DunedinDragon

Well that or read and follow the directions explicitly in the release notes...your choice.

Well, that's because 2.71 didn't incorporate a big architectural change in the core Helix code that is the hallmark of what 2.8 is all about. If you compare the release notes and installation instructions for 2.7 and 2.8 you'll see a VAST difference in the process. You'll also see a lot of warnings regarding the importance of making sure you have the correct version of HX Edit for 2.8. But given your question I'll give you one back. Why is it that the people on this forum with TONS of posts and experience are never the ones encountering problems? I installed 2.81 on both of my Helix floor units without any problems. But in spite of my long history with the Helix, I was very diligent in reading through the release notes beforehand and following them very precisely as I've learned to do over the years. There were clearly some differences in the process I've become used to over the last several upgrades, but I was ready for it and understood what I needed to do and why. The only issue I ran into was when I took the one unit I'd upgraded which is my studio unit and plugged it into the other computer I use for my live performance setup that was running HX Edit 2.70 and HX Edit couldn't connect to the updated unit. It just took a couple of minutes to troubleshoot that the Helix device driver for the laptop running HX Edit 2.70 was unable to be launched by the 2.81 Helix when it was plugged in. No surprise there. But that's why if you deviate at all from the prescribed process, particularly in the installation of HX Edit which installs all the appropriate computer software and the appropriate device driver you'll need for upgrading, you're going to get glitches. And if you try to run Lin6 Updater with HXEdit still running, things won't go smoothly because the device driver will be in use. These are all things mentioned in the release notes, but easily overlooked.

Has anyone else noticed the consistency between people that haven't had any problems having a long history of posts on this forum, and the ones that have had problems having a very limited number of posts? I really don't think 2.81 is the problem.....

The actual position of the gain knob on your mixer channel is actually irrelevant as the whole purpose of that gain knob is to get your signal consistent with the levels of all the other signals coming into the board. That being said, it's also quite possible you may have the settings within your patch (such as amp channel volume, compressor gain, or distortion output, etc) set too high which then causes the overall output volume to be overly hot. One way to check this is to check the relative volume level of each of the blocks within a patch by individually turning them on and off to check that you have a fairly consistent volume level within the patch while listening to it to ensure you aren't building up excess volume through the course of your preset. I check my overall levels at home by running them through a small mixing board and shoot for signal level of roughly -4db on my 1/4" L/Mono out (line level) with my Helix volume knob set at the 3 o'clock position. My XLR output at mic level going into the board is still a bit hotter than the level coming off of a vocal microphone, but that's easily adjusted by the gain knob on my channel. If done correctly your faders should provide a pretty good visual reference of where each channel sits in the overall mix, and the faders are really the only thing that matters in terms of what's going to the FOH. Same with your aux or monitor dial or fader levels for the monitors. But ultimately all that matters at the board is to get your signal at a consistent level with all the other channels coming into the board regardless of the physical setting of the gain knob on your channel. The position of the gain knob doesn't matter but the fader levels do. EDIT: I also noticed that the TF board has a digital gain adjustment for each channel which may be a way of adjusting an overly hot signal. I have something on my QSC TM-30 called a DAC (Digital Audio Control) which does that.

By table I'm assuming you mean the mixing board all of which have a pre amp on each input channel which is used to adjust the signal level of each input before each channel's faders. That being said I don't know if you're gaining anything on the Helix if you're sending the combined guitar and vocal signal to the mixing board.

Not exactly true. As I understand it snapshots were always in the original design for the Helix, but they ran out of time for getting them operational before the first release of the Helix. That's why they were first on the list of items in the next major release of the firmware. There's no particular trick to getting minimal pause between different presets as long as your willing to live with a lower resolution of detail in the modeling. The HD500X has only a slight pause between presets, but much lower accuracy in the modeling. The same goes for the Spider amps that almost no delay.

This makes me very suspicious of the Helix master volume output level. The reason being that if you have that Helix master volume up full, depending on the settings of your preset volume levels you could very easily be causing the limiter to kick in on your speaker which would account for what you're describing. Where do you have your Helix master volume set? That could also account for your digital clipping if you have the levels too high on your amp blocks or other effects blocks or output blocks in your signal chain.

