DunedinDragon

This probably has way more to do with the placement of your speakers, what you're using as your speakers, how mics and stage monitors are being placed and used and the overall noise levels created during your performance than it does the Helix. Feedback is really a simple issue. It's all about creating a noise loop. Where the noise loop is happening can sometimes be hard to determine, but it's absolutely related to acoustic issues and typically not digital electronics. The quick fix is simple. Turn it down...volume or gain. Or determine where it's coming from and isolate the noise loop.

There's any number of ways to do it. What you have there will work fine if you want to record guitar and mic simultaneously. I prefer to do them separately so I can concentrate on one track at a time. The other benefit for myself is I do have some rather complex guitar presets that I need both signal chains to accommodate the processing load. The other thing that plays in my favor is I prefer to use a Blue direct mic which has it's own USB connection to the PC rather than try use the Helix for vocals since I do all of my vocal processing within Ableton. But the way I work with Helix in the studio is very different than how I use it on stage. On stage I'd never consider using the Helix for both vocals and guitar because the Helix doesn't really have all the appropriate tools for gain staging and mixing that a typical mixing board has. And that's VERY different than how you mix a recording because on stage you don't really get to stop and adjust things. You set things up in the very beginning and they need to work correctly for the duration of the performance regardless of how many different presets you use on the Helix. My point is you can do it a number of ways and not just one single way for recording. That's the REAL beauty of the system.

Chances are pretty good that what's happening is you're making some changes on a preset and jump to a different preset and when you come back to the original preset it sounds like it's changed, but that's because you didn't save that original preset before you went to the other preset and it restored the old version rather than the edited but not saved version. That's a pretty common mistake. I flip between presets all the time when I'm editing them to get them gain staged correctly and I never have any problems in all the years I've had my Helix. But I'm pretty diligent in saving my changes. It does happen sometimes but it's always due to me not saving a preset after doing some changes.

The simplest solution if you already have your signal gain staged for FOH just attach your Headrush speaker to a separate Aux out on the mixer and set the level on that Aux out for your guitar channel to what you need as far as volume.

I actually use this in a live band situation with three live instruments and multipart vocals. But I did start off on this journey with just the Helix, but quickly found out the limitations of the Helix as a MIDI controller were such that it would never work correctly. But that's okay. I realize that Line 6 has a very well defined corporate market segment as a guitar modeling company and a big part of their success is sticking to that expertise and not venturing too much into other areas. Because when they have they've shown they're not really experienced or committed enough to become a significant player as was evidenced by their short lived experience in making a PA system. So I'm quite happy with them being what they are and being very diligent about it.

Yeah...that's a lot of stuff. Mine is much simpler but I have the advantage of having designed it with a new generation of tools that made things much simpler. There's actually very little toe tapping in my case. Ableton does the lion's share of automatic activation via a simple MIDI out track that plays along with the song, so a single embedded MIDI command from Ableton in the MIDI out track to the MC8 can trigger multiple MIDI sequences going to multiple devices from the MC8. My only interaction which is all done via the MC8 is to select the song, and start it (two distinct toe taps). Everything else is done in sync with the running of the tracks. I don't currently use any loops but if I were to do something like that I'd probably consider incorporating Maschine into the setup rather than add any additional foot pedal actions since I've gotten very spoiled not having to worry about foot pedal interactions during the course of playing a song. My current pedal board contains only the Helix Floor and the MC8 so it's all very simple to setup. In terms of audio I just have the Helix with a single XLR to the mixer for guitar and a separate audio interface sending a stereo channel to the mixer from the Ableton tracks. My laptop has one audio out USB to the audio interface and one MIDI control USB connected to the MC8.

That's certainly not a limitation for me. My MC8 simultaneously runs Ableton and all my Helix Snapshots/footswitches and preset selection..as well as lighting control and lyric tablet selection and paging. It's all the extra brain any Helix would ever need.

If it changes in Helix Native it changes in all Helix units. It's a single code base

I believe Ableton provides a mathematically correct triplet which is 1.33 + 1.33 + 1.33 = 4 standard beats rounded to the nearest whole number. I'm not sure any of the delays in the Helix have any provision for that level of precision.

The simplest way to address these sorts of things is to play with the mic and mic positions of the cabinet rather than EQ. Dynamic mics like 421 tend to be more mellow than a shure 57 as will a 121 ribbon. The trick is placement. I've always had the best luck positioning it fairly close to the center with a couple of inches distance on dynamic mics and closer with a ribbon. Try it with both mics in combination and play with it to get the sound that's smoothest. Sometimes a Condenser mic a bit further out from the center can work well also. The only EQ I ever tend to need is a final parametric EQ with high cut around 8khz.

