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UPDATE: Instructions for installation further down the page Not sure if any of you folks out there are in Linux-land, but after an SSD failure yesterday I took the opportunity to rebuild my machine with a clean version of Ubuntu 17.10 and WINE (I record using Reaper). Instead of using the Windows version of Reaper, I installed the Linux native version, and then spent the evening futzing about in a last attempt to get Helix Native working. The result... That's Helix Native running under WINE inside Reaper running natively (with lin-vst as the wrapper). It works fantastically well; even patches which would max out a hardware Helix are using just 3% of the available CPU capacity (it's an i7 6700), with no additional latency compared to other amp sims. I is a happy camper :) I couldn't find any info about the process other than the maintainer of lin-vst dropping some hints (and he missed out some major gotchas). Is there any appetite for a guide on how to install it, or is it just me who wants this and nobody else cares?

You don't read it on your phone do you?

OP Here. Thank you all for the replies. Against all odds, I went ahead and purchased about 6 or 8 bluetooth transmitters & receivers from Amazon hoping to find a combination that would transmit with minimal delay using the AptX "low latency" profile... I tested each/every combination yielding wildly different results (all items had Aptx profile capability). I FOUND A COMBINATION THAT WORKS! This Transmitter: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01B4W40VC/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 This Receiver: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073DZMWD1/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 The transmitter is plugged into the "headphone out" of the Helix. Then I have a standard pair of wired headphones plugged into the receiver. I had to use a 3.5mm to 1/4" adapter to allow the transmitter to plug into the Helix. There is still a very slight delay, but not enough to throw me off. I put my wired earbuds in, then put a generic pair of sound reducing cans over my ears when practicing w/ my band in the loud lollipop basement. Given the nature of Bluetooth, it's possible that YMMV but I'm tellin you guys.... I LOVE IT!

Because the world is such that most people are now in the habit of moving faster than they think. It's the inevitable consequence of a society that values instant gratification above all else. "Look before you leap" no longer exists, and we've collectively decided that anything that isn't in a constant state of flux is no longer of any value.... hence the ridiculous compulsion to try and reinvent the wheel at every turn (and for us, the incessant whining if it's been more than 11 minutes since the last firmware update ;) ). On a long enough timeline, it's gonna come back to bite us all in the a$$....

Are you monitoring your guitar through your DAW or directly from the Helix. If you monitor from the Helix directly, mute your track in the DAW and there will be no latency.

see above.

Latency from an interface is usually associated with the buffer size setting specified for the interface (usually in the DAW). If you are going to be monitoring your guitar through the DAW, make sure it's as low as you can get without artifacts. I generally suggest against monitoring through the DAW with the Helix or any other interface that can route audio on it's own. If you've selected the Helix as your input and output interface (some DAWs won't let you choose a different interface), you can just disable input monitoring on an armed audio track that you are trying to record so that you are only hearing the guitar directly from the Helix and just play the other tracks as normal. Again, you don't have to do it his way and can just set your buffer settings as low as possible but make sure you aren't monitoring both the Helix and the Helix routed through the DAW.

Just realised i still have the exact same rig than before (well except for Helix improvements). Thank you line 6 !

I think you could even do a bit more in dimming especially of the text of the off blocks, but like massive improvement. Wouldn't think it would be too hard - I guess they will bundle a bunch of fixes together.

...it still weird to have to submit an idea, and get votes for it, in order to fix an obvious user-interface problem. But if that's the way its gotta be done, so be it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ fyi, I tried an example Photoshop treatment to create more contrast for blocks using a HXN screen shot. Top row of blocks is untreated (the way it looks in the current plug-in), the bottom row I treated so the On blocks are more obvious. (The same blocks are turned on or off in each row.) Of course we users can't fix the current plugin problem using image editing, but it serves as a demonstration:

This is exactly the approach I take when I make an omelette.

I thought I was looking at my own rig when I saw your post!! Almost the same apart from the Rocktron!

Actually, custom skins in the account settings would be welcome, also the possibility to hide the dozen of pinned posts would be appreciated.