Actually, from your description my first thought is there's something wrong with your output device or your input device. It's not very likely something would be wrong with the models in your Helix, but that would be quickly fixed by simply downloading and installing the firmware since that's where the models reside. It could also be possible, if you're using very hot pickups, that you simply need to pad the input. But without any more information about your output device we can only guess at what's going on.

Here's the difference. Your Strymon pedal wasn't unloading a complete set of processing blocks containing amps, cabinets, pedals, etc. and loading a new one. It was switching a few circuits. That's like saying you don't understand why it takes so long to get going in your car because you had a bicycle once and you could just jump on it and go. I have over 200 presets as I have a preset per song and not once has anyone complained about the 1 or 2 second pause between songs from me switching presets between songs. After all I'm only hitting one button.

I play a lot of different clean styles and typically longer sustain isn't something that's really necessary on most of them. There are occasions where I need some additional sustain for lead parts that still need to retain their clean feel and I always fix that with the LA Compressor at the end of my signal chain with a bit higher gain value. Alternatively if I need just a very slight crunch for more sustain on a clean-ish lead tone I normally use the Minotaur. I will add that different guitars make quite a bit of difference in the sustain on clean presets. My Gretsch hollow body is probably the best at adding more natural sustain and my Tele is probably the worst at naturally providing clean sustain.

I never would have thought of using the Lonestar on a groove like that, but it definitely works nicely and has a different feel for a jazzier, funky sound with your Tele. I'll keep that combo in mind. Thanks for the nice find!!

Nope. I do that stuff all the time and I've never had a problem with it. But I do rename the patch once I copy it, so I'm wondering if that has anything to do with it. I know the patches each maintain the patch name internally so that even if you rename a patch that's been exported, once you import it will have the original name. That might have something to do with what might be affecting you.

I think this pretty much captures the main differences. The thing is, HX Edit doesn't contain any of the rules or logic associated with the business of building a preset. It depends entirely on the Helix to enforce the rules such as how much DSP has been employed and what blocks are still available for use based on the DSP left on a given signal chain. This ensures that you can never build a preset in HX Edit that would not work in the Helix which is a VERY good design and ensures there's a single source of logic to managing preset building. In order to provide offline editing you would have to incorporate all of that logic into HX Edit and I doubt seriously that Line 6 would be willing to do such a thing. The fact is, anyone with some knowledge JSON and patience could build an offline editor, but there would be a very good chance it would build presets that would be seen as corrupt or un-importable into an actual Helix since it's not likely to know all the rules and limitations that need to be applied when building a preset.

I went through exactly the same process on my 2.81 HXEdit several times and everything pasted perfectly.

I have my global settings so that the XLR out is set to Mic level and is disconnected from Helix big knob. This does two things. First, It sets my XLR output as if the Helix big knob was set to full, but it sends the signal at the much lower Mic signal level so that it's easier to adjust at the mixing board. Secondly it allows me to use the Helix big knob to control my 1/4" output to my stage monitor independently from my signal to the board to get an appropriate stage mix with the rest of the band. The level coming into the board will likely be pretty hot, but can be adjusted by the gain or trim knob. This varies from mixer to mixer depending on their preamps, but having the signal at Mic level keeps it manageable. Understand that the position of the mixer gain knob has NOTHING to do with unity level, and unity level on the Helix has nothing to do with unity level at the mixer. Unity level is determined by the incoming signal and measured by the signal lights on the mixer which is controlled by the mixer gain knob. If you're using a Mackie board you would have to select PFL (Pre Fader Listen) on that channel and watch your signal lights and set the mixer gain knob such that the signal lights hover right around unity or zero db. This is made much easier if you have your XLR output set to Mic level. In my case I'm using a QSC TM30 mixer. With my Helix XLR output disconnected from the Helix big knob and set to Mic level, my channel volumes on my amps tend to be somewhere in the range of 4 to 6 on most amps or a bit higher on the lower wattage amps like the Roland JC120, but pretty much in line with what I'd expect out of the real amps. All of my IRs stay consistently at -18db.

Which delay are you using and what are your settings? If you're using the Simple Delay, I would suspect you would want to set the Feedback parameter at least at 50% or more and your mix so that the delay is pretty much equal to your dry signal so probably somewhere around 50% or more as well.

