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The mic sim has to be an integral part of the speaker model since that's the only way the IR can be captured.

I read somewhere that the Helix headphone output uses a separate A/D converter. Is that the case and if so: 1. Why 2. Is there loss in output quality from the headphone jack compared to the 1/4" or XLR outputs? 3. Is it reasonable to use the headphone output into a power amp for a separate monitor?

I like the Helix compressors. The LA Comp is great at the end of the signal chain to just glue everything together. It adds a little to the overall tone that's hard to describe. I use Deluxe Comp for the beginning of the signal chain, its the first block the guitar sees. It takes some experimenting to get the effect you want. Use Attack to control pick noise. Use release to control how responsive the compressor is to your playing. Regarding the looper fizz after a few layers, that could still be distortion. You may have no distortion on the first layer, but each layer takes up more headroom. Its the same problem with multiple tracks into a mix buss. Even though none of the tracks may be clipping, as they all add up into the mix buss, it may clip. Try bringing the input level down a bit more.

It's great to have the Matchless, and similar normal/bright, etc. channels of the same amp modeled. But The Line 6 approach of using a different amp model for each one seems sub-optimal. What I'd rather see is a single amp model with additional parameters for bright on/off, channel switching, tone voicing switches, etc. Then we could create footsitch mappings to control parameters in a single amp model instead of having to switch patches to get differen settings on essentially the same amp. This makes more efficient use of patches and block memory as there's less duplication of models. The motivation for this is to get more flexibility from a single patch, reducing the need for scenes and multiple patches. It simplifies using Helix live, and let's us focus more on connecting to and understanding our amp rather than jumping from model to model, never really getting to know the details of a single amp.

My experience with the HD500X was that I always felt I was one tweak away from the tone I was looking for, but I could never get there. Endless study, experimenting and tweaking never seemed to reach closure. Then I got S-Gear and had a completely different experience. All the S-Gear amps are different, but they all sounded great on almost any setting. They inspired me to play more because of the incredible tone and feel. This made me realize that the digital domain can actually work. Now Helix came along and provided a form factor that eliminates all the issues with trying to use a computer in live settings. I'm having the same experience with Helix that I had with S-Gear. All the amps sound good, they're different, not better or worse. All the effects are easy to dial in. You spend more time playing music and less with endless tweaking. This isn't just because of the Helix UI, it's also in the models. No, it's still not quite S-Gear level tones and effects, but it sure is close and sure is easy to use. I have not missed the HD500X at all. And I'm no longer motivated to try to make a computer-based solution work live. Helix is really great.

Its really impossible to give recommended values, there's just too many variables. All I can do is recommend how to determine the values for your situation. First, let's list the variables: Your actual acoustic guitar, its woods, body style, strings, everything that makes it sound they way its sounds How you play the guitar - the picks you use, where you strum, how you strum, angle of pick attack, palm muting style, etc. Your pickup. The body images I captured were from my Fishman Aura Spectrum. These body images were taken from guitars with Fishman under the saddle piezo pickups. The approach is to essentially subtract the IR of the pickup from the IR for the body so that when you play the pickup sound through the IR you get the body tone. If your pickup isn't a Fishman or is not an under the saddle piezo, the body images might work, but they might not sound that good. Obviously the other Helix preamp, EQ, and effect blocks you use. The FRFR you go through The room you're playing in, size, reflections, acoustic damping, number of people, noise level, etc. All these things have a significant impact on tone and how your music is communicated to your audience and reflected back to you - which in turn impacts how you play. Its an extremely complex feedback loop, and one of the reasons its so fun to plan. (As an aside, I notice a similar effect when mountain biking at relatively high speeds on trails - the amount of information you have to process to stay upright and maintain speed is incredible, and our bodies seem to just love to process all that information in real time.) With that background, we can take a look at each IR parameter. Note that other blocks, like preamps and EQ can have similar controls. Low Cut: The lowest note on an acoustic guitar is about 88 Hz. But your hand banging on the guitar body can generate a lot of high amplitude low frequency pulses, including a lot you can't hear. Unless there's some special effect you're looking for (i.e., a bass drum), you probably want to cut these out with the Low Cut (often called a high-pass filter). Setting this to 80 Hz is a good starting point and will work well in most situations. But if you're playing with a bass player too (especially acoustic or upright bass), that low E string can start to conflict with the bass and result in a boomy or muddy mix that doesn't cut through well and becomes indistinct. Start cutting a little higher in this case, maybe getting up to 100 to 120 Hz. 160 Hz is the first octave. That would be cutting pretty high and would probably only be useful for unusual situations where you want a pretty thin tone. High Cut: For acoustic guitar through a body IR, probably never use it. If the image is overly bright, you might set the High Cut (often called a low-pass filter) to 12 kHz or so, an acoustic guitar don't produce too much above that. You can use high cut to reduce noise created by moving your hands on the strings. But generally you want to preserve as much of the high end sparkle of the acoustic guitar as possible. You may need to cut this more if you set the mix less than 100% with under the saddle piezo pickups since these can be pretty bright. Mix: Ideally what you would try to do is to EQ the piezo pickup to sound as good as you can get it, then blend the IR in with that to provide more of the body tone using parallel paths. It all depends on how good your pickup sounds and how much you like the chosen body image. Adding a bit of the piezo can provide better pick attack and a more dynamic tone. Compression can contribute a lot here too. Body images can have a number of pretty significant frequency peaks and dips, that's what makes a guitar sound the way it does, and how they are all unique. When amplified, this may be a good thing or bad thing depending on where you are standing and how close you are to the amp. These peaks can cause additional feedback problems, and dialing back the mix might help reduce feedback. If you are having feedback problems, the first thing to do is reverse the phase. That will often solve the problem until you move to a different position. Level: this has no impact on tone and is only used to set levels between patches so that when you switch patch, the level is not too low or too high. Hope that helps.

