DunedinDragon

Exactly!!! It's hard to gauge what he's after without some reference. What surprises me in all of this discussion is there's been no mention (unless I missed it) of what amp model, cab/IR, and mic(s) he's using. If you start with the wrong stuff you're never going to get where you want to be. The term "tweaking" means to do some precise and relatively isolated changes to an already good foundation of tone. If you're trying to change the sound to something dramatically different then you may have started off with the wrong foundation blocks.

Actually the type of naming convention used for Windows .DLLs was replaced many years ago in the 90's with the preferred method of using a GUID (Globally Unique Identifier) which is a 128 bit unique integer number associated with a resource. This is on Windows but other systems use something similar called a UUID (Universally Unique Identifier). These are used to address the exact types of problems you're describing and are somewhat of an industry standard way of doing dynamically loaded resources. The way this works in Windows is you have a human understandable name which is used for reference, but the system converts this (through the registry in windows) to it's associated GUID which points it to the specific resource to load. There's a significant amount of programming within the operating system to ensure no two resources could point to the same GUID and it depends on everyone playing nice in the GUID world when resources get installed and that registry entries don't get corrupted. The advantage to this type of approach would be that all that has to be stored with the patch is the 128 bit integer, from there it could find the appropriate resource. The question is, how much would this type of architecture affect the available DSP and not steal from other more important aspects of FX and amp processing?

The only thing that occurs to me here is the type of FRFR speaker you were using for building the patches, and the volume you built them at. Fletcher-Munson doesn't mean you need to tweak things are window shattering volumes. 100db is more than adequate to get the feel for how the patches will sound live, so that may have had some weird affect on how you set up your EQ in the patches. The only other thing that occurs to me might possibly be the PA. Older big passive speaker style PA's run off of a centralized main amp would likely have a very different frequency response profile than more modern FRFR style PA speakers. What's confusing to me in this situation is how the patches would come out sounding thin, dull and lifeless. If anything in either of the two cases above, they should have been more "boomy". Of course thin can mean different things to different people. To some being mid-heavy would be considered thin, which would be the case if you cut too much off of the low end. What type of FRFR speaker did you build the patches on, and what type of PA speakers were they using? Also what type of amp models and cabs were you using on your patches. This is quite mysterious......

I can only tell you how I approached it. For the most part the tones I'm normally in need of tend to be somewhat Fender-ish, British, some heavier rock, and something for Gretsch finger-picking ala Chet Atkins. I came down to using four different packages. The Mesa package (which is free), the Fender DeLuxe single 12", the Vox Dual 12", and the Marshall 4x12. This pretty much covers all the basics I think I'll need as each package comes with a wide variety of speaker, mic, mic placement, and mic mixes. So far these have worked out pretty well. From what I've uncovered so far, the Vox 2x12 may be one of my most used packages due to it's versatility with different amp configurations.

Not all IRs are the same as I've recently discovered. I stayed away from IRs for quite a while because I didn't see any real significant difference, until I tried the Ownhammers and had access to a much wider range of mic and mic'ing techniques that were used for capture. This is consistent with my experience in studios where multiple mics are used to produce the more realistic acoustic presence and sound of live cabinets. I'd suggest, if you haven't done so already, get your hands on the free Mesa IR package from Ownhammer and try out several of the various mic mixes. I suspect you'll find the difference you're looking for.

I guess I'm still mystified by the amount of IRs people are using. I understand if you use someone else's presets that are dependent on an IR, that you would have to keep that one loaded. But why would you actually keep an entire set of presets loaded if you're only using a few of them? Maybe I don't get it because I only use presets I build, but it still seems kind of excessive. I honestly can't even imagine the situation where I would actually need 128 slots, much less more than that.

This reminds me of the old joke about the guy that goes to the doctor and says, "doc, it hurts when I do this...", the doctor says "don't do that!" Honestly, why do you need so many IR's? Just because you can? I play a very wide range of genres with different types of guitars and I have a total of 4 IR's that satisfy all of my needs across a variety of amp configurations. One 1x12 configuration, one 2x12 configuration and two 4x12 configurations. It sounds to me like the problems you're running into are self-inflicted... Even if I decide to eventually expand this, I'll audition IR's till I find one I like, then I'll add it to it's permanant slot, rename, and save it starting with the slot number it goes in. My patches are mapped to a slot number, so that's all that's necessary.

