DunedinDragon

I came down to this decision when I decided to get a second Helix unit as a backup to my Floor as well as being a dedicated studio unit. I almost went for the LT, but the lack of variety and number of inputs/outputs along with a dedicated headphone volume control swayed it to get a second Floor unit. And boy am I glad I did. There's simply no comparison as far as versatility for integrating different things with the Floor or Rack's additional I/O and I can't count the number of times I needed it.

Logically it seems like it might work, however the issue with DSP limits is all about latency and you'd still be accumulating DSP latency plus communications latency even across two Helix units that were daisy chained. But who knows? I don't think I'd want to invest in, nor cart around two Helix units plus a MIDI controller to manage the two of them just to find out if it works. I'd just opt for more efficient use of my presets.

To me the key ingredient in that tone is the mellow mid-range which comes down to the guitar being used. Highly doubtful that's from a single coil, but my guess would be it's more likely something along the lines of the 335 with humbuckers. It's not as clean as one might think as it has a bit of a breakup when the guitar player digs in. With the right type of guitar I think the sound is very achievable with a number of amp, cab and mic configurations. I'd probably start with the HiWatt and definitely a R121 ribbon mic in the mix and maybe a mix with a dynamic mic of some sort. I'd have to experiment with speakers to find the right sound. Then the effects to top it off, but that's the easy part if you get all the other elements right.

Unless you have ears like a bat I doubt you or anyone else could seriously tell the difference between the two as far as tone or even loudness. However, coverage might be a different matter. I was using a QSC CP8 for a while and went to a K.10 as my monitor and there was a big difference as far as the overall presence or "size" of the sound at the same volume level. That made a big difference in how well I heard it on stage. I will say the K10.2 that I use now is maybe the best stage monitor I've ever used, and I'm comparing that to Yamaha DXR12's that everyone else in the band uses as their stage monitors. But that's really due to the difference in how QSC tends to be more "in your face" with it's tones than does the Yamaha which is a bit more musical. In my case my K10 is a dedicated floor monitor. in the case of the Yamaha DXR12, those are shared monitors. For that reason alone based on my experience I might recommend the K12.2 if you're talking about shared monitors.

That might be something useful if you're just a bedroom player, but to me it spells disaster if you intend to play live. It seems like it would deceive you into believing you have a good tone which would dissipate into a nasty mess once you put it through a PA. If you look at a Fletcher Munson curve you can also easily see it's not a static transformation. It changes incrementally as the volume goes up. In order to do that correctly you would have to be able to monitor the actual volume in the room to make those corrections which is outside the scope of what Helix or any modeler is designed to do.

Here's the bottom line difference between choosing a FRFR style powered speaker or something like a powercab. For most people the powercab provides a more traditional on stage amp experience whereas any FRFR style powered speaker provides more of an audience experience through the PA. Those are really the bottom line differences so it really depends on what your needs are. In my case 90% of my usage is on a live stage and it's important to me to hear what my audience will be hearing when I'm dialing in presets because my entire band all goes direct to the PA without any on stage amps so I don't even own any real amps or cabinets. I only own FRFR style powered speakers other than the studio monitors I use in my studio. I will tell you that getting a good representation of how your presets will sound in a live environment will be just as expensive as the powercab. There's a very good reason why the Headrush 108 is cheaper...it's missing some importnant stuff that you'll find in the more premium level speakers like EV, JBL, Yamaha and QSC. That may not be important to you, but if it's an accurate representation it will be more expensive because, like anything in life, you get what you pay for.

That's very true and that's why I go to such great lengths to measure my output signal levels on every patch so that on a typical mixing board it will almost always read at just below unity at mic level and full volume on my Helix volume knob, and I never adjust that for different boards. That ensures a consistent analog signal level at the board on all my presets, and they can adjust that however they want to from there. But the one thing I won't do is adjust my internal patch levels or global levels on the Helix....that's where problems can undoubtedly begin to bite you.

I'm not sure we're talking the same thing. The measurement being used at the input level on all digital consoles is always analog when receiving a signal through an XLR or 1/4" input, and that's what you're adjusting when you turn the trim/gain knob on any channel. Both the QSC and Soundcraft systems as well as probably several others provide a digital signal level adjustment inside the workings of the console that can be used to further adjust the signal post analog to digital conversion, but in all cases it always peaks out at the same analog signal measurement which tells me they limit how high the digital signal level is allowed to go for exactly the reasons you're talking about as far as digital signal limits. Just like the Helix, there's an upper limit allowed on the digital signal level, but that doesn't stop you from increasing your analog output post D/A conversion using the Helix volume knob beyond what a receiving A/D would be able to safely convert. So somewhere they have to place a limit. I'm sure that's the same logic being used on powered speakers which implement a limiter in their circuitry between the incoming analog signal you adjust on the speaker's gain knob and the internal digital signal being used by the bi-amps and DSP processors.

