amsdenj

One helpful way to think about attack and release, and perhaps compression in general is to think about extremes. Fast Attack - Fast Release: reduced transients, increases sustain, and increases overall compression. The compressor reacts quickly to quickly to reduce transients, but also releases quickly to react the same on the next transient. Useful for increased sustain with fast playing. Fast Attack - Slow Release: creates more consistent volume and fatter tone. Loud transients are quickly reduced and the subsequent volume is maintained at a consistent level longer. Can help tracks stand out better, but may clip off pick attack in faster passages making an unnatural sound. Might be better for slow passages to smooth volume variations over sustained notes. Slow Attack - Fast Release: results in the least amount of compression (for the same compression threshold) and sounds more natural. Increases transients and sustain. Slow Attack - Slow Release: Provides increased transients and reduces sustain. Might be useful for Country tones.

Not sure I followed exactly what you are doing. I think you're saying that IEMs and OEMs sound different coming from your PA's monitor feed. I'm also assuming that you are not monitoring through Helix's headphone output, but rather the headphone (or other) monitor output from the PA. If this is the case, then perhaps your IEM's are not matching the PA's monitor output impedance. Try using your own dedicate headphone amp fed from an XLR output from your PA monitor mix.

Its really a question of risk during configuration/setup vs. risk during a performance. Testing all possible combinations would require some discipline. I doubt Line 6 would want to deal with potential unexpected issues that come up during performance. There are certainly work arounds too, using different patches. It means you'd have to arrange patch changes where the delay isn't an issue. Bottom line is its a reasonable idea, but maybe not a priority for Line 6 or many users.

This will not work. The Variax Standard acoustic models already model an acoustic guitar. That is, they take the raw piezo pickup outputs and translate them to something that would come from an acoustic guitar based on the modeled instrument. The Fishman Aura and similar products, including using acoustic guitar IRs in Helix, usually expect the input to be a raw piece output or the output from a magnetic pickup (if its an IR for an electric guitar acoustic tone). Using these with the Variax Standard would be putting the piezo pickup output into two acoustic guitar bodies. This would sound unnatural and have a lot of odd resonances. I have asked Line6 to provide a neutral body image for the raw piezo pickups as a Variax option, that would allow us to use a Variax with acoustic IRs in Helix. Not sure there's any new development going on on Variax these days, or if this will ever be provided. But it would really open up the usability of a Variax.

Sounds like there's a possible short or some other hardware problem with your guitar. I have not had any problems with the open tunings on my Variax Standard.

I think they are essentially the same guitar with the Variax Standard having the modeled guitars. I found using a wider nut spacing and a good setup makes a Variax Standard into a pretty playable guitar. And the single coil pickups aren't bad either.

Attempting to calculate DSP usage based on active blocks only sounds like a good idea, but could have a very negative impact. Essentially it would make the patch non-deterministic. That is, you could create the patch, with all the blocks, but it would be somewhat unpredictable which combinations of active blocks might run out of DSP and not function in a live situation. That would not be a good thing.

The stock cabinets can sound good, but you might need to experiment with the mic choice and placement. The SM57 sounds hash and unpleasant to me. I like the darker sounds of the ribbon mics up close. Experiment with the low and high cut in the cabinet models too. This can quickly tailor the tone for your needs.

My approach is similar to yours and probably best described in this blog post: Creating a Helix Electric Guitar Patch (updated)This posting was pre-snapshots, and I use the Teemah! more often now, maybe plate reverb instead of spring. The biggest difference is that I tend to treat my Clean, Drive, Overdrive, Distortion tones using gain staging in the same snapshot. That way I can combine them. Drive adds a studio pre in front of the amp to lower the bass into distortion, and changes the amp drive. Overdrive is Teemah! Distortion is Compulsive Drive. These are set so that I can use different combinations for different volume and distortion levels throughout the song. I prefer this over snapshots as it keeps all the other footswitches directly available for adding/removing effects. So I guess I treat Helix like a traditional pedal board and amp, and tend to use the same patch all night. I do use snapshots for open tunings and switching guitar models with my Variax.

Probably want one that contains some kind of lubricant. But those that don't might work ok too. It would be nice however if someone from Line6 support verified this is OK before we all start doing it.

I would expect there to be some variation in the pickups and/or guitars they modeled. In my limited experience, if you use good metering (I used Logic Pro X), you will see differences in string level in every model. I didn't worry too much about that. Rather I took an average that got things close, and then applied that to the global settings. My intent was to adjust for differences in the actual piezo pickups on my guitar, rather than all the variation in the models themselves. That may not be perfect, but it seems close enough given all the other variables that impact string volume while playing. Also, after adjusting the global string settings, you might need to also adjust the levels in the models. Since I had to bring the hot strings down to match the weakest pickup, I brought the overall volume of each model back up to compensate. Another thing that seems to help the model a lot is to blend in some of the magnetic pickup. This can fill in some of the dynamics and high end that's missing from the models. I don't do this because I want to be able to use the open tunings. But it might be useful in some situations.

