Two blocks of live readouts sit at the far left, refreshed about once a second:

Edit tools

One edit tool is always active (highlighted blue). The fifth button, Snap (magnet), is an on/off toggle, highlighted amber when on:

After the tools: the Markers button (diamond icon — opens the Markers / Memory Locations window, same as Cmd/Ctrl+5) and the Show/Hide Mixer button (fader icon — opens the mixer dock).

Loop readout (In · Out · Len)

This readout describes the loop region — the range used for looped playback — in the current timeline format. It deliberately tracks the loop region only, not clip or time selections.

The values update live while you drag the loop or its edges. When you drag an audio file in from Explorer or the Audio Pool, the readout instead previews where the file will land and how long it is. With no loop region defined (a fresh session), all three fields show --:--.

Transport controls (right)

Waves, Settings & Folder shortcuts

Meter Bridge

The meter bridge shows a numbered column for each physical input currently switched On in Audio Settings (here, a 64-channel interface with none switched off). Each column is a live level meter with a brief peak-hold, letting you confirm signal is arriving on every input before and during recording — independent of which tracks those inputs are assigned to. Switching inputs off drops their columns from the bridge rather than showing them as dead strips.

Meter bridge display toggles

Two diamond toggles on the right edge of the bar control how the meters are laid out. Click a diamond to switch it; a filled diamond means that mode is active.

Track-Size, Global Controls & Timeline

• Track-size selector (the "Micro" dropdown) — sets the height of all tracks at once, from Micro through Extreme, or Fit to Window.
• Global track controls — the M / S / speaker / R row toggles Mute, Solo, Input Monitoring, and Record Arm across all tracks at once.
• Markers lane — the thin strip labelled "Markers" holds your memory-location markers along the timeline.
• Timeline ruler — shows positions in the current format. Drag horizontally on the ruler to move the playhead, drag vertically to zoom, and the red vertical line is the playhead itself.

Zoom Controls

Track Header

• Coloured strip + number — the track's colour band and its auto-assigned physical input channel (not a row/position number). In Multi Out mode this same channel also carries the track's output — input and output are locked together. Green with a number means the track is routed; red with no number means it has no routed assignment (e.g. its routing ran past the available hardware inputs).
• Track name — double-click to rename.
• M — Mute (turns red when muted).
• S — Solo (turns yellow; silences all non-soloed tracks).
• Speaker — Input Monitor / Listen (turns green; passes the track's live input through so you can hear it). Audio tracks only.
• R — Record Arm (readies the track to record from its assigned input).
• Ring — the track's channel format: a single ring means mono, two interlocked rings mean stereo. Click it to change format.

Recording

Inputs are assigned automatically by track order — the first track gets input 1, the next input 2, and so on. Reorder tracks if you need a different track-to-input mapping.

1. Arm the tracks — click R on each track header, or select tracks and press Alt+R to arm all selected tracks that have an input. The global R arms every track at once.
2. Monitor input (optional) — click the speaker button to hear the live input, or press Alt+M for all selected tracks with an input.
3. Record — press the Record button or Cmd/Ctrl+R.

Record Modes: Normal vs. Auto-Arm

Right-click the Record button to choose between two modes:

• Normal Recording (default) — pressing Record only records the tracks you've already armed with R.
• Auto Arm Recording — pressing Record automatically arms every track that has a valid input assigned, then starts recording — you don't need to arm tracks by hand first.

The small lightning-bolt badge on the Record button is only visible when Auto Arm Recording is the active mode, so you have a persistent visual reminder of which mode you're in before you hit Record. This setting is remembered between sessions.

Working with Tracks

Creating Tracks

Press Cmd/Ctrl+T or use Track → Add Track… to open the New Track dialog, where you set the channel format (mono or stereo) and how many tracks to create at once.

Managing Tracks

• Rename — double-click the track name. Tab commits it and jumps straight to the next track's name (Shift+Tab for the previous one), so a whole session can be renamed without reaching for the mouse.
• Delete — select the track and press Cmd/Ctrl+Backspace, or use Track → Delete Selected Track.
• Remove Unused Tracks — Track → Remove Unused Tracks deletes, in one undoable step, every audio track that has no connected input (its IO column is red) and holds no audio regions. Aux tracks and any track with audio are kept.
• Reorder — drag a track up or down by any empty part of its header (the name label, or the blank space around the controls). The buttons and the bottom resize handle keep their own gestures. A blue line shows where the track will land, and the list scrolls on its own while you hold the drag near the top or bottom edge. Select several tracks first (Shift-click for a range, Cmd/Ctrl-click to add individual ones) to move them as a block. Reordering is locked while a take is recording, and while an Online Waves Integration connection is live. You can also move the selected track with Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+↑ / ↓.
• Resize height — use the track-size selector (all tracks), or drag a header's bottom edge.
• Select — click for one track, Shift+click for a range, Cmd/Ctrl+click to toggle.