Okay, I know this is an old thread, but I just found it today. I read the whole thing. I am compelled to toss in my 27 cents. First, I LOVE; that's "el oh vee ee" my Firehawk FX. I scoped it out before buying it. Don't even know how someone could ever possibly miss the fact that it was NOT ever intended to be managed via the PC, but whatevs... After I'd watched several youtube vids. scoured Line 6 websites, and oodles of threads I knew exactly what was what. I researched the PROS | CONS and was well aware that the only way to edit/tweak patches was via a remote app for either iPad or Android. Now, I had briefly lamented the idea that no PC wizardry would be possible aside from updating my FHFX via USB. But I thought, big deal. I want something I can hit those sweet patches with -- easily -- and I found the "PERFECT" appliance in the Firehawk FX. Besides being wireless (despite a little lag while switching between patches) I'd even found one that was totally cool. None of the other guys I gig with had anything like it. Now got that out of the way. I will say this: After all the pre-purchase research, I decided to rent one for a month. I made my dude from Long & McQuade promise me that if I ended up buying it he'd have to include my rental fee in my purchase. Yes, I am a pretty smart cookie. So fast forward, now I've had the Firehawk FX for going on 2 years, and I still LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE it. I even had the blessing of having the sound-guy from my local church go out and buy one for the church. He did this because he saw how much I loved mine, how ridiculously easy it was to use, and how COOL it is too, and because he was tired of feeling like crying each time I packed mine up to take it home after a service. This is just waaay too cool too because now I can just show up to church and log into my own tones and I'm ready to go. Wow. Until you get used to that, you'll just never understand what a freedom and blessing this is. The Firehawk FX is a tool for the player who pulls their patches out of the cloud or tweaks their own patch and then uploads it to the cloud or even just stores it as a preset in the pedalboard. Then just pulls out their phone or iPad and goes to work. It's not for making a movie or a record. There are plenty of gear options for you to do those things, and, well actually, you could do this with the FHFX too. You'd just use it as a digital workstation because it does connect to the pc or mac via USB. But I digress. Marketed for ease of use/access and reliability of tone -- AND YES it does this flawlessly. For slightly south of $500.00 bucks there is just no equal quite as cool, portable and functional. Other players burn with envy when they see me use my rig. Those who hear me play -- freak out -- at how awesome the tones are that I dial in just straight out of the cloud especially when they see me log in on my cell phone or iPad, pull up my tone library/tone search, and start playing all under 10 mins! And I do all this with one hand while enjoying my caramel macchiato with the other hand. The Firehawk Dominates. It has no equal for what it is meant for. I will play mine for live gigging forever. You, and ten more guys just like you won't pry it from my cold dead hands after I'm gone. ;)

Yep, I voted for Helix>DT too. I'm afraid there just aren't enough DT users to justify the programming, or maybe the DT uses on-board preamps rather than the HD's progrmamed one, thus can't use Helix via L6 Link? DT integration would be the straw that broke my wallet's back and I'd be ordering a Helix LT if it was announced. As far as MIDI programming, Check out my comment (and responses) in this post in Chad Boston's FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/line6helixusergroup/permalink/867209436796064/

You explained my hesitation 100%.. I’ve been having a blast with the used DT25 head and cab. I always liked the ease of the 1 cable in with the line 6 link but felt the tone was different paired with the Pod HD500X. I Tried but could not get the same tone I got just plugged directly into the input jack of the amp. I’m repeating the path I went down a couple of years ago. I started with a DT 50 Head. It was just a little to much for me. I bought a Dt25 combo fell in love with it. Got the PodHD500x and bought a Dt25 Head and cab for stereo. It was cool little set up. The cabeling was easy. Guitar cable to the pod, line 6 link to 1 amp then jump amp to amp via the link. There are a bunch of guides out there to tweak the pod but I could never match the tone of the amp in voice 4 with a few pedals. I saw the HX effects and I thought that could do it. I voted for Helix and DT integration, I’d buy a helix right now if it worked with the line6 link. I Have a firehawk 1500 but I find it lacking. It has great features but i just like the sound of the DT25. So i find myself back where I was a year or so ago.... I really have no interest in buying a pod. My dream rig would be the power and versatility of the Helix or HX effects connected to the DT via the 1 cable of the line 6 link.

