Metallica 2023-24 World Tour Powered by Waves Plugins

Oct 21, 2023

“Waves plugins define my style of mixing,” says live sound engineer Greg Price (Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, Van Halen), who is now mixing front-of-house for Metallica’s M72 world tour.

Metallica 2023-24 World Tour Powered by Waves Plugins

After decades serving as the live sound engineer of choice for rock legends Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, Van Halen, Rage Against the Machine and Foo Fighters, Mr. Price has recently replaced the now-retired ‘Big’ Mick Hughes, who had been Metallica’s FOH engineer for over 30 years. “My biggest challenge,” Greg says, “is how to bring a new texture, but honor what has come before.”

“Waves plugins have always been my go-to processors,” Greg notes, “and now they enable me to bridge 40 years of Metallica into a single show.“

Greg Price on tour with Metallica: H-Delay in action

Mixing the shows from his Avid VENUE | S6L 32D-192 mixer, Greg uses the plugins as an integrated part of the console setup, via his Waves SoundGrid Rack for VENUE plugin host. “Metallica is only four guys, but we are using all 192 inputs in this show. To get everybody to see it, we have four drum kits [across the stage], each about 30 inputs, and we have multiple redundancy in the rest of the system. It’s like three stadiums systems into one!”

“Mixing Metallica is a rare treat in my career,” the acclaimed live engineer says. “These guys are as dedicated as I’ve ever seen, and when they hand me the keys to the car—boy, that’s really special. I have to step up to meet that expectation.”

Watch More from Greg Price

Blast from the past: In 2018 we caught up with Greg in the midst of an Ozzy Osbourne tour. Watch how Greg replicates Ozzy’s signature studio vocal sound, his ‘Good Cop, Bad Cop’ approach to parallel compression, and how he uses some of his go-to plugins such as SSL G-Master Bus Compressor, C6 Multiband Compressor and more.

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