Leaderboard

Don’t know what sound you are after/expect but generally speaking: A real amp consists of three parts – Preamp, Power amp and Speaker/s. That’s the signal chain and that’s the box DunedinDragon showed you above. Without deep diving the speakers are an “integrated” part of the power amp sound/response. That’s what Line6 emulates, with a microphone stuck into the speaker. If you remove the speaker, you remove part of the power amp/speaker/mic, you remove what is used to “eq/sound sculpture” the sound for that particular amp. You don’t remove the speaker in the real world. You change amp, speaker and/or mic to do that. What you can do is To replace the speaker with an EQ and sculpture the sound from there. Numerus of articles on that, search the forum for more info. You find a speaker that sounds decent to you and then place an EQ, one or more, on places in the signal chain. Depending on what I want. I sometimes place it before my amp block, between the power amp and speaker and/or after the speaker. Then tune to taste. In some cases it’s enough with just the preamp to reach the sound you want. Done that to get some nice jazz and blues tones, also for acoustic tone. Change amp, you might not like that particular AC30 Fawn. There are other AC30 alternatives in Helix, and speakers. Or a combo of the above. One thing for sure, at least for me, in my 10+ years I have been using modelers, I never liked the sound of a full amp without speakers (but what could I say, I play blues). The rest I’ve fixed with effect pedals and EQ’s. Yes, and when you turn up the gain the distortion level and some unwanted frequencies will appear that the speaker/s will filter out. If this filtering is not to taste you change amp, speaker/s and/or use an EQ to reach the sound goals. //Per

THIS is an actual AC30 Fawn which you are modeling. Notice the speaker cabinet is an integral part of the unit. Why would there be a question on this?

With 3.5 the IR blocks use significantly less DSP. If the presets use IRs you automatically get that benefit after updating to 3.5. If the presets use the (now legacy) cab block you can switch to the new cab block which also use significantly less DSP.

Yes.... either use the AMP+CAB block, or separate AMP & CAB blocks. Most players don't scrutinize a real amp the way they do a modeler. Artifacts like you describe exist on real amps as well... it's called crossover distortion. Place a mic on an amp, throw the headphones on and scrutinize the tone. You probably won't like what you hear at first. I recall a discussion about Van Halen not having that in his tones.... someone posted an isolated Van Halen track and SURPRISE, there it was. FWIW... the crossover distortion is part of the "power amp". If you run a pre-amp model into a Cabinet that will often go away, but you also lose a lot of character from the amp... especially on a VOX AC15 or AC30 model where the power amp is a huge part of the character.

Really? You feel the need for someone to answer this for you? I don’t know what you have been using prior to the Helix floor, but I would guess that some sort of speaker cabinet, Impulse Response, load box, or EQ sculpting was involved? You say: - “When using single amp with no cabs attached in the signal chain it sounds like very distorted tiny speaker.” Hmm… well, what did you anticipate the the sound would be like? I often tell people that because the Helix is a digital modelling system you can do things that would not generally be possible in the real world, with out the risk of anything blowing up! But, ITRW, As a general rule, you cannot play guitar through just an amp head. The head makes no sound on its own. In fact, using a tube amp head without a speaker connected is dangerous, and can seriously damage the amp. The head requires a load to distribute its power, usually provided by a speaker cabinet. It may be advisable to read this:- https://homemusiccreator.com/can-play-through-just-amp-head/ Hope this helps/makes sense

Just wait for support. Clearly an hardware problem.

Another one of these silly .php files. Why not save it as .wav or .mp3 so everybody can actually HEAR it?

If anyone is still looking for a fix -> I managed to solve this (after some Windows 11 updates, my Pod Go was no longer detected as an output device for my laptop and the Driver Manager was saying that the Pod Go driver was not working properly, even though the app Pod Go edit was properly working, it was just that the device was not available as an output device for the laptop). Reinstalling the drivers and Pod Go edit did NOT fix the issue, but I found that it was caused by Windows Memory Integrity as the driver was not compatible with this feature, so disabling the Memory Integrity feature in Windows Security -> Core Isolation settings, then uninstalling & reinstalling the Pod Go edit (as well for the drivers that come with the Pod Go edit package) followed by a restart fixed the issue. Hopefully Line 6 will release an update so that the drivers are no longer in conflict with Window Security features ...

USB hubs have been an endless source of problems ever since I'm using them. I can't even remember how much I already had and apart from some medium-expensive Belkin one (that I unfortunately forgot in a backstage area a while ago), pretty much all of them had some issues every now and then. Fwiw, this is my experience with standard USB hubs (there's newer ones such as what, say, many people are using with their M1 Macs, also allowing you to connect various other things, those seem to do a lot better). In addition there's USB cables and for whatever weird reasons, the differences between them are staggering - and once you're using a hub, you double those potential issues. In a nutshell: Don't use hubs for anything mission critical in case it's possible.

