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Looks like I'll have go back to using Carla as a middle-man then because at the end of the day, it's critical to be able to get a signal to pass from BUS1/outputs to BUS2/inputs. Here's a perfect scenario explaining why this is is so important. Imagine you have a multi-out drum plugin (not uncommon for drum synths). Of course, many plugins have multiple outputs but we'll just use a 16 out drum plugin as an example. The goal here is to isolate as needed. For example, maybe the kick is outputting to stereo out 1, the snare to stereo out 2, HH to stereo out 3..... and so on.

So you start by creating output bus with 32 channels and then point your drum track to the new bus. Drums are coming in on their respective channels and things are looking good.

Now you decide you want to work on the snare sound. Maybe you want to work on the transients or add a delay. You have to be able to isolate that stereo channel in order to do that work. This can't be done without routing that exact pair of channels to another bus where it can be processed.

Now what's a little alarming is that up until the recent "xaudio" work (I don't know what to call it), input sends were working exactly like they should. The key word there is "should". From all my time in the world of Qtractor though, there has never been any well-established means of routing a signal from a given bus' output to another bus' input. Essentially, the entire issue is treated as some kind of "ghost in the machine" but........ what other mixing console treats signal routing in that fashion? Being able to route an output to an input is kinda the bread and butter of how a mixer is supposed to work.

It's just frustrating having material (sessions) break because there's a lack of willingness or even curiosity to get a mixer to act like an actual mixer.

I hear what you're saying about Insert Sends being offloaded to the underlying audio engine but please remember, from an end-user perspective, nobody cares. All we're trying to do is route a signal from point A to point B. How that happens (in a reliable fashion) is kinda besides the point. I mean, a bus input is within Qtractor's codebase as is a bus' output. Remember, the whole "using Input Sends to work-around the mysterious bug" thing isn't really the goal. It's just a work-around that worked....... until it didn't. Honestly, it really should have never been needed in the first place. It should be possible to route directly from a pair of outs to a pair of ins but I think we all know this reasonable expectation has long been abandoned for reasons unknown.