This article might be helpful: The Last Word on Class A. It describes different amplifier classes (A, B and AB) and output stage technologies (single-ended and push-pull). The amplifier class and output technology, and whether the amp has a negative feedback loop have a big impact on sag, ripple, bias effect, and bias excursion. Here's a few key takeaways from the article in terms of tone not technology: Fender/Marshall style amplifiers: Use class AB fixed bias, push-pull output stages with a phase inverter and negative feedback loop This makes the amp sound tighter, especially at lower frequencies It generally better for cleaner tones Power supply ripple and noise are canceled because of the push-pull output stage and won't have as much effect. The transition from clean to distorted will be fairly abrupt, and will have more odd-order harmonics which can sound harsher These amps will generally exhibit more sag because of large changes in plate voltage when the amp is overdriven. Some quick notes on preamp vs power amp distortion Preamp distortion is controlled by the amp Drive control. This tends to be be asymmetric (involving cutoff and saturation) and contains a lot of even-order harmonics that sound good. Power amp distortion is controlled by the Master volume. In a class AB, push-pull amplifier, the even-order harmonics will be cancelled causing a somewhat harsher tone. Sag will have a greater compression impact as the Master volume is higher. So you have three volume controls, that behave very differently: 1) Drive that controls the preamp drive and distortion, 2) Master volume with control the volume, distortion, and sag in the power amp, and 3) Level, which just controls the output level and has no impact on tone. Vox style amplifiers: Use cathode biased output tubes and no negative feedback which will generally accentuate sag and bias excursion effects The transition from clean to distorted is smooth and more gradual, providing more control of distortion with the guitar volume control and how you pick So these power amp controls, Master Volume, Sag, Hum, Ripple, Bias and Bias X may be quite different with different amplifiers, and will have little effect if the Master Volume is turned down. This might be why sometimes they don't seem to do anything. Pick an amp with no negative feedback, and run the Master Volume high and these controls will generally have more impact on tone. Regarding the effect of the bias control - whether you bias hot or cold, this will have an impact on how the amp distorts. Bias is used to set the tube's operational point. Under or Hot Biased (lower negative grid voltage): The tube has higher idle current, runs hot, gets more full sounding, then harsh as bias voltage is reduced further, might get muddy at high volumes, shorter tube life, will be noisier, has less crossover notch, saturation distortion occurs earlier (since the tube is already conducting a lot, and pushing the grid more positive pushes closer to saturation). There’s no impact on cutoff distortion (since there's a lot of room to push the grid negative). Over or Cold Biased (higher negative grid voltage): The amp can become sluggish, more crossover distortion but more saturation clean headroom, weaker sounding, can lack sparkle, tubes last longer but amp doesn't respond as well.