I think there's a problem in the realities of modern digital mixers in some of your assumptions. I know for an absolute fact because I've seen it now on QSC Touchmix and Soundcraft UI digital mixers that an arbitrary built in limiter comes into play on any channel where the signal hits around 8 or 10 db above unity. I assume that's to avoid the possible damaging effects of digital overmodulation, but it's there nonetheless. I can't attest to it on all digital mixers, but those particular two I have direct experience with. So in the case of someone gain staging a signal above unity, they won't be getting 6db of boost depending on where the signal is trimmed to. There's no problem on these consoles with a 6db boost or even peaks as long as it's intermittent and the main signal level is at or below unity.

There really isn't much you can do about how each soundman gain stages your signal. That's why I'm pretty conservative about how much I boost my signal level when it comes to leads. As long as I'm sending a consistent signal level on every song and that signal level boosts slightly (maybe +2 or +3db) on leads, I've done all I can do. Like you, we generally tend to run our own PA most of the time, and I try to gain stage all the signals on every channel at a consistent level just below unity and let the faders do the work of where that instrument or voice needs to sit in the mix. Once I've done that I never have to touch a fader at all during any performance. But the truth is, once you're on someone else's board all bets are off and you just have to trust them with the FOH mix. As long as I'm getting a good stage mix through my stage monitor (which I do have input on), I've just come to terms with any soundman that wants to gain stage my signal differently is just going to have to drink his own poison. If that means he has to ride the fader all night then so be it.

Personally I think guitar players have gotten too used to using pedals/footswitches to do a lot of things that could easily be accomplished with changes in playing technique or using the controls on the guitar which is why soundmen get frustrated trying to keep them where they need to be in the mix. It also accounts for why people keep running out of DSP on their Helix patches.

I think part of the problem you're having is caused from having too much stage sound which confuses things when you're dealing with a mixer. The truth is you don't need a lot of stage sound with the tools we have nowadays. Once you go ampless on stage and simply use good floor monitors or in ears you'd be surprised how easy it is to manage the stage volume and mix separate from the FOH volume which results in MUCH better management of your personal mix on stage while allowing the soundman to better craft the FOH mix. My leads are maybe boosted 2 or 3 db and work fine both on stage as well as for the audience. My floor monitor is mixed with my guitar level boosted slightly over what is sent to the audience and works fine live with no interaction from the board.

I have two Helix floor units. One is in my studio and that's attached to a fairly powerful desktop unit with a 23" screen primarily for working with Ableton Live, Kontakt and some other screen hog programs. I also use that system for designing drum tracks for the Beat Buddy which is used with my live performance Helix. In my live setup area where I do most of my dialing in of patches, practice and rehearsal I use a 10 year old high end gaming laptop with a 17" screen which I previously used for video editing. Neither has a touchscreen as I prefer using a mouse. The reality is I only rarely use HX Edit on either computer on the Helix. I generally prefer to dial in my tones using the hardware interface rather than HX Edit since that's what I'd have to use were I to need to make modifications to any patches at a live event. in the studio I do use the Helix as my primary sound card and audio interface on in my live rehearsal area I typically use the laptop for configuring my Morningstar MC8 MIDI controller setup and managing backups, imports, exports and firmware updates on the Helix but it's typically connected to my mixer through the XLR output directly from my Helix. I also have the two computers networked together so I can easily share files and printers between the two computers. Both computers also have Ableton Live and Kontakt loaded and used on them.

Thanks rd2rk!! I know exactly what you're talking about. To make things even more challenging in that regard, I'm brand new to Ableton, Kontakt and even my experience with the MC8 is only about 4 months old so I'm swimming in ignorance with a lot of these tools. I also believe I uncovered a bug in the Helix as it pertains to inconsistent triggering of snapshots via MIDI. That one kept me scratching my head for a day or two.....