Here's the problem you have. The Helix is dependent upon whatever output mechanism you choose to direct it through. If you design your patch on one type of setup such as studio monitors or headphones, then play it back through a different system such as an amplifier and cabinet, there are going to be any number of differences between the amp and cab models you used at home and the amp and cabinet being used at the tuning room. You could possibly try to modify the patch with EQ, but that's something you'd have to do by ear. No one is really going to be able to tell you exactly how to modify the patch to get you where you it sounds right. That's just through experimentation and your ears.

I think you're heading down the right track moving to some form of FRFR setup as that will allow you to get the most out of your Helix setup. I've been a long time user of modeling technology and the Helix is where I'm going to be hanging my hat for quite some time, so I'll try to capture a few of the lessons I've learned that may be helpful to you. You're right in saying that your wallet will take an initial hit in order to get a decent rig setup. It's not just the expense of the Helix, but a decent FRFR speaker can be a significant expense on top of that. I personally use a Yamaha DXR12 as my speaker choice My primary reason was that it seemed to match up best to the frequency response profile found on most decent PA systems. In my opinion the point of this kind of rig is to have a high degree of confidence that what you're hearing on stage is what the audience will hear through the PA. That can be a problem for some people because they've never experienced it. Even with a traditional amp rig, once you mic the sound in the cabinet the sound the audience will hear something very different than what you're hearing. So it can sometimes take a little experimentation to find a sound you want in an FRFR setup due to the increased frequency response profile of these speakers. For quite some time I followed the philosophy of using the Global EQ settings to hi cut the highs and low cut the lows to confine the response to be more like what you'd get from a traditional cabinet. This works okay, but I still found myself doing a lot of final adjustments in my patches using the 10 band equalizer to get the sound presentable to my ears. I recently discovered I can get past almost all of this tweaking using the right kind of IR's. I tried several but the only ones that seemed to really do a good job of this were the Ownhammer IRs. This is because each Ownhammer IR comes with a large range of individual IRs that were captured with a variety of mic setups. One of the key things to getting a good tone on stage or in a studio out of a traditional cabinet is the placement of the mic or mics and the type of mics that are used. For the sound most pleasing to my ear on Fender Deluxe cab and the Vox cab IR's I found the SP2-5 mix configuration which is a special mic configuration by Scott Peterson placed about midway out on the speaker cone to be the right one. On the Marshall and Mesa cabinet IR's I preferred the OH1-5 which is the mix of an SM-57 and a Royer 121 ribbon mic placed midway out on the cone. But this is one of those things you'd need to judge for yourself. The net effect of this was that I got a much more realistic tone for my patches without having to do much modification with EQ, if at all, and cuts my time for building patches in half. I would strongly urge you to use whatever FRFR speaker you intend to use on stage at stage volume when deciding which IR to use and for setting up your patches. Otherwise you could get a rude awakening when you show up for a gig at gig volumes. I still use Global EQ to hi cut signals above 8000 hz and I have my speaker setup up to cut lows at around 125hz as that is where most PA's commonly cut for guitars. I also use the higher density IR's (2048) even though they tend to cost more DSP memory, but are MUCH more precise, realistic and effective. As far as building patches, everyone is different. Because I play a very wide range of styles as well as guitars I build patches for each song. That may not be necessary in your case if you tend to stick to a more limited set of genres and one guitar. If you do find you need multiple patches it's a good idea to get a sound meter so you can normalize the volumes between patches. As I mentioned I build my patches at stage volume through my stage setup. I target 100db on the sound meter with my Helix master volume set at mid point and the speaker volume at mid point as well. This helps ensure I have plenty of headroom if I need to turn up my master volume for some venue, and that all of my patches will be turned up an equal amount. I use different patches for different guitars because the output of the guitars can have a significant effect on the overall volume and sound of a patch. One very important thing to understand about traditional FRFR speakers is the tone you hear can vary quite a bit depending on placement. FRFR speakers aren't meant to be listened to in very close proximity because of the way they're engineered. I try to stand back about 5 feet from the speaker when evaluating my patches and I ensure I place my speaker away from me about 4 or 5 feet. FRFR speakers also don't radiate sound in the same way as a traditional cabinet. They are designed for a tighter cone of projection with no sound projection to the rear and off to the sides, so it may be useful to angle the speaker on stage so the rest of the band can hear it better if you don't send your guitar through the monitor system. That's about all I can think of right now. But good luck and enjoy your new adventures in modeling.