I guess this must be a "luck of the draw" situation. I have two Helix Floor units I've used every week either live or in the studio for 7 years and nothing has ever "crapped out" other than some footswitches that needed cleaning to work better once.

I think it may be worth your time to understand the concept of gain staging versus volume settings. Gain staging is all about controlling the level of the signal whether it be Line or Mic level signals so that it doesn't distort and has plenty of headroom whereas volume is what's applied AFTER something is gain staged. If gain staged correctly you should have plenty of headroom to set your volume wherever you need it. There are plenty of good YouTube videos on this subject.

Ideascale is what is used by Line 6 for considering new features. It's not a certainty that entering an idea there will result in new features. It first must generate a fairly good showing from other users voting for it. Even then it may not result in a new feature if it's not considered to be in the domain of Helix's product scope and definition. As @rd2rk mentioned MIDI is really an added attraction. It's probably sufficient enough to address MOST user's needs, but Helix is not designed to compete with full, dedicated MIDI controllers. There are plenty of those on the market and I doubt that Line 6 has much interest in capturing market share in that space, but you could try if you want.

I generally take readings on my app at around 10 feet. I use an app called 'Sound Meter' which gives me a max and average reading and I use that at performances to get a feel for our overall volume just walking around the room. Very handy. Actually, in my rehearsal space I plug into the QSC TM30 mixer and then into my Yamaha DXR12 speakers left and right to get the best feel for the sound. It's actually a big benefit if you can do that as it will be more representative of your live sound. I just plug into the mixer as I would at a performance with my XLR outs set to Mic level. That way nothing changes between my rehearsal setup and my live setup on the Helix. I can also gain stage all my presets more accurately so they're consistent through all of the songs. This is particularly useful if we play through someone else's PA as I can be assured everything will be consistent. In my band we don't have any amps on stage and go direct to the mixer relying on our stage monitors for our stage sound. That makes it super simple to have a sound on stage that matches what the audience is hearing out front. Bear in mind that A/B'ing against a 4CM setup will have some problems in that area since the amp will flavor the stage sound differently than what the audience actually hears. If you Mic that amp then it's going to be harder still to actually hear what the audience hears because your stage sound is going to have the raw amp sound rather than the mic'd sound the audience hears. It also makes it much harder to hear your instrument and voice mix on stage that matches what the audience hears out front. This is the main reason we all go direct to the mixer and use only the floor monitors. Not to mention it GREATLY simplifies our setup and tear down time.

Chances are what you are hearing as a difference between live and at home has to do with what's referred to as the Fletcher-Munson effect. Human hearing is such that different frequencies are heard better as the volume increases. Generally speaking I find you get the full effect across all frequencies around 90dbSPL. That's really not that loud, but it's useful to know when dialing in your presets at home to get a good feel for how they'll perform and sound live. Download a signal meter app for your phone and that will allow you to get your levels in the correct range. You can dial in your sound at home plugged directly into the Mackie speaker if you want. I'd suggest getting it up off the floor at about chest height to get a good distribution of sound. The problem is that live you'll be going into a mixer which tends to expect you to send a Mic signal level, but your speaker expects a Line signal level generally. The easiest way to deal with this is to configure your Helix to send a Line level signal out of your 1/4" outputs and use those to dial in your presets with your speaker's gain control set at 12 o'clock, or halfway at home. You can configure your XLR outputs separately to send Mic Level and use those to go direct to the mixing board. Since there's nothing to put a mic on, you simply take the normal mic cable the soundman provides and plug it directly into your XLR L/mono output and you're ready to go once you've been gain staged and volume checked. In my case I NEVER adjust any EQ for my Helix at the mixing board. The Helix is more than capable of dialing those in. I just gain stage it on the mixer and leave everything else flat for performances.

I'm assuming that it's HXEdit that's not working not the Helix unit itself. Of course knowing what kind of computer you're plugging into and operating system would help, but the issue appears to clearly be related to your USB connection. Start making sure you're not going through a USB hub and are plugged directly into a USB port on the PC. Some PC's have USB ports that are connected to an internal USB hub. So try connecting to a port on the back of the PC and see if that helps. It's also VERY important to make sure it's and actual USB 2.0 type A connector to a USB 2.0 type B without any converters. It needs to be what is normally sold as a USB printer cable in most stores.