You're right that you can't swap the compressor but you can assign the foot switch to another effect. If you need an extra wildcard effects slot, download the preset BJClean1

After months of learning the Firehawk and all its 'ins and outs' and capabilities I have finally gotten around to figuring out a preset storing system on my device. I am a bit of a stickler and I didn't want to lose the factory presets. Let's be honest, they may not sound fantastic in every situation, but alot of the implementation and FX blocks are great for inspiration. What I did was save every single factory preset to "My Tones" with this naming structure "Z - 1a HD Rhythm" Z at the beginning keeps it at the bottom of the my tones list out of the way of my real tones, but I can easily recall it at any time later for inspiration (not having to do factory reset to get them back, etc) Now that I have the factory presets backed up, I started saving my real personal presets in the many firehawk banks. It took my months to decide what kind of saving structure made sense to me. I approached this not from a cover band/performance perspective, but from an 'owner of many amps' perspective. Each bank is an amp. Each preset is a variation of that amp for a certain guitar that I own. So for example the bank structure for 1 would be "Fender Deluxe Reverb" 1a. F Deluxe R Tele 1b. F Deluxe R Strat 1c. F Deluxe R LP 1d. F Deluxe R SG I carry this on for all the various amp models I really want to play 2a. F Bassman Tele 2b. F Bassman Strat 2c. F Bassman LP 2d. F Bassman SG I will do this for as many banks forward as I need. I can see myself setting up Fender specific banks, then into Vox, then into Marshall's, then into the higher gain stuff. Any time I know I can bank up and preset "3" will be the Les Paul always. This will allow me to grab any guitar and play any amp tailored specifically to that guitar/pickups/output. I figure if I get into a band situation in the future I can use this is as the basis of my tones when I play, but then as I get into more setlist specific situations I can copy tones and create likely banks for actually songs. For example using Tom Petty Running Down a Dream: 1a. RDAD Rhythm 1b. RDAD Crunch Tone 1c. RDAD Lead Tone etc. This will allow me to tailor the patches to the exact similar tones or delay trails for what those songs are. Any feedback is appreciated! I Know this kinda thing is very subjective and opinions vary wildly.

So I am further down the rabbit hole with the Firehawk FX. Truth be told, I have been following alot of the Pod HD500x and Helix training videos on youtube due to the massive lack of presence the Firehawk seems to have out there in the wild. There is really nothing available on it compared to these other device. One helix video I came across was normalizing patch volumes using your computer DAW/interface. I found it very valuable. You can see that video here: Reading up around the Helix forums as well lead me to realize alot of people use their computer DAW to set patch volumes. The general consensus is, because this is a DIGITAL device (I still have a hard time realizing I have to treat this thing differently than a standard amp, because of digital clipping) is that your patch volumes should hit about -12DB on your input meter with your most authoritative strum - when you whack at your strings the hardest it should peak about -12 db. I run my Firehawk into my Yorkville YX10P with the following consistencies: Output volume (main red rings) = 50% Guitar volume (white red rings) = 54% (or the exact middle of the dial) This seems to be a common practise to keep things consistent across the board. With my guitar input volume right in the middle at 54%, I noticed that basically all my patches as they are currently set were clipping HARD. Amps' that I had set for Channel volume slider at 70% or sometimes 50% had to be brought down generally into the 20-25% channel volume range for the signal to hit that -12DB marker on my DAW. Theoretically then...with alot of the amp volumes down much lower, I can push my Firehawk master output volume (red ring) higher, which from what I am reading online would give me a better signal to noise ratio overall. So that leads me to the following questions regarding 'digital guitar' rigs. Is this normal? For whatever reason it seems like the channel volumes are SO low in this configuration. However there is an interplay here between the guitar input volume (white ring) and the channel volume. If I decrease the guitar input volume, then naturally there is less signal to the Firehawk and therefore the channel volumes would like come up higher to compensate. Would both of these situations sound the same ultimately? Is one better than the other? I assume that having the volumes lower like this WILL reduce digital clipping and probably make my guitar sound better overall. Also, with a much more higher powered FRFR like the Stagesource L2M or something, I would be able to push a louder cleaner signal into it by having the ability to run the overall master volume (red ring) higher. Anybody have any feedback on this? I am new to digital guitar rigs so please bare with me as I try to sort this out with a little help from my friends! Thanks crew :D

Auto sets the input impedance to whatever it is for the effect in the first block right after the input. This is to model the impact that effect has on the tone of the guitar and its cable. Setting a lower input impedance could reduce the high end of your guitar, but so can turning down the tone control just a little. This is actually convenient and quite common practice. Try setting up your clean tone with the neck pickup and the guitar volume and tone all the way up. Then when you switch to the bridge pickup you can roll back the tone just a little to warm up that pickup. If you setup your clean tone for the bridge pickup, then you don't have any way to get the sparkle back on the neck pickup.