I've recently mentioned this system a few times over the last couple of months while I've been working on it, and this is the weekend we go live with it...at least for a few songs. I knew there's a few in here that have put together some pretty impressive rigs, so there might be something in my effort someone might appreciate and learn from. I know I learned a lot building it. First some history. After the COVID lockdown the band I was in for about 10 years went from 7 member down to 2, so we went into the process of pretty much rebuilding from the ground up. The two members were myself (lead guitar) and the drummer. I was able to recruit a bass player and his wife who is a singer. But in order to be able to bring over more of our traditional material we needed more than just bass and guitar. Fortunately the drummer is a decent guitar player, singer and a good front man so he left the drums behind and became our acoustic guitar player and singer along with the other three of us in the group. We elected to replace the drums with a Beat Buddy which I ran via MIDI from the Helix with custom drum tracks for each song which were coordinated with my presets for each song. But it was always in my mind we could do an even better job taking greater advantage of some of the amazing tools available on the market and the following is the result of my studying and experimentation for developing a system that can be used to incorporate any type of additional instruments into any song and will automate and coordinate all of the instruments and their settings both live and recorded during any song with no intervention from anyone other than starting the song via a single MIDI command from a footswitch. Excuse the messy picture, but that's basically what the live rig looks like, but the diagram will be easier to describe what's going on here. The core of the system is based on an Ableton Live system using a number of available high quality samples from actual instruments in a studio. I use the session view of Ableton to organize four tracks for each song. There is an Audio track containing the additional instruments for the song, an outbound MIDI control track over USB to the Morningstar MC8 for coordinating actions on the Helix and on the BeatBuddy during the course of the song, an inbound MIDI track over USB for commands from the MC8 to Ableton used to select the correct song and play it, and an internal MIDI command track to send commands to Ableton to stop playback of all tracks when the song ends. The net effect on stage is I simply select the appropriate bank on the MC8 for the song we're going to play, which automatically coordinates the correct Ableton scene, the correct Helix Preset, and the correct drum song on the BeatBuddy. I then have a single footswitch on the MC8 that launches the song. From that point all of the stage actions on that song will be automated so when I get to the part for a lead or tone change for a bridge or chorus, it's all done automatically and switched back when the lead or chorus ends. I literally just concentrate on playing the song and never touch a footswitch. The most common question is, what's the difference between this and just using a backing track? The real answer is there is a lot of our material that doesn't need any additional instruments and we can do a fine job with just the Helix and the BeatBuddy as we've been doing. In that I still have the option of running a song manually with footswitches on the MC8. Actually I could use an Ableton track to automate those sequences as well, but there are also a number of songs where we might have long interludes that might vary in length such as talking with the audience during a song or a break where a singer or singers or bass player or myself might be doing something special without any other instruments playing, so we need to have the ability adapt on stage live to those situations. I guess that's about all I can think of for now, but I'll be happy to discuss any details anyone is interested in if you have them.

Oops...one thing I meant to mention. Don't worry about the sound guy tweaking for the room. That has nothing to do with your channel on the mixer. If he's doing it correctly he's adjusting the final output of all channels because adjusting for the room (what's referred to as RTA...Real Time Analysis) applies equally across all instruments and voices in that space.

Since getting my Helix about 7 years ago I've exclusively used typical higher end live powered speakers such as Yamaha DXR12, QSC K10.2, QSC CP8 and EV ZLX-12P both as floor monitors in live performances and for dialing in my patches at home. They all have slight differences, but all are very accurate and usable and have always been a good match for live FOH systems that are quality modern systems whether traditional setups or line arrays. The trick is in setting them up and using them correctly in a home environment. I also have a separate studio setup with Yamaha HS7 speakers but I rarely dial in my live guitar tone on them. They're specifically used for studio work. These types of live speakers are built to do a very different job than what studio monitors do. Studio monitors are designed for close in listening from a listener in a fixed position whereas these type of speakers are designed for filling a big and wide space across a lot of users and the higher end speakers have DSP customizations that can account for the differences in how they'll be used whether as floor monitors or main audience speakers as well as other customized applications. You need to take theses things into account both at home when dialing in patches and in live use as to how they'll be placed and used in order to get the best results. All of these type of speakers have a limited vertical sound radius and a very wide horizontal sound radius when placed in an upright position, and just the opposite in a monitor position. The reason for this is so sound energy won't be wasted projection sound into ceilings and floors but rather contained within the audience space for greater efficiency. They also use a bi-amp design where one amp is dedicated to the speaker and the other for the high end driver for the horns. Wattage has very little to do with loudness so forget about the wattage rating (which can be very deceptive), but focus on the SPL ratings which are specific to actual sound production. At home I use a single speaker in an upright position placed at roughly chest height. I maintain a distance of at least 6 feet from the speaker in order to allow the sound from the high end horn driver and speaker to blend, and I'll typically listen from various positions in the room at a loudness of around 90 or 95 dbSPL which overcomes the human ear Fletcher-Munson effects. I have the setup on the speakers set for live performance but I do apply the built-in high pass filter used for bypassing subwoofers which is typically 100 to 125hz. That helps to isolate and identify the lower guitar frequencies that will be most problematic in a live performance. I also only set this speaker's gain knob at unity or 12 o'clock as that better ensures I won't inadvertently engage the speaker's built-in limiter with a signal that's too strong. Although I prefer to use the DXR12 for dialing in my tones at home, I prefer the QSC speakers for my personal live stage monitor as they have a bit more of an "in your face" punch as monitors which better separates my guitar from the other stage monitors which are DXR12's. In all cases for floor monitors I employ the 125hz high pass filters in order to avoid any bass coupling with the floor. I also use DXR's for front speakers if I'm not using our line array as they have the most musically appealing tone.