Track Colour

Click the colour well on the right edge of a track header to open the colour picker.

Pick any of the 32 swatches to tint that track's header and body, or choose No Colour to reset it. Track colour is purely visual — useful for grouping related tracks (e.g. all drums, all vocals) at a glance.

Working with Clips

Importing Audio

Drag audio files from Explorer/Finder onto a track — a preview shows where the clip will land — or use File → Import Audio (or the + Audio toolbar button) to import onto the selected track. Supported formats include WAV, AIFF, FLAC, and MP3.

Files at another sample rate. A file whose sample rate differs from the session's is not imported as is — it would play at the wrong speed. TracksLive asks first in a standard system dialog, showing the file's rate and the session's: Convert writes a copy at the session rate into the session's Audio Files folder (the original is untouched), Skip File leaves that file out, and Cancel Import stops the whole import. Tick Don't ask again for this session to convert every further file without the question; the choice is saved with the session, and the same checkbox lives in Preferences → Confirmations, where re-ticking it brings the prompt back. Each conversion runs behind its own progress dialog whose Cancel skips just that file.

Session and audio device at different rates. A session is always at one sample rate, and the audio device is asked for it when the session opens. If the device cannot run at that rate (a SoundGrid network locked to 48 kHz, for instance), or if the device's rate is changed while the session is open, TracksLive shows Sample Rate Changed. Convert All converts every audio file in the session to the device's rate (copies in the session's Audio Files folder; the originals are untouched) and rescales regions, markers, fades, automation and the playhead so nothing moves in time; the session is then at the new rate and marked as changed. This cannot be undone, and the undo history is cleared. While opening, the alternative is Cancel Load; with a session already open it is Keep Session Rate, which asks the device for the session's rate again.

Sample Rate Mismatch on open. If one or more of a session's own audio files turn out to be at a different rate than the session is loading at, TracksLive shows Sample Rate Mismatch before touching them: how many files, at which rate(s), and roughly how much data. A mismatched file is always converted in full before it can play, which is slow and memory-heavy for a large file, so this is shown before that work starts rather than after. Continue proceeds with the conversion; Cancel Load stops and returns to the launcher so the audio device's rate can be checked first.

The Audio Pool

The Audio Pool lists every audio file that belongs to the session. Open it with Windows → Audio Pool… or Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+P.

The header bar summarizes the whole pool: total Files, combined Duration, and total Disk space used — an Unused count appears when any file has no clip references, and a Missing count if any file can't be found on disk. The search box filters the list as you type; the Info button shows or hides the right-hand panel, which displays the selected file's details (path, duration, sample rate, bit depth, channels) and exactly which track and clip uses it, with each clip's position.

Each row shows a file's duration, sample rate, format, size, detected stem type, and how many clips reference it (#). Click a column header to sort. Select several files at once with Shift-click (range) or Cmd/Ctrl-click (individual) — the file actions below apply to the whole selection.

Selecting a file also selects its regions in the session view and scrolls the earliest one into view, so you can see where a file is used without leaving the Pool. The same link works the other way: right-click a region on a track and choose Select in Pool to open the Audio Pool with that file highlighted, or Reveal File to open the audio file in Explorer/Finder, exactly like the Audio Pool button.