I used the acoustic guitar patch described in this blog post Creating a Helix Acoustic Guitar Patch for the first time at a gig last night. I used it with my very old Gibson J50 with an under the saddle pickup. It sounded great. The patch was designed for my Martin 00C15AE, but its in for repair. I had a bit of feedback issues when using the Drive switch for leads. But not enough to get the sound hole cover out. I was probably a bit too close to the PA speaker. The sound was natural, warm and carried well. I would still like to see Line 6 add an acoustic preamp model with tone controls voiced for acoustic instruments, perhaps optimized for acoustic guitar. It would be great if Line 6 could provide some acoustic body images out of the box too. The would really increase the value of Helix, especially when used with a Variax. I would also like to see Line 6 provide a direct out for Variax piezo pickups so we can make better use of IRs with body images. This makes the Variax more flexible and could breath new life into the older variax acoustic 700.

Believe it or not, but I get good results from a Roland AC90 for smaller venues. I go into the stereo line inputs in the back. Its essentially my on-stage guitar monitor, and I like to have it behind me. The only issue with this is that for some reason Roland did not route those stereo line inputs out the XLR outputs. All the circuits are there to support it, but they're not connected. Must have been some design decision, but it escapes me. With all the I/O capabilities of Helix this isn't really an issue. If I need to feed something to the PA, I just use the Helix XLR outputs.

See this blog post: Creating a Helix Electric Guitar Patch. It discusses gain staging for clean, drive, overdrive and distortion using the same amp. I use three footswitches for this (clean is all off). The drive switch controls the low and high cut of a Studio Tube Pre in front of the amp, its gain, and the drive control of the amp. Off is clean, on increases the overall amp drive, and adds some low and high cut to deal with mud and fizz. Overdrive uses a distortion pedal for increased gain. Distortion uses a different distortion pedal with more gain, and more tone voicing to address the increased mud and fizz that comes with added distortion. These switches can be used in combinations too for additional gain and voicing options. Use your guitar volume control for more control and finally leverage all that gain in your hands and how you pick.

I find that the USB 7 direct output volumes are a little lower in output then other interfaces I have. I have to turn S-Gear's Input control all the way up for the guitar to drive the amps properly with Helix. I'm told that the USB 7 direct output is unity gain, so the low input is coming from the guitar, and isn't getting the gain provided by a typical audio interface that has input gain controls. Helix should also provide some input gain controls for direct output so that it can drive computers properly.

Regarding low and hi cut, generally cut bass before distortion and cut treble after distortion. This reduces the mud created by distorted low frequencies that overwhelm the mids and highs. Cutting highs after distortion reduces the ice-pick/fizz. Use gain staging with the amp's Drive control plus one or two distortion pedals to progressively increase the bass and treble cut as the gain increases. Some pedals like the ProCo Rat and Timmy do this automatically. My Drive switch changes the Studio Preamp low and hi cut parameters and changes the Drive level to to go from a clean to a slightly overdriven tone that's derived from the amp without pedals. Set your tones using the neck pickup on your guitar, then back off the bridge pickup tone a bit to adjust for that pickup's extra brightness.

Also Helix 1.06 does not offer any improvements in USB MIDI I/O with El Capitan. Helix audio I/O for El Capitan isn't usable an any more than a few seconds.

You can define your own control surface in Logic Pro X an use Helix to provide MIDI CC or PC messages. Regarding looping, I had the HD500X Looper mode sending MIDI messages to Logic and MainStage to control tracking and looping, using the same footswitches as the HD500X. You can't do that with Helix since the Looper mode doesn't send any MIDI messages. Too bad as it means you can't use the different Helix mode to do different functions with the same footswitches.

I suspect this issue results from jitter in the USB cable that causes the clock to drift when processing both input and output. Helix may be able to address the jitter in software, but it may also be a hardware issue.

I too have had good experiences with Line6 support, having had many Line6 products over the years. In the past, the Line6 products were in the upper end of consumer electronics marketplace. At that market position, and given the nature of change in the amp modeling and digital signal processing fields, I was not surprised to see some quality control issues, and rapid obsolesce; disappointed, but not that surprised. I took it as my own risk in being an early adopter of emerging new technologies. However, Helix is a different story at a different time. First there's the 3X price point compared to the 500X market position. That raises expectations for capability, quality, durability and life-time. Its still not the same as a $3K guitar, but I hope Helix isn't obsolete in a year. Second, the market is different. There's lots of great digital amp modeling solutions out there including Kemper Amps and Axe-FX. Plus there are a number of excellent options for iPad (BIAS FX) and computer (S-Gear) that really rival what is possible in dedicated hardware units. Helix is a big step forward for Line6 and the modeling industry. Let's give them some time to address some of the issues that can only be discovered in practical usage scenarios, fill out the available models (amps and effects), address the Mac OS X USB audio issue, etc. I have faith in Line6 that these problems will be addressed and we will be happy for a long time with our investment in Helix.

