I think its fair to say this is a feature everyone has been waiting for. It puts Avid on basically the same level as Premiere Pro for this functionality.
In fact the implementation for group by waveform is pretty much identical to PP so it shares the same weaknesses and strengths. All my test were done on Macbook Pro Retina with thunderbolt storage so throughput is not a bottleneck.
Lets start with the positives. It works and it works well. You highlight the source clips in a bin that you want to group, right click and choose group and then choose the waveform button.
That's all the options you get - you don't get to pick the audio channel like you do in PP. Once you do that you must wait for the analysis. Here's the first negative. It takes over as a foreground process and you lose access to the rest of the application and it takes a while - 3 x 49 minute clips too 4 minutes and 26 seconds to analyse and group (2 x XDCAM EX and 1 x XAVC-L). I can live with that. Its no longer than PP. It also may be that some ofthe waveforms weren't drawn fo those three clips as subsequent test with just XDCAM EX clips were quicker.
Next negative - if the clips in question don't already have waveforms drawn (eg AVCHD footage) that time multiplies out. Significantly. It took 11 mins and 53 seconds to prepare a 7 mins 42 sec AVCHD file then a further 21 seconds to analyse 2 x XDCAM EX clips of similar length.
So it would be quicker to transcode these clips first. Not the end of the world as the majority of multicam is transcoded first anyway. Doesn't fit my particular workflow but that's the luck of the draw.
What I do see is a missed opportunity. I wish Avid had set the bar rather than simply hoisting it to the same height. If they'd offered to take a sequence of clips and create a grouped multicam sequence based on audio waveforms, all as a background process that would have set them apart from every other NLE. As that is the way most AE's work it isn't exactly rocket science. if they'd offered options to choose audio tracks and limit waveform analysis to the first two minutes of a clip that would have sped the process up.
So a great new feature that could have been implemented better, but still worth the price of admission.