I haven't had any problems on either of my PC's like this. But both are higher end units running up to date Windows 10 and I maintain them very well and only use them for serious applications...ie, no games or junk apps. That's why I suspect there's a huge difference between different people with the same OS. The specs for building a PC can be quite variable and I suspect it starts with PC vendors taking a lot of latitude to provide a bunch of USB ports that are really just hubs. Makes the price go down but introduces problems.

Am I missing something here? Since you're using different presets per song, why wouldn't you just dial in the specific BPM on each preset? Then you could just dial in the specific note value (1/4 note, 1/8 note, dotted 8th, etc.) on your delay pedal or any other pedal that's BPM specific. All you do is select the preset and you're ready to go. That's what I've been doing for years.

I suspect that has more to do with your PC than with the Helix. I've got 2.81 on both my studio PC and my live performance laptop and I have consistent HXEdit connections with both Helix units on either computer. I suspect that's because both my PC and Laptop are higher end computers so the manufacturer didn't take any cost saving shortcuts and all my USB ports are direct ports and not hubs. I've never had connection problems on either of them for the last 3 1/2 years.

First question, where is this person getting 2.81.1? 2.81 is the only thing listed from Line 6 in the download section for HX Edit. Who knows what this person did... One thing he for SURE did is totally hose up his update. There's NO question about that!!

I set high and low cuts unique to each patch. That's because each guitar, amp, cab/IR, mic, mic placement and mic mix are going to be major factors in the overall tone. So until all those things are settled I really don't look much at the high and low cuts and just place them at the end of my signal chain for the final tweak that sounds best in each situation. Low cuts will generally be 100hz to as high as 140hz, and high cuts range from 8khz to 10khz. But I don't have near the problem most people have as I always have a mix of MD421 and R121 for my cabinet mics which reduces the need for aggressive EQ adjustments generally. If you look underneath the expression pedal you'll see where the allen wrench goes to adjust the tension on the pedal. I never adjusted it at all on either of my Helix floor units. I just let them break in naturally, but then I'm not a big user of wahs and such.

You do realize the variation in volumes won't be fixed by any difference in speakers. That's the function of the different amp models behaving the way different amp models are supposed to behave. You'd have the same problem if you were switching between real amps of different wattages. The difference being you can adjust the channel volumes on the different amps models to level them out in the Helix and not lose any tone. But you do need to bear in mind that ANY EQ is nothing more than a way to add or lower volume in a specific frequency range. That can result in a louder overall volume. I think you're just running into the fundamental differences between traditional cabinets and powered speakers. Even on a traditional cabinet you'll get the same sound once you mic it and send it through the PA. I'm suspecting that you may be standing too close to your cabinets when you play and are getting overwhelmed by the horn. I always give myself 5 or 6 feet of distance and usually stand a bit off-axis. This is one of the reasons you wouldn't normally want to sit directly in front of the FOH speaker cabinets. They needs some space to blend the two speakers. I think you'll also find you get a much less problematic sound and have to apply much less EQ when you blend microphones on a cabinet. The most common combination you tend to see is an MD421 dynamic mic and a R121 ribbon mic. That's a VERY common combination in IR packages.

Honestly I think you've just barely opened up the possibilities. It's kind of interesting to me that two products doing the same things as far as modeling amps can come up with such different results as far as settings. Theoretically if you measure and model a circuit's inputs and outputs you would expect those results to be very similar between different products, but apparently they can be. Maybe it's in the process they use to take the measurements. In any case, I suspect you're going to find a number of other situations that will be different settings in the Helix from the Axe but will ultimately result in achieving the same target. I would bet if you watched some of the Jason Sadites 'Getting Great Tone' YouTube videos you might be better able to more quickly identify the differences in his setups and what you were used to on the Axe.

I'm pretty much in the same boat as you. I have Sonar Platinum which is the main reason (other than having many years of familiarity with Sonar as well as a huge library of my recording projects) for not moving on. The Platinum versions comes with such a wide selection of additional plug-ins that I depend upon, particularly Addicted Drums, I'm just not sure if those would transfer over to another platform or if I'd have to re-purchase them. Did you find any utility that would aid in converting your Sonar project files to Reaper??

Global would be hard to do since snapshots are defined specifically as part of a given preset. If you have a new preset it will likely have different blocks and different setting, so you would need to define snapshots specific to it and it alone. Of course you can always define a bypass or default sound as a separate preset and select it. Of course there will be a slight delay.