Moving, Resizing, and Splitting

• Select — click a clip to select it. Hold Ctrl (Cmd on macOS) or Shift and click to build a selection one clip at a time; clicking a clip again while holding either key removes it and leaves the rest of the selection alone. This works with the Move tool and the Selection tool.
• Move — with the Move tool (1), drag horizontally to change timing (respecting the edit mode) or vertically to another same-format track. Hold Cmd/Ctrl while dragging to lock timing and only move between tracks.
• Resize — drag either edge to trim; you can't trim beyond the available audio.
• Split — position the playhead and press Cmd/Ctrl+E (Separate at Playhead), or switch to the Scissors tool (3) and click a clip to split it there.
• Rejoin — Alt+H (Heal Separation) rejoins clips split from the same source that are still adjacent.
• Crossfade — select a clip and press X (Edit → Crossfade) to crossfade it with every clip it partly overlaps — see Fades and Crossfades.
• Duplicate — Alt+drag a clip to copy it. If several clips are selected, Alt+dragging any one of them copies them all in a single undo step. Drag along the same track to place the copies freely in time. Drag onto other tracks and the selection keeps its shape: the topmost selected track lands on the track you drop on, the ones below it follow in order, and every copy keeps its exact time — the same rule as moving clips between tracks. Drop near the bottom of the arrangement and the group slides up so it all fits. A copy that a track cannot take (a mono/stereo mismatch) is skipped rather than cancelling the rest, and a preview appears only where a copy will actually land. Cmd/Ctrl+D duplicates the selection in place.
• Delete — select and press Delete.
• Bounce — Cmd/Ctrl+B renders the selection to a single new clip in place — see Bounce Selection.

Clip Gain

Select one or more clips and press Cmd/Ctrl+G to open the Clip Gain dialog. Set gain in Absolute, Relative (offsets each clip from its current gain), or Normalize (targets the peak of the portion of audio the clip actually uses, not the whole source file) mode, with coarse (±1 dB) and fine (±0.1 dB) buttons, a reverse-polarity option, and a live waveform preview. Multi-clip selections adjust together.

Fades and Crossfades

Every clip has fade-in and fade-out handles — green triangles at the start, red at the end. Drag a handle to set fade length; right-click it to choose a curve type and a preset duration:

Overlapping clips do not fade automatically: the clip on top plays, and both clips can be grabbed and moved. A shorter clip hidden entirely under a longer one is drawn as a dashed ghost; to bring it back on top, right-click the longer clip and choose Send Backward (greyed out when the clip overlaps nothing). To crossfade two clips, select one and press X (Edit › Crossfade): the earlier clip fades out and the later one fades in across the whole overlap, for every clip the selection partly overlaps. To edit a crossfade, drag it: drag the center to move the edit point, or drag an edge handle to resize. Shift+drag resizes symmetrically. A crossfade is never longer than the shorter of the two clips, so dragging it wider stops there.

Mixing

Open the mixing console with the Show/Hide Mixer toolbar button. Each track gets a channel strip, with the MASTER strip pinned on the right.

Channel Strip

Clicking a strip's body, nameplate, fader, or pan knob selects that track — and selection is shared with the timeline, so selecting in either window highlights both. Shift and Cmd/Ctrl extend the selection exactly as they do on a track header. Clicking mute, solo, or a plugin slot operates that control without changing the selection. When several tracks are selected, moving one fader moves them together while preserving their relative levels, as a single undo step.

From top to bottom, each strip has:

Master Strip

The MASTER strip carries the final stereo output. It has its own fader and level readout — which supports the same double-click-to-type entry as a track strip — and an M (mute) button, but no solo. Master mute is shared with the timeline's Master Track button, so muting in either place lights both. Two toggles sit at the top, where a pan knob would be on a normal strip:

• Diamond — toggles a narrow mixer view so more channels fit on screen at once.
• Speaker — "Audition all tracks": toggles input monitoring on every audio track at once. It lights green while any track is monitoring. Auditioned inputs follow the output mode: in Stereo Out they sum to the master bus, and in Multi Out each track's input is heard on that track's own output.

Whether tracks sum to the master or route to individual physical outputs is set by the Stereo Out / Multi Out toggle on the toolbar.

Markers

Markers (memory locations) flag positions on the timeline. Open the Markers window from the toolbar's marker button, the Windows → Markers menu, or Cmd/Ctrl+5.

• Add — press Cmd/Ctrl+Return at the playhead, or plain M (on its own, with no modifier), or use the + Add button in the window.
• Recall by number — type . then the marker number then . again.
• Step through — ; jumps to the previous marker, ' to the next.
• Edit or delete on the timeline — right-click a marker's diamond for Edit… (name, comment, and colour) and Delete Marker; double-click its label to rename it in place.

The Markers Window

Each row is one marker. The columns:

Everything is edited directly in the table: double-click a row to jump the playhead to that marker (the Name, Position, and Comment cells open their editors instead of jumping, and the Color cell opens the palette). Select several markers at once with Shift-click (range) or Cmd/Ctrl-click (individual). The + Add button adds a marker at the current position; Delete removes everything selected.

