Waves 1.7.0

Waves 1.7.0 build 16 is about running well next to Elgato Wave Link and being
a lighter process: it fixes the Wave Link control path that could not find
Wave Link 3's control port, stops two sources of Core Audio churn that could
destabilize other audio apps, and cuts idle and per-gesture CPU work across
the app.

Added

• Test Connection in Settings › Mixer: a read-only check that discovers
  Wave Link 3's control port, performs the handshake, and lists its channels
  with how many software channels are free, so "Wave Link is not running" and
  "every channel already holds an app" are distinguishable without logs.
• A Wave Link bridge check in Diagnostics and a matching section in the
  diagnostics export (endpoint, Wave Link version, channel layout, last
  error).

Fixed

• Find Wave Link 3's control port on real installs. Wave Link 3 chooses an
  ephemeral port at every launch and the macOS location of its port file is
  undocumented, so the previous file-then-scan discovery could fail outright
  and leave every app uncontrollable while Wave Link ran. Waves now asks the
  kernel which ports the code-signature-verified Wave Link process is
  listening on and accepts only a port that answers the Wave Link 3
  handshake. No lsof process is spawned any more.
• Stop conferencing auto-pause from silently moving apps between Wave Link
  channels. Automation may mute an app that already has its own channel and
  is refused honestly otherwise; only your own level change relocates an app.
• Keep the Wave Link control socket open briefly after a change so a slider
  drag reuses one connection, and skip the notifications Wave Link pushes on
  the same socket instead of treating them as replies.
• Explain Wave Link states in plain language in mixer rows, the route badge,
  Settings, and Help, and name the app rather than its bundle identifier when
  no free Wave Link channel is available.
• Feed the per-app IO proc only the tap's input stream. An aggregate device
  carries every stream of its output device, so a device that also records
  (USB headsets, microphones with a headphone jack, audio interfaces,
  virtual devices) put its input stream ahead of the tap's; every IO cycle
  was then a geometry mismatch, the app was silenced, and Waves held the
  device's input open. The device's own input streams now stay disabled for
  the IO proc and the callback addresses the tap's buffers by offset.
• Bound geometry-mismatch recovery. A rebuild now has to render clean for a
  full second before it counts as recovered; a mismatch that returns sooner
  backs off and gives up after three attempts, releasing the tap so the app
  is audible again. Previously a persistent mismatch destroyed and recreated
  the tap and aggregate device four times a second for as long as the app
  ran, with every other audio client on the Mac watching the device list
  change twice per cycle.
• Stop re-probing audio-capture authorization on the 8-second session
  refresh and on every device-change event. The probe is a system-wide tap
  that every audio client observes being created and destroyed; it now runs
  at startup, on an explicit diagnostics refresh, and on Recover Routes.
• Coalesce overlapping device-change passes and ignore the inventory events
  Waves's own private aggregates raise, so a default-output change no longer
  rebuilds every route twice, and a route pinned to a device that did not
  change keeps its live tap instead of dropping out.
• Remove the verified-router hot path from the level tick. The router check
  ran a full code-signature validation on every audio-playing process, twice,
  four times a second (roughly ten milliseconds per process per check). It now
  reads each process's published bundle identifier from Core Audio, validates
  only a process that claims to be Wave Link, caches the verdict for that
  process lifetime, and runs only on ticks that re-observe conflicts.

Changed

• A slider nudge mid-drag, an automation step, or a startup restore row no
  longer rewrites the session file, rebuilds the diagnostics checklist, or
  re-reads the login item over XPC; the committing change does that once.
• Icons are captured only for apps that can become mixer rows, not for every
  helper and agent process on each 8-second pass.
• Adaptive Mix drops to its idle cadence after two seconds of silence across
  managed apps and returns to the fast cadence on the first audible pass.
• The header waveform and row meters cap at 60 frames a second in the
  frontmost window instead of following a 120 Hz display.
• Level ticks invalidate only each row's meter, not the whole row.
• The control-socket state broadcast is built only while a client is
  connected.