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PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Clyne Media, Inc.
Tel: (615) 662-1616

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Waves Audio LV1 Classic Powers the Savannah Music Festival Across 13 Venues and 61 Artists

— Lead Festival Engineer Brenden Robertson standardizes FOH on five LV1 Classics, while house and touring engineers alike — from a 40-year veteran mixing Lucius to a first-timer running 11 straight shows — call it a game-changer in the field —

Knoxville, TN, May 27, 2026 — For the 2026 edition of the Savannah Music Festival (SMF), Lead Festival Engineer Brenden Robertson made a calculated bet: standardize the entire technical footprint of one of the South's most storied festivals on a single console platform. Five Waves Audio LV1 Classics now cover at least six key mix positions across SMF's primary high-production venues — the Lucas Theatre, the Trustees Theater, and Kehoe Iron Works — with a sixth floating unit deployed as a backup and utility console for pop-up events and A2 roles. The scale of the undertaking is significant. Brenden oversees technical operations for 61 artists across 13 venues over a 12-day run, personally mixing 11 of 19 artists at his primary posts. It's a logistical puzzle that, in his view, only works with the right foundation under every engineer's hands. Robertson stated, “In a festival with 13 venues, you can’t afford technical friction. When the LV1 Classic launched, I suspected it was the missing piece for SMF. Getting my hands on the actual console surface for a live mix confirmed that Waves had finally married their processing power with a world-class tactile workflow.” A Festival-Scale Architecture Built on the LV1 Brenden’s preparation strategy centers on what he calls the BERA Method — a unified console architecture designed to eliminate on-site friction before an engineer ever steps behind the desk. A master “springboard” template pre-configures all bussing, matrix routing, and FX chain construction, so that each incoming engineer’s job is reduced to building the input layer. The LV1 Classic’s Recall Safe and Scope features lock down mission-critical channels — stage talkbacks, MC lines, house music — while per-act Snapshots initialize a clean slate for each guest. The 80-channel expanded mode proved equally important. SMF’s roots-focused programming — blues, jazz, and acoustic ensembles that demand high transparency and dynamic range — can push channel counts quickly when a marquee act hits the stage. Having that headroom available as a festival-wide standard meant no headliner was ever told no. Brenden’s custom layer approach minimized paging during changeovers — a “Single-Layer Command” philosophy where DCAs, critical input strips, and Matrix faders all share the same surface layer. With 15-minute turnarounds a regular occurrence, that kind of surface speed is not a luxury. How Touring Engineers Responded The true test of any festival console isn’t how well it works for the house crew — it’s how fast a touring engineer who’s never touched it can get a show in the can. At SMF 2026, the LV1 Classic faced that test dozens of times over. Brenndan McGuire, FOH engineer for Lucius and a 40-year live sound veteran whose credits include Sufjan Stevens, Feist, and Mac DeMarco, approaches a console the way he approaches music — as an instrument. His evaluation of the LV1 Classic was immediate and emphatic: the touchscreen was the best he’d encountered in the industry, with a size and responsiveness that allowed him to shape EQ with a precision he’d previously only achieved with rotary encoders. Setting up custom fader layers was quick and intuitive, and after a brief orientation, he spent his time exploring capabilities rather than fighting the interface. He looks forward to working on a Waves desk again. McGuire remarked, “I came up as a musician first, so I tend to approach a console like an instrument. We have to be able to flow and find a connection, to understand and trust the layout. The LV1’s massive touchscreen allows quick access to a multitude of functions in one or two moves — very intuitive.” Mark Goodell, FOH engineer for the Julian Lage Quartet, was a first-time LV1 Classic user who left with a strong interest in expanding his time on the platform. After a very quick learning curve, he felt at home with the console fast — easily navigating to channel strip EQ and compression functions using the LV1’s Channel view. He’s now pursuing additional hands-on time at Dale Pro Audio in New York. Dan Hallas, full-time touring engineer for P.O.D., mixed the festival’s closing night — a Miles Davis centennial tribute — on the LV1 Classic. After getting oriented, he had a strong show and, by his own admission, found it considerably better than the desk he tours with. Among the more notable LV1 sightings of the festival: the engineer for John Craigie arrived with his own modular rig — no LV1 console at all, just Waves IONIC stageboxes and a SoundGrid server in a rack, paired with a MacBook Pro and an iPad running MixTwin. He mixed the entire show from the audience, walking the room with his iPad while the rack sat side-stage. Lightweight, self-contained, and fully functional. Zachariah Karatassos, a house engineer at SMF, had a 90-minute crash course on the LV1 Classic and then went straight into 11 consecutive shows without a single issue. A musician-turned-engineer, Zachariah describes his relationship with a console in terms of flow and connection — and the LV1 delivered. He found the layout intuitive, the navigation fast, and the touchscreen capable of putting a multitude of functions within one or two moves. He was also able to teach the console to guest engineers on the fly, all of whom came away impressed with the platform. His standout moment came mixing Kingfish on the Alcons LR24 system — a dense, high-energy stage where the LV1’s preamps and the PA combined to deliver what he called “absolute magic.” High intelligibility, every instrument with space to breathe, and a mix he could trust with his eyes closed. Karatassos noted, “I came up as a musician first, so I tend to approach a console like an instrument. Mixing Kingfish on the LV1 on the Alcons LR24 boxes was my favorite part of the festival — those preamps with that PA, it was absolute magic. I could close my eyes, trust the gear, and completely immerse myself in the mix.” Lars Petter Kristiansen, engineer for the Tord Gustavsen Trio, was a first-time LV1 Classic user who arrived at SMF with tempered expectations and left genuinely impressed. He found the LV1 Classic easy to understand, praised the user interface and the depth of information available on-screen, and reported nothing but a positive experience. His takeaway was straightforward: he could see himself buying one. He remarked, “This was my first time on the LV1 Classic, and I was positively surprised — I’d enjoy this desk just as much as anything I’ve worked on. I could easily end up buying one in the near future.” Standardization as a Strategic Asset Brenden’s decision to standardize on the LV1 Classic was shaped in part by the festival’s previous experience: where the prior year’s console platform felt like a step backward for a festival of this pedigree, the LV1 Classic proved an absolute leap forward. All four A1s at SMF 2026 reported strong experiences on the LV1, and three of them — touring engineers themselves — said they would be happy to encounter one on a venue rider or bring it out on the road. For Brenden, the measure of success goes beyond throughput and uptime. The signal he’s watching for is the guest engineer who finishes their set, clocks the sonic depth and tactile speed of the LV1 Classic, and starts asking how to get one into their own touring rig. He summed it up: “When a world-class guest engineer finishes their set and immediately starts asking how they can integrate it into their own touring rig — that’s the win.”

