Jneau,
first, nice to have you here, and I want to congratulate you on the purchase of your DL32R. I really like mine.
I have recorded many live concerts with mine but I record using my Mac laptop and Digital Performer instead of a USB drive.
Personally, I find the format (multi-channel wav) that the DL32R uses to record multi-track is a royal pain in the butt.
I do not want to spend hours converting these files to individual mono wav files.
About every seven minutes or so, (1.93 gigabytes) the Mackie creates another multichannel wav file, and of course automatically names it numerically.
Each one of these wav files appear to be stereo, but in fact are really 32 channel files that need to be converted into individual mono files.
So you can imagine,... a two hour concert will have about 17 files. Each one needs to be converted then.....if that isn't time consuming enough,,, all of the first seven minutes of the concert (32 channels) need to be imported into your favorite DAW for mixing, then the second seven minutes of 32 channels need to be stitched up against the end of the first set of 32 channels accurately, down to the sample to eliminate any glitches at the splices.
Repeat and rinse 15 more times for a two hour concert recording. This is why I use a laptop and a separate recording program that eliminates the need for the silly parade of seemingly unending tasks.
Audacity will import your multi-channel wav files, or so I hear, but I don't have any experinece with Audacity.
The 32 channels will be recorded from your preamp,... meaning, only the input gain will effect the recorded tracks, pre-fader, no EQ, no compression, no gating, muting or anything else will effect the sound of the recorded channels. So even if you have excessive processing, or muted channels, it doesn't matter,.... all of your channels will be recorded.
