LV1 – User-Assignable Bus Types

Feature Requests
1

Hi Waves,

I would like to suggest a relatively simple extension to the LV1 bus architecture.

Currently, the 32/64-channel versions provide:

  • 8 Groups

  • 8 FX Auxes

  • 16 Monitor Auxes

I wonder if these 32 bus resources could be made user-assignable by bus type, while retaining the current configuration as the factory default.

For example:

  • Bus 1–8 = Groups

  • Bus 9–16 = FX Auxes

  • Bus 17–32 = Monitor Auxes

would remain the default.

But an individual bus could then be changed from:

Group → FX Aux

or:

Monitor Aux → Group

depending on what the user needs.

I don’t think the underlying indexed routing architecture necessarily needs to change. If maintaining the existing routing rules makes implementation easier, that would be perfectly fine. The important part would simply be allowing the user to reassign the role of an existing bus.

Why?

LV1 is already surprisingly flexible when you start thinking of Groups, FX Auxes and Monitor Auxes as different routing primitives rather than fixed-purpose buses.

For example, an advanced user can build architectures where:

  • a Group is used as a processing container,

  • a Monitor Aux is used as an FX return,

  • an FX Aux is used as a summing bus,

  • FX Auxes are chained,

  • and Monitor Auxes are used as macro/summing stages.

The limitation is not necessarily the underlying routing capability — it is that the available bus capabilities are tied to fixed bus types and quantities.

A user-assignable bus type would make LV1 considerably more powerful without changing the experience for the majority of users.

A practical example

I currently have a vocal architecture where I want:

Lead → parallel ADT/KMT processing → Lead Sum → Verb/Slap sends → Vox Bus → Main

One possible LV1 implementation is to use an FX Aux as the Lead Sum, because that gives me the downstream routing capabilities I need.

With user-assignable bus types, this could simply be an ordinary bus whose role I define as required.

The same concept could be useful for nested/advanced bus architectures, parallel processing, additional summing stages, FX grouping, macro buses, etc.

Advanced-user feature

I would not expect this to be necessary for the average LV1 user.

It could simply be an option available on the bus itself, with appropriate warnings when changing its type.

Something as simple as:

Bus Type: Group / FX Aux / Monitor Aux

would potentially open up a lot of advanced routing possibilities.

The existing 8+8+16 architecture could remain the default, so normal LV1 operation would be completely unchanged.

For advanced users, however, this would turn the existing 32 bus resources into a much more flexible routing toolkit.

One additional thought

There may even be a natural hardware/DSP scaling opportunity here.

More complex user-designed routing architectures could have higher DSP requirements, and Waves could recommend or offer higher-capacity SoundGrid hardware for those configurations.

In other words:

More routing freedom → more complex systems → more DSP → natural hardware upgrade path.

I think this could be a relatively small software-facing change with a disproportionately large benefit for advanced LV1 users.

Thanks for considering it.

2

in general, yes. If you’re doing a FOH-Show, more groups can be handy.

But the workaround for now: you can “misuse” every Aux as a Group. Also, with the most recent LV1 version you got 8 additional busses, that can be either Aux (then in total 24 Aux) or Group (then in total 16 Groups) or any combination, so partially it is already there …

Best Peter

3

Thanks for reply

I know, this is how I currently workaround the structural limitations. However, as I wish some fx to terminate at a sub group, from which I can tap time FX, and some to terminate at a macro bus, entire routing gets kinda messy. It works for me, altough adding a bunch of unnecessary complexity. Also. it makes it more difficult to find a suitable stand-in, as the person needs to be able to dissect a … well, messy routing

4

… I get that.

For me, I (but only with LV1) started to use the last 3 Auxes as main Drums, all Band and Vocals Group, thus leaving the 8 “true” groups free for f.e. Kick, SN, TOMS groups (if I’m doing some Rock or Metal, with Pop I normally don’t need this), this groups are also PreFX.
So at all Inputs and “near to Input groups” (if you know what I mean) are pre FX, all other “groups” are the last Auxes, which keeps the session somewhat clean, but I understand your point.

On the other hand - most “real” digital mixers even don’t give you the opportunity to route a group into another group, so with this in mind, LV1 is still pretty advanced in this aspect…

Regards Peter

1 Like
5

If you want to get really fancy with what’s already there, you can put a sidechainable plugin on a regular channel and solo the sidechain (e.g. InPhase is good for this, since you can also flip polarity and correct for latency, but plenty of others work). This can give you post-fader parallel processing without taking up one of the bus channels. Seems like the only downside is the automatic latency compensation doesn’t work.

I haven’t tried it but you can probably also use an External Insert to copy the signal to another input channel. Might need to route through an AES loopback (connect your output to your input).

And of course there are a lot of link channels, so if you just want grouped fader control rather than grouped processing you can use those (admittedly, every time I do this I end up getting rid of it, but in some cases it works great - I use my LR/M/C all linked this way). Custom mixer layouts make this pretty transparent.

My big request for advanced routing though is to let me connect the fader to any parameter of any inserted plugin, which I’d mainly use for a mid-rack fader so that I don’t need to use an entire group/aux just to get a mix of pre-fader and post-fader processing.

Again, depends on your needs, so I’m not saying you don’t need more groups, but I am saying that I needed more groups and came up with some inventive ways to get around it that have basically all resulted in lower latency and an easier time mixing. So it’s certainly offputting to encounter the limitations (and I was mad for ages until I found the pre-FX/post-FX option on groups), but it likely is for the best.

(One other anecdote - my DAW lets me do very arbitrary routing, including creating deliberate feedback loops, and the usual outcome is insane latency and not better mixes :laughing: )