If you have nothing to loose, take the pickup out of the guitar, remove the cover and coat the windings with wax. That might fix the pickup. I've done this in the past with good success.

Agreed, I have other class compliant USB devices that work fine in El Capitan. Helix also works fine if its used for output only. I only degrades if used for input and output.

I didn't find that too useful with my variax acoustic 700. It was like playing through two bodies and sounded worse. I really wish the variax had a direct piezo output so we could use these body images as intended. It would really breath new life into an otherwise unused instrument. I use the 700 for live gigs for many years. But with Helix and the body images I've created in Helix, I now use my old Gibson J50 with a piezo and get a fantastic tone. Line 6 should really pay attention to acoustic instruments with Helix by 1) providing an acoustic amplifier with tone controls voiced appropriately for acoustic instruments, and 2) providing some built in body images.

I set the rate to exp 2, with min and max set to match typical Leslie speaker speeds: .7RPM and 7.4RPM. Keep the intensity conservative, around 4-6 depending on the song needs - this is an effect that can wash out a song if its over used. I like Chorus mode the most. Lamp bias around 3 so it feels reasonably symmetric, and natural. Mix to taste, but I keep it around 50%. Less is more with most effects and really applies to this one. I had the original, used it for years. Wish I had kept it.

Try using a compressor with a very fast attack. But try different picks too. Thicker picks with rounder points will provide warmer, darker tones and more control. Thin sharp picks are very bright and floppy. I never use them. I really like V picks. The key to good guitar tone starts and ends with things that touch the air - your fingers, string, picks and pickups on the source end, and the speaker, cabinet and mic on the destination end. If these aren't right, there's not a lot you can do between them to recover.

There's still some problems with Helix USB audio with Mac OS X. 10.11.3 came out today, but made no change. Using Helix as an audio interface with both input and output into apps like Logic Pro X or S-Gear standalone (probably the new BIAS FX Standalone too) works fine for a few minutes, but degrades quickly into digital distortion hell. Hopefully this will be addressed in the next Helix firmware update. Its not usable as it is. Windows 10 is better, but still gets clicks and pops on pretty high buffer size/latency settings. I don't get these with other interfaces.

There's still some problems with Helix USB audio with Mac OS X. 10.11.3 came out today, but made no change. Using Helix as an audio interface with both input and output into apps like Logic Pro X or S-Gear standalone (probably the new BIAS FX Standalone too) works fine for a few minutes, but degrades quickly into digital distortion hell. Hopefully this will be addressed in the next Helix firmware update. Its not usable as it is. Windows 10 is better, but still gets clicks and pops on pretty high buffer size/latency settings. I don't get these with other interfaces.

Perhaps the reason for disabling the volume control when using the camera connection kit for USB audio is that it is expected the device is controlling the volume, and the iOS device is delivering a standard (near 0dBFS) signal to the device. Using the iOS device volume control send a less than optimal signal to the device, as well as be a redundant control.

struggled getting a tone that I really liked out of the HD500X. I spent many hours scowering forums and tweeking, and managed to get something useful for live gigs. It was OK, but not something I loved. Then I tried S-Gear from www.scuffhamamps.com. My experience was completely different. Every setting on every amp just sounded wonderful and I found myself wanting to play and seldom tweeking. Different tone were't better or worse, but rather different in an inspiring way. And it wasn't just the tones, it was the flexibility of the amp models that allow many tones out of the same amp, and how the amps feel when you play them. To sum it up, S-Gear was just more musical and inspiring and didn't require endless tweeking. I never used the HD500X at home to just play for the fun of it, always S-Gear. Helix is much more like S-Gear in terms of tone and feel. Yes, there's still some tweeking, especially in the Cab and IR models. But the tones are there, the feel is there, and you can spend more time playing music and less time thinking you're just one tweek away from the tone you're looking for, but never get ther. Also Helix effects are totally different that HD500X. They sound much better and are a lot easier to dial in.