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Photo file 1: SMF_2026_Waves.JPG Photo caption 1: All five stages of the 2026 Savannah Music Festival were standardized with Waves Audio LV1 Classics at FOH About Waves Audio Ltd.: Waves is the world’s leading developer of audio DSP solutions for music production, recording, mixing, mastering, sound design, post-production, live sound, broadcast, commercial and consumer electronics audio markets. Since its start in the early ‘90s, Waves has developed a comprehensive line of over 240 audio plugins and numerous hardware devices. For its accomplishments, Waves received a Technical Grammy® Award in 2011; an Engineering, Science & Technology Emmy® Award for its Waves Clarity Vx Pro plugin in 2023; and NAMM Technical Excellence & Creativity (TEC) Awards for its Clarity Vx DeReverb Pro plugin in 2024 and eMotion LV1 Classic console in 2026. Additionally, its early flagship plugin, the Q10 equalizer, was selected as an inductee into the TECnology Hall of Fame. Increasingly leveraging pioneering techniques in artificial intelligence, neural networks and machine learning, as well as the company’s three decades of accumulated expertise in psychoacoustics, Waves technologies are being used to improve sound quality in a growing number of market sectors. Around the world, Waves’ award-winning plugins are utilized in the creation of hit records, major motion pictures, and top-selling video games. Additionally, Waves now offers hardware-plus-software solutions (including the revolutionary eMotion LV1 Classic live mixing console) for professional audio markets. The company’s WavesLive division is a leader in the live sound sector, spearheading the development of solutions for all live platforms. Products from Waves Commercial Audio enable A/V system integrators and installers to deliver superior sound quality for corporate, commercial, government, educational, entertainment, sports and house-of-worship applications. Under its Maxx brand, Waves Software Licensing Division is bringing Waves’ award-winning technology into a variety of consumer-facing markets including Mobile, PC, Home AV, Education and Enterprise. Some of the largest and most prestigious global OEM brands have adopted its DSP algorithms to enhance the sound experiences of their consumers. North America Offices: Waves, Inc., 2800 Merchants Drive, Knoxville, TN 37912; Tel: 865-909-9200, Fax: 865-909-9245, Email: info@waves.com,  Web: http://www.waves.com  Corporate Headquarters Israel: Waves Ltd., Azrieli Center, The Triangle Tower, 32nd Floor, Tel Aviv 67023, Israel; Tel: 972-3-608-4000, Fax: 972-3-608-4056, Email: info@waves.com, Web: http://www.waves.com  Waves Public Relations: Clyne Media, Inc., 169-B Belle Forest Circle, Nashville, TN 37221; Tel: 615-662-1616, Email: robert@clynemedia.com, Web: http://www.clynemedia.com

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