DunedinDragon

One other anomalie that's worth being aware of is that it's much easier to produce higher frequencies than lower frequencies and they travel better in open air than do lower frequencies (less air resistance). This all tends to even out over space, but can cause you to end up with a muddy tone in your performances if you're too close to your speaker or in a smaller space when dialing in your tones. I find that I often need to dial in a bit more highs than I'd normally like with my presets at home, but then they sound perfect once I play live in a larger space.

So you would prefer 11 pages of constant whining about something that won't get changed by anything said here?? Sounds pretty boring to me...

You know, to me it's not about the ability to mimic someone else at this point in my musical wanderings. I've spent so many years mimicking different people that now I have the luxury of applying some of those sounds and techniques into other types of music to give them a more interesting sound and production feel. A little Joe Walsh flavor in this song, a little Brian May in that one, a little James Taylor in this other one, and maybe some Clapton, or Chet Atkins, or Brad Paisley in others. That's what makes the Helix so much fun for me. It's not about playing a Joe Walsh song, but what if Joe were to sit in on "this" song...what would that sound like? Now that's fun no matter who you are....

At some point I would have to think latency would become an issue. Certainly if you're passing signals back and forth between the units requiting A/D D/A conversions everytime. Personally, if you can't get what you need out of the DSP available in the Helix there's something wrong with your approach I think.

Generally speaking this typically comes down to the USB cable or the way the USB cable is connected to the computer. The Helix connection doesn't work well with non-direct USB ports, and not all ports on a computer are direct. Some are typically slaved. That's where I'd start. Try different USB ports on the computer and see if that fixes it.

Quite honestly I don't think I've ever felt like I needed to correct for the acoustics of a room with my Helix in almost 4 years, but that's because I can't say I've come across a room that was so bad it needed it. Unless you're willing to go out in the room while the band plays and listen to it, you might be making things worse if you're simply gauging it on what you're hearing on stage. And the way I look at it, if the acoustics of the room are affecting me, they're affecting all the instruments and that needs to be corrected globally at the mixing board.

I really began to appreciate the benefits of an FRFR setup with my HD500X. Since I began playing in bands in the late 60's I had all sorts of exposure to various amps and cabs, and I loved the sound I could get from them. But that was of course in the days when PA's didn't always play a big role in a band's stage production and recording technology was pretty limited for the average guy. It wasn't until the early part if the 21st century that I really began playing around seriously with modeling, first in the studio and then later on stage with some of the modeling amps as modeling began to get more and more sophisticated. My big "leap" was when I went to the HD500X coming from a Mustang series amp. For it's time the Mustang really did a remarkable job of providing a flexible platform for playing various genre's of music, but it still suffered from the deficiencies of all cabinets in that getting a consistent stage sound from venue to venue was always a challenge due to the limitations of the way cabinets produce sound differently depending on where it's positioned relative to you and to the rest of the band, and could often differ significantly through the FOH from the sound you had designed with the Mustang. You could compensate for those deficiencies by routing your sound through the monitors. So the natural next step for me was the POD HD500X using a typical FRFR monitor style speaker for which I chose the Yamaha DXR12 to give me a consistent sound from dialing in at home, to on stage, to the audience in the FOH. I think my drive toward that kind of consistency came from working as a sound man for the same number of years as I'd been a musician, which drove me toward an appreciation of the sound I could get from a FRFR monitor, which was the FOH sound brought to the stage. To my ear that's the polished production sound of a studio, but in a live environment. To me that's always kind of been the ultimate goal. Therefore, getting away from cabinets gave me what I really wanted which was to overcome the limitations that drove me crazy with cabinets.

AHA!!! I think you're describing too much articulation..ie the strings of the chords don't blend together as much as you'd like, which is often the case with powered speakers and even studio monitors sometimes. I personally like that sound, but if you don't try changing the BIAS. In my experience some amps are more in need of BIAS adjustments than others. You even might mess a bit with SAG to even things out a bit more.

There are a couple of things that occur to me. One is how you're positioned relative to the FRFR112. On the bass it might not be as relevant, but what you might be experiencing is simply being physically too close to the FRFR112. With the Bass it might not be as much of a problem, but powered speakers by their nature need a bit of physical space from them in order to sound normal and allow the speaker and horn to blend correctly. Imagine the difference in sound sitting right next to PA speaker in a nightclub versus sitting in the middle of the room. Generally when dialing in my tones at home through my DXR12 I give myself a good 6 to 8 feet from the speaker and often stand with my back to it or off axis to get an accurate read on how it really sounds generally. Another thing that occurs to me is you mentioned different cabs, mics, and mic placements, but the biggest difference maker in my experience is the mic mix. Since this is mostly limited to overdriven sounds I'd recommend trying the Ownhammer mix ending in OH2 or OH2F at various distances and see if that cures the problem. Those are a blend of an MD421 dynamic mic and R121 ribbon mic that seems, to my ear, to be the most natural blend for higher gain tones. Since you're still relatively new to the guitar side of things also try bringing down the gain a bit on your amps. You probably need less than you think. Adding an LA2 compressor at the end of the signal chain can also also help the sound blend a bit better. Just some thought too consider.