As I understand it, the power amp in on the Spider Valve simply drives the signal through the tube amp portion of the amp. Therefore all you need is an output cabinet. But it sounds like all you have is the amp head and no cabinet. Regardless, I'm still not sure what you mean by the same sound as the "tuning room". Maybe you just need to start at the beginning and read through the basic documentation a bit so you can help us understand what you're asking, because there are a LOT of different answers here depending on what it is you're trying to do. If you simply want to create the sound of a Twin Reverb amp and speaker, all you technically need is a Twin Reverb amp and cabinet block. The same with a Marshall or any other amp. You can use headphones to hear them. The amp block contains all the EQ controls of the original amp along with gain and volume controls.

It's very hard to understand what you're trying to do based on your description. I'm not sure what purpose the HD 100 is serving in this case, and it's not clear if you have any signal being directed through the Helix. You said you have the Helix plugged into the Marshall "power amp", but exactly where is your guitar plugged in? Is it plugged into the HD 100 or the Helix? Most people in your situation are either using the 4CM approach or going direct into the Helix and then into the power amp of amplifier. Without understanding what you're doing it's hard to give you any ideas on how to get you where you want to be.

Yeah, I bought their HiWatt and tried it out. Fewer choices means fewer capture options. I found I definitely prefer multiple mic captures as far as sounding more realistic through my rig. And I got that with the Ownhammers.

For the most part I let my speaker and PA take care of the low cut as their hipass filters are set at 125hz, which is about right for me. Other than that I do have a global cut at 8000 hz, but if I have to tweak things at the high end I put a 10 band eq as my last block and adjust it to taste. It seems to make a much more natural response curve than just a hi-cut would do. I'm using a Yamaha DXR12 as my FRFR speaker by the way. I've also found that I have to do a LOT less tweaking now that I started using some of the Ownhammer IR's rather than the stock cabs.

I'm pretty much the same as the OP in that I rarely use the Helix app. I do the VAST majority of my preset building and adjustment through the UI. The only reason I ever pull up the editor is to do hard disk operations such as saving/restoring or loading IR's. This speaks volumes about how functional the U/I is in my opinion. Every once in a while I'll get stumped on something but I can usually quickly resolve it with the cheat sheet. Personally I think you're taking a big chance relying on the Editor app if you play live. You don't want to be trying to figure out the Helix U/I in the middle of a performance.

I may eventually end up doing something like that, but I'm very early in the process of picking just one version of each IR that best matches what I would intend to use it for. I guess I'm mostly concerned about keeping it manageable given what people were going through in the last upgrade. At this point I'm going to see if I can achieve everything I need to achieve with just one mix of the 1x12 Deluxe cab, 2x12 Vox cab, 4x12 Mesa cab, and 4x12 Marshall cab. I may end up with additional mixes of the IR's on each of the cabs, but for now I'd like to limit it for convenience sake.

That's assuming you want to load all the IR's, which I don't. I want to audition them to find out which one's I want to load.

You've probably already found the best amp model for pedals in the HiWatt. In fact that was one of the main features of the amp originally that made it so popular. It also does a great "edge of breakup" crunch sound. As far as IRs, I'm finally becoming a believer on them once I discovered Ownhammer IRs. The only downside is each of the Ownhammer IRs comes with a very wide variety of mic placements and mixes and you have to spend a bit of time figuring out which ones work best for you. The best way I found to do this was set up a simple patch in which uses just an amp and IR slot 128. I would then work my way through each of the variations of the IRs loading them against different amps to find the one that most pleased my ears and responded well to that amp. Once I did that I loaded it into a more permanent lower slot.

Fortunately, as computers go, Helix is a relatively simple one. No need to worry about exotic video graphic drivers or high end sound cards. Just fairly simple computational stuff for the most part. The mechanical stuff...well that's always a risk. But when it comes to digital equipment, it's always been FAR more reliable than analog stuff in my 40+ years of experience. One wrong bump in the road and there goes a tube or a reverb. Most digital stuff I've had seems to not be as affected by such things and have been workhorses.

