Behringer WING · Waves eMotion LV1

WING head amps, on LV1's channel strip.

Headlink is an I/O module that eMotion LV1 loads like a Waves stagebox. It puts your WING's preamp gain and 48V on LV1's own strip and keeps both ends in step — turn either one, the other follows. Control only: audio stays on your SoundGrid card, and if Headlink stops, LV1 and the mix keep running.

Tell me when it ships What it needs

channels

2-way

LV1 and the desk

in the audio path

Two wires. Headlink is only ever on the thin one. If the desk stops answering, the strip's gain and 48V go inert and the tray mark goes red — audio never passed through Headlink in the first place.

eMotion LV1's channel strip showing a Preamp section with Gain at 15.0, a 48V button, polarity and Trim on two adjacent channels. — The controls — LV1's channel strip

eMotion LV1's System Inventory, Rack A: slot one holds Wing-1, shown ON with the console pictured, running DIG at 48 kHz. The slot beside it is empty. — The device — LV1's System Inventory

Both of these are eMotion LV1. The WING is listed in LV1's own inventory as an I/O device, and its preamps appear on LV1's own strip. Headlink is what makes them appear.

The difference

An overlay makes you go and find the channel.

Both approaches end up changing the same preamp. Only one of them fits what you are doing during a soundcheck.

Overlay app

Map every channel to a preamp, by hand, before you start
Notice a channel needs gain
Bring the overlay window forward
Find that channel in the overlay
Adjust it there
Go back to the mixer

Six steps, and a mapping table to maintain.

Headlink

Turn the gain knob on the strip

One. The mapping is read from the desk.

What it does

It asks the console, instead of asking you.

The card cannot tell LV1 which preamp feeds which input, so most tools make that your problem. Headlink reads it from the WING directly — and keeps reading it.

Controls on the strip: Gain and 48V appear on LV1's own channel strip, drawn by LV1. Nothing floats over the mixer and nothing has to be brought forward.; LV1 channel strip · gain · 48V
Finds the desk itself: Broadcasts for the console on every network it can see, and takes its address, model and firmware from the reply. No IP to type.; autodiscovery · no address to enter
Follows repatching: Reads which physical input feeds each card channel and re-reads it when you change the routing mid-session. The strip follows.; no restart · read from the desk
Every input its own range: A local XLR and an AES50 stagebox have different ranges and different detents. Both are read from the console, per channel.; −2.5…45.0 / 2.50 dB −3.0…45.5 / 0.50 dB
Works both ways: Turn it on the strip and the preamp moves. Turn it on the desk and the strip follows, quantised to whatever the console actually applied.; LV1 → desk · desk → LV1
Names, not numbers: Shows what the console calls each input — Kick, Amb L, Lead Vox — read off the desk, not typed in again. Unnamed inputs keep their connector label.; read from the desk · never renumbered
Knows a stereo pair: A linked pair shares one head amp, so both legs move together. Headlink marks which leg owns it — so two channels showing one figure reads as correct, not broken.; L / R marked · follows the desk instantly
Uninstall, and failure: The stock Waves module is kept beside ours and put back with one click. If the desk stops answering, Headlink says so instead of showing a stale number.; one-click uninstall · fails to pass-through

The Headlink dashboard: 64 channels, each showing the console's own name for the input, its connector and gain. A coloured stripe marks which box the preamp is in — local XLR, AES50 A, B or C, StageConnect. Stereo pairs are marked L and R and mid/side pairs M/S, phantom power and desk-side mutes are badged, input meters run along the bottom of each tile, and two channels that clipped this session are outlined in red.

The question LV1 cannot answer: which preamp is actually behind this input. Read from the console — the desk's own name for every input, which leg of a stereo pair owns the head amp, and the range that source actually has.

When it goes wrong

The question worth asking about anything that runs during a show is what it does on its worst night.

It fails toward the stock LV1, not toward silence. Here is all of it.

The desk stops answering

The tray mark goes red and the strip's gain and 48V go inert — they never show a stale number. Audio is unaffected: Headlink is control only, on the network to the desk. The SoundGrid card carries the audio and never knew Headlink was there. When the desk comes back, nothing is replayed that was not observed first.

control only · nothing replayed unseen

Waves ships a new LV1

Headlink checks the LV1 build before it touches anything. On a build it has not been verified against it stays out of the way, and LV1 starts with the stock Waves module exactly as before. You lose WING preamps on the strip — not the show.

verified per build · unknown builds pass through

You want it gone

One click. The stock Waves module was never overwritten — it sits beside Headlink's under its own name and is copied straight back. A failed install puts it back by itself, so LV1 is safe to start either way.

one click · the original is never overwritten

Phantom power

48V is only ever sent to the channel that asked for it. Linking a stereo pair moves gain to the shared head amp — it never moves phantom, because each XLR has its own switch. Inputs on the protect list in your config cannot be switched on from LV1 at all. Put your ribbons there at load-in.

never redirected · per-input protect list

Gain structure

See the preamp clip, not just hear it.

LV1's channel strip has nowhere to put an input meter — there is no metering in the interface a device gets to fill in. So the level you are setting the gain against is the one number you cannot see.

At the physical input

At the input itself, not after the mix. That is the difference between “this channel is loud” and “this preamp is running out of room” — and nothing downstream can undo a clipped converter.

The peak is held

Meter frames arrive about twenty times a second and a window repaints slower than that. A transient short enough to fall between two repaints is exactly the one that clips, so the peak is caught and held.

Clip latches

A flag stays up after the fact, so you can look up at the end of a song and see which inputs were in trouble — instead of needing to have been watching that channel at the moment it happened.

At a glance

It tells you when it can't help.

The tray mark carries one job: whether Headlink is actually working right now. Four shapes as well as four colours — either one is enough on its own, so the state survives a glance, a small tray icon and colour-blindness alike.

Searching

Looking for the desk

Linked

Gain and 48V are live

Attention

Running, without preamp control

Link lost

The desk stopped answering

Item	Detail
Console	tested on WING Rack — WING and WING Compact speak the same protocol
Host	Waves eMotion LV1 17.3 · 16.5 (Windows 10 / 11)
Audio path	none — control only; audio stays on the SoundGrid card
Connection	WSG card + network to the desk — autodiscovered
Controls	Gain, 48V — both directions
Channels	64
Sources	Local XLR, AES50 A/B/C, StageConnect
On the desk	nothing installed — the desk's own network protocol
New LV1 builds	each is verified before Headlink enables itself; on an unknown build LV1 starts with the stock Waves module
Uninstall	one click; the stock Waves module is kept beside it

Coming soon

In final testing, on real rigs.

Headlink is running today on a WING Rack driving eMotion LV1 through a WSG card — all 64 channels, both directions. Pricing and a download will be posted here once it ships.

Behringer WING only, for now — X32 and M32 are the next consoles on the list. Built by Flavius Emil at Orion Technologies in Romania, on his own WING Rack and eMotion LV1 rig.

Questions, or want a look before it ships? — @flaviusemil

Headlink is an independent product. It is not made by, endorsed by, or affiliated with Waves Audio or Music Tribe. WING and eMotion LV1 are the trademarks of their respective owners.