This is one of those great misperceptions about beta testing. That's because some major software companies (ones I've worked for in fact) have enlisted everyday users as "beta testers" in a program open to almost anyone..calling it an open beta. The truth be told, an open beta program is nothing more than a marketing effort as there really isn't a testing discipline in place as far as scheduled reporting and NDA's. Nothing is really gained as far as the development cycle in an open beta other than public word of mouth and there's really not a lot of support for open beta users that might lose data or have problems. Functional (real) beta programs are always confined and limited in participation to ensure testers adhere to testing disciplines and cover a wide enough range of possible uses to be "user driven but functionally appropriate" testing and are quite demanding in their reporting requirements with plenty of support from the product development organization. Even then, statistically speaking, the VAST majority of bugs get discovered, classified, and prioritized by full-time product testers following a regimented functionality block testing program, not by beta testers.

There is absolutely zero doubt this behavior has always been the case when switching presets. That's because the blocks in the current preset have to be unloaded and the new blocks in the next preset have to be loaded. It does take a moment and there is no carryover trails because they are two separate memory images. That's been the behaviors since the beginning. Snapshots were introduced very early after the Helix was introduced to get around such limitations. Until that happened you still had the alternative of assigning multiple effects to a given stomp button and you still can. However, if you think snapshots is less user-friendly you certainly won't like multiple assignments. At least snapshots give you visual feedback about what is assigned and what settings are being changed within a snapshot. It may simply be that you don't understand how simple assigning snapshots is. And for that I'd refer you to Jason Sadites YouTube video on understanding snapshots. Like you I use a song per preset. I don't use snapshots in every preset, but for certain complex arrangements and needs it's by far the simplest and most powerful way to implement and maintain these more complex setups. I reserve my upper row of stomp buttons for snapshots and my lower buttons for individual stomps and I've yet to run into anything that needed more. For example, I just finished a new preset today where the intro is a clean guitar with no reverb, then the song generally uses a mid-gain "Joe Walsh" style tone in the verse, chorus and bridge with some light plate reverb, then a lead using a tube screamer block and adds in a delay with the reverb. At certain points within the chorus, bridge and on the lead I'm using a second harmony guitar. All of this complexity is afforded using three snapshots (clean, crunch, lead), and a separate momentary stomp that controls the Twin Harmony effect in both the Crunch and Lead snapshots. All of this took about an hour to layout...and a little more to refine. But without snapshots that would would be a nightmare to try and control live. I suspect once you watch how Jason Sadites explains, sets up and uses the snapshots they likely won't seem as much a mystery and will become a very useful feature in your arsenal for building presets.

I'm not sure what you're asking about. Maybe if you described the situation and what you want to do we could help you.

Generally speaking, with a fairly normal setup on a single signal path, you can only get two IRs if you're using the 1024 version. I'm not sure why that is, but apparently that's part of the implications when Line 6 states that the stock cabs are more efficient than IRs. Personally I can't really tell the difference sonically between a 1024 and a 2048, but then I also only rarely find a reason to have more than one IR. I can certainly get more tonal flexibility using a single IR that has different mic mixes and placements than I could with two different IRs, and those mic mixes and placements can all be contained in a single IR, so I just don't see the need for more than one IR. The only exception is when I'm using two different amps such as a clean and overdriven in which case I'll have the amps and their IRs on separate paths using separate DSP chips. I suppose if you just can't live without mixing IRs, you can use a DAW or various utilities to mix separate IRs into a single IR.

I think you may be forgetting the fact that in zolko60's mind the whole world only consists of his needs and wants......... ;)

I think sometimes people don't take into account that many of our Helix units are "operational" systems. We actually depend on it every week in the same way as an order taking system of an internet retailer. You don't approach it casually and it's not something you do without a lot of thought and planning. Because I really can't afford to be thrown into a 3 or 4 day skirmish with unexpected problems that I MUST get resolved before I'm scheduled to play again. The implications of that are far greater than needing any of the features of 2.8 immediately.

How?