You don't need to do anything. These are powered speakers, but they don't provide phantom power, primarily because you don't generally plug a condenser mic into them. Helix will connect just fine.

Re: #4 variax input problems: what has worked for me is to change the input from multi or variax to guitar and then change back to multi or variax and re-do the variax parameters. Looks like something isn't being migrated properly and corrupts the block. The procedure I described seems to reset it.

Fremen, you have given so much. I'm sure I speak for everyone on this forum that we all want to give back to you our support for your good health.

One thing we can't forget about tube amps is they gave us the tones we want to model!

Agreed, but starting from a good source can make all the difference. Truth is, the variability in tubes, especially given their availability these days, isn't necessarily a feature. You can have to re-tube your amp and it might never be the same. These things wear out and aren't being built they way the use to. To some extent this is the same as the analog/digital argument. Turntables and records sound warmer than digital. That indeed use to be true when D/A converters were poorly designed and constructed. But its hard to make that argument today. Regarding modeling, it should be possible to model any characteristic of a tube you can measure. The only limits are the ability to measure and the complexity of the resulting code. The models will be an approximation of the analog source, but should be close. As DSPs get faster and cheaper, it will be easier to squeeze more code into the same space/time and models will get better. But the other thing you can do with models is create things that can't exist in the real world. That's the next step for modeling instruments and amplifiers - to create new instruments, not just duplicate the ones we have now.

I ended up touching up many of my personal patches on this update, something I didn't have to do on previous updates, at least not as much. I was using a Variax, Wah with Exp 2, and snapshots. And I had a number of footswitch controllers that turned somethings on and others off. I had a lot of trouble getting the Variax settings to work in snapshots. This was partly because of the missing variax parameters when selecting the input block. I finally had to switch the input block to guitar then back to variax to clear out what appeared to improperly migrated block content, and re-create my variax model selection and tunings. With footswitches that control multiple blocks, you may find that the footswitch light will display the state of the wrong block, that is it looses the block it was displaying when you exported and imported into the new version. Just touch the footswitch until it selects the correct block, then save. I went through the procedure to address the Exp 1/Exp 2 bug. That seems to be working ok now. Bottom line there were a lot of issues updating to 2.10 that required me to review every patch carefully. That may be fine, especially if I want to exploit new features. But I wouldn't recommend doing it right before a gig.

Even if you don't own a variax (I have 3), you should still want to see this update for Helix. This is what shows commitment to existing products and that your investment in Line6 establishes a long term partnership through products that evolve and last.

My best wishes to you. I've been having some medical issues too. Getting old is a drag. However, music keeps me motivated and happy.

Try turning the master volume and bias down. This will clean it up a bit more.

By default the Variax sets the global string levels at 0dB and the volume of each string in the models to 100%. However, most Variax instruments have quite a bit of volume variability in each of the piezo pickups. So it is important to balance the string volumes. Does anyone know the relationship between the string volume percentage in the models and the global string levels in dB? I found that for my Variax Standard, the following string levels work pretty well across models and pickups: E-50% A-50% D-60% G-60% B-90% E-100%. However, I don't know how that translates to global string levels in dB.

That does seem to be the case, especially for Variax parameters. Click another block, then click back to the input block. You should see all the parameters. I have also had the problem with the wrong Variax model being picked. What I found is changing the input block to guitar, then back to Variax and re-doing the parameters seems to fix the problem for me. I think doing this in the patch fixes all the snapshots too. I think there's something that didn't get migrated properly for patches with Variax inputs in 2.10. I would suggest redoing those patches by changing the input block to something else, then back to Variax to restore the patch.

Yes, it seems to loose this on patch import after updates. At least I've seen that quite a few times.

DI, I think the manual is great, and I've read and referenced it a number of times. Thanks for a quality product. I use to have a setup with the POD HD500X as a front of the amp pedalboard into Apple MainStage using S-Gear amp models. This gave me a longer looper, and amp models that were a lot better then the HD500. I couldn't reproduce this with Helix because of missing MIDI features (Looper switches didn't send MIDI CC, and MIDI couldn't control block states). I think all these issues have been addressed and I could probably recreate that configuration. But Helix is so much better than the HD500 that I'm no longer motivated to bother. I still love S-Gear, and still use it for recording, but Helix is really quite a product in every way.

One thing I noticed when restoring patches is that sometimes patches that use a footswitch controller to toggle one block on and another off will end up having the switch incorrectly lit. For example, I use a volume block and univibe in the same patch, both using EXP 1. The FS is labeled UniVibe because that's it primary function. The volume block is then the default operation when the univibe is off. When I restored the patches, the FS was displaying the state of the volume block, not the univibe. To fix this, just touch the FS a couple of times until it is displaying the univibe block. The FS will now show the right state. Save the patch and all is well.