USB hubs have been a problem since Line 6 first went USB on the XT line....All modelers that act as interfaces and have edit ability employ both Bulk Mode (editing) and Streaming Mode (audio) simultaneously. There is an inherent problem with the USB IEEE Leader Follower specification in that Streaming mode allows for an "acceptable" number of dropped packets. Bulk mode is what is used for data transfers like copying files and device presets and that mode must move the data perfectly. Because Streaming is a real-time mode and Bulk is not, when Bulk mode hits a critical condition where it must interupt Streaming mode, the stream will drop some packets and sometimes, bulk mode will get errors. These are low level hardware errors that happen all the time and are corrected. hubs add another layer of interrupts for the other devices in the hub and the hub itself. This is dictated by the spec... It is so much better now that it was years ago, but I don't think hubs will ever be good for streaming audio devices...But then, not all hubs are created equal. So one hub could work where another won't. I have seen it happen with computer MB so many times...New board comes out and there are bugs in the modes and you have to update the BIOS to fix it...Sometimes a shop will develop a driver using a flawed chipset and workaround the issue....then the chipset is updated and workaround breaks the driver....but yeah, hubs are mostly bad results for Line 6 stuff.

Unfortunately hubs are a problem. and from personal experience not all hubs are created equal. I recently bought a reasonably expensive hub. It lets me make all the connections I want to make. But it turns out I can’t get 4K monitor support ( although it is supposed to work) so I bought a midrange USB-c to HDMI cable and that works 100%. My point is that usb hubs are just a minefield of pain- there are lots of YouTube videos on it. So all you can do is buy a USB-c to Helix USB and hope it works- some here might have a common brand to point you at? Otherwise, you are stuck with trial and error as all the cables say they work and many don’t!!

I had this same issue with my 3 computers at home, finally could fix it selecting manually the drivers instead of letting Windows doing it automatic: update driver->browse my computer->Let me pick from a list, and manually selected the right Line6 driver. Did this in all the 3 computers and working, hope this helps.

COPY AS ALIAS feature for patches ============================= http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/COPY-AS-ALIAS-feature-for-patches/808685-23508 [ I'd like to see patches that act in a kind of Master / Slave assignment like a typical Alias-functionality for files and GUI desktops on Macs and windows. This would allow us to have the same preset linked to in several different places in different set-lists - and when a user edits the alias preset and presses SAVE - a dialog would pop up asking the user if they want to save to the "MASTER" or if they want to make the ALIAS into an ordinary patch - a modified copy - from then on no longer linked to the "MASTER or "template" patch ]

I have just added a new Idea regarding the import and Export of Impulse Responses: http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Impulse-Responses-IR-Import-Export-automatic-Number/806973-23508 Please vote if you like the idea - thanks! Here's the Idea: Import and export Impulse Responses is not very convinient at this point. So I thought of a way that could make this process a little more user friendly without changing the whole workflow. 1) First off all the impulse responses internal should be saved with the whole name. Even if it is cut on the display, the whole name should be save internal (even only in editor or the device itself), so that on export the whole name is there again. 2) If a Impulse response is imported the internal name should be extended with the slot number as prefix. Again this would not be visible. So the internal name for a IR on slot number 1 would be like: 001-Original-cab-name Visible name on display would be: Original-cab-name If now the IRs are exported for a backup all IRs would be sorted autmatically as they are prefixed with the slot number. On the import the editor would recognize on which slot the IR was by reading out the first letters (001-) and import it in the right slot. This would even work if we have empty slots between the IRs because the program recognize the number on import. Another advantage would be that we could easily prepare our IRs in a folder and sort them by simple adding the slot number to the name as a prefix. So on Import the IRs are imported in the slot we like as we have added the prefix. Hope it is understandable - Thanks for voting

While I like the idea I really think that the focus in the helix itself should concentrate on Modelling and sounds. All that fancy stuff eats up DSP and storage. But this would be a good Idea to have on the helix editor only - not in the device itself. Just my 2cents

Ability to Tag and filter ( search on ) Helix presets with a Keyword http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Ability-to-Tag-and-filter-search-on-presets-with-a-Keyword/806003-23508 Allow Helix presets to be given several tags of one's own choosing - and then be able to filter on the tag when skipping through presets to find an ideal tone for something. Being also able to SAVE and RECAL such search criteria by a common name - say "Danny's Rock Lead" could save time for common searches. This all inside HELIX of course, NOT CustomTone - although of course the tags provided in those tones could be used by default. For example some suitable patches could be categorised "Tagged" with Rhythm, Lead, Clean, Overdriven, Distortion, HM, Country, Jazz in any combination of these. Or maybe have three separate categories: Genre Amp Model Lead/Rhythm/Pad Clean/OD/Distortion Also it would be useful if one could filter by the amp model too. So one could apply Country, Rhythm and Essex A30 to get all presets suitable.

I have added two Ideas to the Scale: 1) Posibility to choose if the Amp+Cab are inserted as one Block or two separate blocks: http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Amp+Cab-insert-as-separate-blocks/804050-23508 2) Helix Editor: Show how often an IR is in use: http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Helix-Editor-Show-the-number-how-often-an-IR-is-used/804054-23508