For Behringer WING + Waves eMotion LV1

Your WING's gain and 48V, right on the LV1 strip.

Headlink puts the WING's preamp controls on eMotion LV1's own channel strip — where your hand already is. Turn it in LV1 and the desk follows. Turn it on the desk and LV1 follows. It never carries your audio, so nothing about your sound changes.

Tell me when it ships What you need

eMotion LV1's own channel strip: a Preamp section on six WING inputs, each with Gain, a 48V button, polarity and Trim. Two of them are a stereo pair fed by EX 17 and EX 18 and share one gain control. — LV1's own channel strip. That preamp section is a WING channel — gain and 48V, live, both ways.

The difference

No more walking to the desk for gain.

You're mixing in LV1. A vocal comes in hot. Today that's a walk — or a tablet, an unlock, a search. With Headlink it's the knob already in front of you.

Without Headlink

Notice a channel needs gain
Put down what you are doing
Walk to the desk — or pick up the tablet and unlock it
Find that channel over there
Set it, walk back, find your place in LV1 again

Five steps, mid-soundcheck.

Headlink

Turn the gain knob on the strip

One. And the desk follows.

Some tools float a separate window over LV1 and make you map every channel by hand first. Headlink does not — LV1 draws the controls itself, and the mapping is read from the desk.

On the rig

Mix on the strip. Check the patch when you need it.

Day to day you never open Headlink — you turn the gain where it already is. The window is for the question LV1 cannot answer: which preamp is actually behind this input.

eMotion LV1 running with the Headlink dashboard open over it. LV1's channel strip shows preamp gain and 48V on the left; the dashboard behind lists all 64 inputs with their names, gains and meters, read from the same desk.

A working session — LV1 behind, Headlink over it. Both showing the same desk, at the same moment.

What it does

It already knows your desk.

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.

How it is wired

Two wires. Headlink is only ever on the thin one.

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 System Inventory, Rack A: slot one holds Wing-1, shown ON with the console pictured, running DIG at 48 kHz.

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.

During a show

Safe to run on a show night.

Here is what Headlink does when things go wrong — because on a show, something always does.

The desk stops answering

The tray mark goes red and the strip's gain and 48V go inert — they never show a stale number. Your audio is untouched — it never went through Headlink. 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, before you 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

From the maker

Made by one person who mixes on this rig.

I'm Flavius Emil. I run Orion Technologies from Romania, and I built Headlink because I was tired of walking to my own WING Rack every time a channel needed gain. It runs on my rig today — all 64 channels, both directions.

If you mix on LV1 and a WING, I'd like to hear from you: what your rig looks like, and what would make this useful. I answer everything myself.

Flavius Emil · Orion Technologies, Romania

Coming soon

Running on my rig today. Shipping soon.

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.

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.