Exporting & Interchange

Bounce to Disk

Use File → Bounce to Disk… to render the session offline to 24-bit WAV at the session sample rate. Bounce is unavailable while a recording is in progress.

The dialog:

Bounce Selection

Press Cmd/Ctrl+B (or use File → Bounce Selection) to render the current selection to a new clip in place — TracksLive's consolidate. Make a time-range selection with the Selection tool, or select clips with the Move tool (each track uses the span of its own selected clips), then bounce:

• Each affected track's clips in the range — with their clip gain, polarity, fades, and crossfades — are rendered offline exactly as they play back.
• The result is written automatically as a 24-bit WAV to the session's Bounces folder, named after the track and range (e.g. Kick_0.30-2.15.wav) — no dialog.
• The rendered clip replaces the selected range on its track, so a patchwork of small clips, splits, and fades becomes one contiguous clip.
• A single Cmd/Ctrl+Z undoes the whole bounce and restores the original clips.
• Tracks whose part of the selection contains no audio are left untouched.

DAWproject Import/Export

Move sessions to and from other DAWs with the open DAWproject format via File → Import DAWproject… and File → Export DAWproject….

Waves Integration

From the System Settings menu:

• Online Waves Integration… — discover and connect to Waves eMotion LV1 (SoundGrid) mixers on your local network.
• Offline Waves Integration… — create tracks from a Waves LV1 session's input channel names, matching the console's layout without a live connection.

Online Waves Integration

Offline Waves Integration

1. Click Browse… and pick a Waves session file (.dat, .emo, .mrdb, or .sprk — LV1 or SuperRack): it loads immediately. You can also drag the file from Explorer/Finder straight onto the window, or paste a path into the field and press Return.
2. The channel list fills in, and the status line reports how many channels were found and how many are currently selected.
3. Check or uncheck channels — click a row to toggle it, Shift+click to apply the last-clicked row's state to every row in between (range check/uncheck), and use the header checkbox to check or uncheck everything at once.
4. Click Sync Offline to build a track for each checked channel, named after its LV1 channel. The same Sync Session Structure prompt as in Online Waves Integration comes first — Sync Now, Save As… (keep the current session under a new name before syncing), or Cancel — and the same automatic backup is written before anything is replaced. This sync is also blocked while recording is active.

System Settings

The System Settings menu opens two separate windows: Audio Settings… (device, sample rate, buffer size, and routing — with a Session tab alongside it for session-level file/format options) and Preferences… (Cmd/Ctrl+, — general behavior, appearance, and recording options, one page per tab, cycled with Tab / Shift+Tab). The same menu also holds the two Waves Integration entries and About, which shows the exact version you are running: click the version line to highlight it and press Cmd/Ctrl+C to paste it into a bug report.

Audio Settings

OK applies your changes; Cancel — or pressing Esc — discards them and restores the device settings you arrived with.

Session

Preferences

Open with System Settings → Preferences… or Cmd/Ctrl+,. Three pages are available in the sidebar — General, Themes, and Recording — cycled with Tab / Shift+Tab while the window is focused.

General

Themes

Recording

Troubleshooting & Tips

• No audio playing — check the track's mute/solo state, and confirm your device in System Settings → Audio Settings.
• Nothing records — confirm the track has an input assigned and is armed (R lit), and that the Record button was engaged.
• Performance issues — increase the audio buffer size in Audio Settings.
• The interface is unresponsive — the LOCK may be on; press Esc to unlock.

Keyboard Shortcuts

These are the shortcuts tied to menu commands and on-screen controls in this edition, verified against the application's command definitions. Both platforms are listed side by side — read across your own column.

Only three keys ever differ: Windows Ctrl is macOS Cmd (⌘), Windows Alt is macOS Option (⌥), and the key Windows calls Backspace is labelled Delete on a Mac keyboard. Everything else — letters, digits, Space, Esc, arrows, punctuation — is identical.

Transport & Tools

File

Edit & Clips

Tracks

Zoom & Navigation

Markers

Windows & Settings

Esc does whatever fits what has focus: it closes the focused tool window, clears a selection in the timeline, cancels an edit in progress, and unlocks the interface when LOCK is on.

Getting Help

Choose System Settings → About… for version information and links to Waves' legal notices and support contact.