I think we can safely refer to this as a "Walking Dead" thread.

I think you could more easily do the same thing without sacrificing use of the footswitches within the presets by simply using an external MIDI controller to be your "Directory" and select whatever style of preset you need for any given song.

There are a number of us actively using MIDI for various purposes in here, but a lot depends on the complexity of the MIDI transactions you'll be wanting to do in coordinating with the Axe fx. The Helix is a fairly simple MIDI controller when compared to the more robust dedicated MIDI controllers on the market. For example it might be possible to coordinate scenes with snapshots (I'm just guessing), but you'll likely run into problems if you want a single interaction (button push) with the Helix to result in multiple MIDI transactions with another MIDI device as it's not really designed to do such things. I can only guess at this point since I'm not familiar with the Axe FX MIDI implementation. From what you're describing it may be more reasonable to use a MIDI controller to simultaneously control both the Helix and the Axe FX. When I was using my Helix to control and coordinate my actions on the Helix with a BeatBuddy all worked very well, but began to get unwieldy and pretty much impossible once I added additional devices I needed to coordinate together and ended up buying a Morningstar MC8 MIDI controller which has a MUCH wider range of possible MIDI actions that can be combined into one stomp interaction and sent to multiple devices. As I said there are a number of very proficient MIDI folks here so I'd start simple and try mapping out a specific single interaction you'd like to achieve between the Helix and the Axe such as coordinating the selection of a Helix preset with the loading of an Axe scene. There are instantaneous commands that can be triggered by the loading of a preset in the Command Center and sent to an external device such as the Axe. Start there and get a feel for how it might work for you.

What you have to come to grips with is the Helix is a modeler which means it's simulating the actual circuitry of the amps and effects, therefore you encounter all the same things you would encounter if you were dealing with two different amps with different effects in the signal chain. Two different amps will have two different circuits and often two different responses to the way they're setup and how they handle external effects and therefore two different ways you have to go about leveling their output while maintaining the tone depending on all sorts of factors such as gain, tone stacks, pre effects, post effect, etc. The good news in all of this is that the Helix has added a signal meter that all you have to do is select the output block and you can get a sense of where your signal output appears to be. For the most part I've found 60 or 65% on the meter seems to be about the right levels to shoot for and should come out to be roughly equal in volume other than perceived volume which may need to be adjusted. I don't find it all that hard but I've gotten used to it over the last 6 years and I'm sure you'll get used to accounting for it as well as you build your presets and snapshots. I personally spend most of my time getting the basic setting of the amp dialed in with the basic tone I want at the volume I want and then try to make adjustment to the rest of the blocks as I add them so the amp and cabs remain fairly consistent, but everyone probably approaches this differently.

Ultimately, it wouldn't do any good if you did get FRFR speakers that would match your DT770's since you're going to be playing live through a PA system and NONE of them will are going to sound like your DT770s. That's why getting a FRFR speaker that's consistent with what PA's use is the most accurate way of getting your sound where you want it to be...and that's not for you, that's for the audience.

You probably wouldn't want a preset for each verse, chorus etc. Presets tend to be more applicable to songs or a group of songs, and within a preset you might have snapshots for verse, chorus, solo, etc. Presets would define all the things you will need such as the amp model, cab, overdrives, reverb, delay, chorus, EQ etc. You can then change the settings of those things on the fly with snapshots.

Although I do keep everything on a large pedalboard, it's technically not necessary as the only thing I ever interact with on stage is my MIDI controller. I could easily place everything else anywhere that's convenient on or off stage. Over the last couple of years my band has transitioned from a traditional setup with amps on stage to everyone connecting directly to the mixing board and depending on high quality FRFR stage monitors and using small MIDI or preamp pedals. This has dramatically changed our stage footprint and may be the direction you want to examine as this is becoming more and more prominent as more people turn to modeling preamps. As rd2rk mentioned above there are a wide array of very powerful MIDI controllers on the market all of which would likely be able to manage your equipment with just a little planning and investment of time.

Nothing special at all in turning the Helix on or off. There's no standby state. The only time it's vulnerable to problems is when it's going through an update procedure and there are recovery methods for that.