Run with the Big Dogs

If I were a professional sound man, I would definitely have Multirack for the sound quality, vertility, ease of set up, cost, convenience, etc etc. But I'm just a closet guitar player/singer....doomed to have a few effects and below average sound quality......
Multirack is a virtual rack (well actually it is up to 64 racks). I've had Multirack for just a week now, so I am certainly no expert; but it has completely revolutionized my sound system and I wanted to share that with others. Here are the highlights:

1. Multirack is a standalone program and has nothing to do with
recording software. It is strictly for live performing....and It sounds great whether or not there is a live audience.
2. . Multirack installed fairly easy (although there are a few different steps with ILOK/Waves), and had no glitches. I'm using Vista 64 on a quad core processor, and a Tascam US-1641 interface. Vista 64 is not officially supported, although Windows 7 is.
3. It uses only Waves plugins. The plugins can also be used in your recording software, so you can get double duty from the effects software. (I purchased the Gold bundle; 26 high qualiity effects including EQ's, compressors, reverbs, delays, doubler, de-esser, enhancers, etc.)
4. Unlike a physical rack where the effects are stacked vertically, in Multirack the effects for each channel run in a horizontal row, with up to 8 effects available for each row. Each additional channel uses
another row. Any effect can be used any number of times in different channels. Effects can be added or deleted from a row with a few clicks, or the row rearranged by dragging and dropping. Each effect in each row can be individually adjusted by double clicking on that effect: the effect interface will then pop on the screen. If you have used the Waves plugins, you already know how nice the interfaces are. The amount of control the user has and the ease of use, I think will be an eye-opener to people used to using physical racks.
5. GTR3, Waves guitar effects package, works great in Multirack, and has really brought my guitars to life. The package is loaded with first class amps, speakers, and stomp boxes.
6. The number of channels you can set up is limited to the number of outputs on your audio interface. While the professional sound man will be using Multirack patched into a large mixing board, the hobbyist can do fine plugging mics and instruments directly into the audio interface (use the interface and/or Multirack to handle input levels) and using a mini-mixing board to manage the output going to the power amp.
7. Multirack has many other features. You can create and save different Sessions: a session is a specific layout of channels and effects. And you can create and save different snapshots within a session: a snapshot is the sum total of all the individual effects settings. And there are controls to compensate for latency, although I have not found latency to be an issue.
8. The Waves support people have been prompt and helpful with their responses. Also, if you have an iLOK dongle, you can demo Multirack for 7 days; check the Waves website.
9. Although Multirack seems to be aimed at professional sound
people, I can strongly recommend it for others, including hobbyist singer/ instrumentalists. It has an intuitive layout, and is very easy to
use. While the Waves products are not low-budget items, for a relatively modest cost, you can have a hugely versatile, high end signal processing chain, and professional level sound quality.