I suspect he's probably already had a lot of experience in using IR's. Plus he seems to be very particular about the placement (which I don't blame him on that). The Helix cabs only allow you to modify distance which sometimes isn't enough.

Excellent tip!!! I just did this with three different presets using three different amp models and cabs and it certainly makes a nice difference in the polish of the tone. I noticed it mostly on the pick attack where it seemed to level it out and remove some of the harshness. Also much better blending of the chord itself without losing articulation. I basically put it just in front of the amp and moved the volume up to match the volume of the patch and, voila, instant creamy response. Thanks for the tip!!

I've always suspected this might relate to the design of certain amps that have different channels and each channel has it's own volume and the amp has a volume setting, so it's necessary to have them in order to model the circuit correctly. Most of the amps have the master volume set to 10 by default which would tell me it doesn't have a separate master volume. But certain amps, like a J45, has a master volume that isn't maxed out at 10, which tells me it's part of the original circuitry and has some impact on the tone. By and large, if the default master volume on the amp defaults to 10 I just leave it alone. I only adjust ones that don't default to 10. As far as I can tell, channel volume does seem to have some impact on certain amps, and probably on all. For example a Fender Deluxe gets considerably more crunchy the higher the channel volume goes, whereas there seems to be no impact other than pure volume when I adjust the output block volume. I also like the idea the output block volume is set in db, which helps with the precision I'm looking for when matching volume levels.

I've used the same methodology for normalizing my patches on every modeler I've had. The techniques have sometimes changed because of the features offered by the modeler, but the approach never varies. I use a standard DB Meter. I tried using ones that are offered for smartphones, but they aren't as responsive as actual physical devices that can respond up to 130+ decibels. I leave my Helix Master Volume knob at 50%, and my DXR12 FRFR speaker at 50%. This leaves me plenty of headroom for adjustment before I come anywhere close to digital clipping. The drive and channel volumes (and master volume although I never tend to adjust that from defaults) are used for tone more than volume. I personally like to use the volume adjustment on the output block to ensure I'm not affecting the underlying tone. I originally started using the volume adjustment on the cabinets, but found that was problematic if I was using dual cabinets. I get the tone basically where I want it first, then I target an average of 100db on the sound meter with my settings where I stated before. When I build patches I NEVER touch the Helix Master Volume or the Volume on my FRFR speaker. By and large I do all of this by ear and then check things at the end with the sound meter for finer adjustments. Once I get to the gig I may make minor adjustments during rehearsal or sound checks with the Helix Master Volume, but I still never touch the volume on my FRFR speaker. My powered speaker has a built-in limiter as many powered speakers do nowdays, so I do everything I can to leave headroom so that doesn't get engaged.

Quite honestly I could care less what the major guys are using. It has little to do with me. I'm a working musician that plays every week and has to move, maintain, and setup my own rig. Personally I think all the hub bub about who's playing what is nothing more than hero worship and is simply a distraction from doing and using what makes sense for you to produce the best live or recorded music you can in the most efficient and effective way you can. As far as having "your" tone, I might remind you that some of the bigger acts you probably grew up listening to produced "their" sound various different ways in the studio. Although Joe Walsh sounds similar throughout his career, he's used a multitude of different setups on different songs with a mixture of amps, cabinets, and mic'ing techniques. Many times on different cuts on the same album. Same with Pete Townsend and Keith Richards. Granted most of these guys weren't that meticulous with their traveling rigs...but some have historically been such as Joe Perry with Aerosmith. Personally I feel you have nothing to lose by being that meticulous in your setups nowdays because of technology like the Helix. The way I look at it not all cleans, crunchy, or overdriven tones are the same. Otherwise we wouldn't have all the amps and cabinets we have on the market. For most of us working musicians we had "our" sound historically due to the single amp we had. That's really no longer the case.

Do you happen to know if the phantom power issue that was reported prior to the 2.0 release was fixed or is it still potentially harmful to the Helix?

I'm with everyone else here in thinking you should start over and just reset to factory defaults. That should clear up any weird stuff in terms of input and output. After that, start with just a basic signal chain with just an amp+cab block (leave all the default settings) and output it through your HS8 monitors. Don't add anything before or after in the signal chain and maybe cycle through a few different basic amp+cab combos. Leave all the default settings in place and see what happens. If it's still really bad I'd contact Line 6 support because I think that pretty much indicates some issue with your Helix.