Since I don't use a 4 cable method, I'll leave that question for someone else. As far as a separate path from the chain, I'm assuming you're talking about a split and merge from the signal path. That really has nothing to do with placing an effects loop into the signal chain. This is just a way to allow blocks to operate in parallel such as a reverb and a delay, or two simultaneous amps working together. As far as your Celestion IR pack, those are all just variations of different captures of the speaker using different microphones or microphone mixes as well as different placements of those microphones on the speaker cabinet. All of which will create slightly different tones on a given amp. So any of them can be used and should be used to audition what works best for a given sound. The real question here is, why are you using IR's if you're using the 4 cable method into a traditional amp setup. You already have a cab, so an IR is just adding the effect of a cab on top of a real cab.

It's been a while since I got mine, but as I remember it did come with a cable. It's a cheap one but one that would work. I'd suspect you'll end up getting a better one that's longer. The firmware was loaded on the Helix and it came with a thumb drive that contained the manual and (maybe) an older copy of HXEdit for editing from your PC or Mac. It doesn't really matter in that regard because in all likelihood the first thing you'd want to do is log on to the Line 6 web site, download and install the latest version of HXEdit, which will install all appropriate drivers and the Line 6 Updater software. You would then run the Updater and install the most recent version of the firmware onto the Helix. When it comes to whether you would use an amp or get an FRFR, that's really a matter of preference. If you choose to go through an amp you'd want to make sure it's got an effects insert line that would allow you to bypass the pre amp and just use the power amp and cabinet, or use a 4CM setup. In either case you could use the amp modeling, but not the cabinet modeling as you're already using a real cabinet. You could still use the cabinet modeling if you were going direct to a PA. In that case you might have a separate signal chain for the amp and for the direct to PA. An FRFR setup would allow you to use all the features without limitations and that same signal chain would work for a direct to PA situation as well.

Early on I got into setting the Tempo on all my patches for several reasons, delays being one of them. My patches are all song specific so it's easy to set it up that way. Aside from being able to use it for effects, it's also quite handy so the drummer can use my flashing light to set bring us into the song. The good thing about having a consistent BPM for each song is that we can very precisely manage our time. This is very handy when we're playing in a multi-band performance scenario with each band held to a specific length of time. There's nothing more aggravating to me than a band that's supposed to play for 40 minutes playing for and hour and 15 minutes. That's SOOOO inconsiderate to the other bands and so unprofessional.

The key parameters you need to deal with will be Time, Feedback, and Mix. These are the ones that will dial in the basic sound which can then be refined with the other parameters. For myself I prefer to deal with Time based on note values rather than milliseconds. In order to do this you need to set the tempo for your patch by touching (not pressing) the Tap button and dialing in the Beats Per Second (BPS) of the song you'll be playing. I then personally prefer a 1/8 not or dotted 1/8 note so the echo is synchronized with the song I'm playing. Feedback is the number of repeats. Generally 10% is one repeat, 20% is two repeats and so on. The Mix parameter is how prominent the delays will be. I normally set this between maybe 15 to 20%, but you can go higher if you want a really wet delay. But you have to be careful because if you're playing a busy rhythm part it can become muddy very quickly with too much delay in the mix. In my opinion it's very easy to dial in too much delay which might sound great by itself, and very noisy and distracting when played in a band setting, so a lighter touch always works best. The key to delay is to not make it prominent until you mute the guitar, and for most of the time it's just there in the background.

Agreed. More importantly each different variation requires a certain threshold number of buyers to make it worthwhile investing in the development of the product. I'm not sure something like an LT without a pedal would garner enough market potential to make it profitable given the likely negligible price difference with the LT. It just doesn't make good business sense to my eye.

Well, you haven't given us much to go on. You just listed equipment (whether active or not) which doesn't factor into this decision. They'll work the same on both. What's your envisioned usage? That's far more likely to shine a light on which unit would serve you best. If you gig a lot and are pretty active as far as effects and pedal usage on stage, the higher build quality might be worth considering. If you plan on using it for recording then there's a real benefit to having the extra I/O to simplify your workflow in the studio. Those are the type of things that determine which is best for you.

I've always greatly admired LRB and their musicianship. I rank them right up there with people like Toto, Steely Dan, Atlanta Rhythm Section and many of the other great "session bands" of the late 70's and 80's. That's why it doesn't surprise me at all given the range of their musical styles they'd adopt the Helix to simplify their stage act. Their kind of music is a clear example of where the Helix can shine.

I have two Helix floor units and XLR's are perfect on both.

I haven't used any experience with any of the factory presets, but if you can give me an idea of a style of song that might be reflective of what you do I might have a personal preset that works for me with my Yamaha DXR12 I could attach to a response so you could try it out. It would also be helpful to know what guitar you use as my presets are designed for specific guitars which are: Acoustic, Les Paul, Stratocaster, Telecaster, and Gretsch Hollow body. I play a pretty wide range of genres so I'm sure i could find something that might be close to what you're looking for.