For several years I've been using Ableton to play back tracks and synchronize automated control over my presets/snapshots/footswitches with the playback of those tracks. I initially used the Helix as the MIDI controller but abandoned it pretty early on due to anomalies such as those you mentioned with the Helix's implementation of MIDI and started using a Morningstar MC8 as the central MIDI controller in my rig. I think the Helix can do simple MIDI integration, but it comes with so many oddball limitations it becomes a handicap for anything too sophisticated. The anomaly you discovered was one I ran into as well, but was easily overcome with my MC8 by just sending an alphanumeric letter rather than a note which Ableton easily responds to. The biggest limitation was the Helix's inability to send multiple commands from a single footswitch press for more complex interactions which is easily implemented on my MC8. In my implementation the MC8 completely replaces the footswitches on the Helix so that everything (Ableton and Helix) is controlled from a single source controller. This was crucial in my case because I'm synchronizing control over several devices (Helix, lighting, tablet lyric display, etc.) with the playback of the track The bottom line for me is that the Helix can send and respond to MIDI, but it's a very long ways away from being a legitimate MIDI controller.

The question here is, "how do you know you have the tone you're trying to achieve given that even listening to it means it's been affected by the speakers you're listening through?" As odd as that sounds, it's actually a significant piece in the puzzle. Ultimately the reason we have cabinet models with various mics and mic positions is because it's a part of the real world of sound...in essence sound doesn't happen without it. If you play your "perfect" preset through a pair of lo-fi computer speakers it's not going to sound anything like what it will sound like through a pair of high end studio monitors in a room with sonic treatment. And even that sound can change dramatically depending on what it's played through live or on a different guitar. All I can say is I use cabinets and mic settings on almost all of my presets as a final way of "finishing" my sound to get the sound I want in production whether that's on a recording or in a live performance. The only time I don't use cabinets is with an acoustic guitar for example. And that's because I'm after the very natural sound of the guitar and I don't even use an amp in that case. And the final judgment and adjustments are made once I play it through the system on which it will be played live, and played in conjunction with the other instruments and vocals it will be mixed with. As far as learning the ins and outs of different speakers, mics and mic placements that comes with time and experience. At this point I know the kind of setups that tend to work well for me depending on the style of music, and the guitar I'm playing it on...and that's about the best you can do. But it's been that way the whole time I've been playing, recording and performing for over 50 years and I'm not sure it's going to change much.

Generally speaking when you go direct to a powered speaker you want to sent a Line level signal not a Mic level signal, and that's why I'm assuming you're not getting enough gain. I normally set my signal levels in the Global Ins/Outs settings. I set mine to Mic level because I'm always going direct to a mixing board. When I used to go direct to a standalone speaker I'd send Line level, which is what is typically sent from a mixer to a powered speaker.

It just sounds to me like you have a big problem with paralysis by analysis. Clearly you don't have a problem with understanding complex things given your nerdy configurations, but making music in general is not about complexity, it tends to be more about simplicity. The fact is, you don't really need to know all that much in order to be productive with a Helix. Exotic configurations and setups rarely make any kind of significant difference especially to an audience which is why you're doing this. I've been working with my Helix since it first came out in 2015, and I have done some complex things with it. But the VAST majority of what I use when I play it tends to orbit around one of two specific amps that are very powerful and flexible which are the Grammatico GSG and the Elmsley which were released in firmware 3.60. I committed my time to understanding how to configure them and what each option provides which are pretty well documented by Line 6. Beyond that I confined myself to about 5 different Line 6 cabinet configurations from the new cabinets. Just using those as the core elements I can create any of the presets I need, and I play a LOT of different styles of music. Beyond those amps and cabs the only things I use in any of my presets are a choice of three different distortion pedals which are the Minotaur, Teemah and occasionally the Tone Sovereign. Beyond that I'll usually have a Dynamic Hall or Dynamic Plate reverb, a Transistor Tape Echo (if needed), a final LA Studio compressor and a final Parametric EQ (for final finishing of the tone) and that's it. With just those components I've created well over 100 different presets in all sorts of styles. The vast majority of my presets don't use snapshots because I can get the sounds I need just using regular footswitches. There are occasions I might add a specialty block of some sort like a Twin Harmony or a Poly Capo, but almost everything is very limited, concise and SIMPLE. The important thing is that you don't need to know everything, you just need to know a few things very well in order to be productive. And you don't need to tweak sounds endlessly to get a good sound. You get something reasonable and start playing it. The VAST majority of tone comes from the amp and cabinet settings. Everything else are really just finishing touches. Get something that kind of works. Play it for a while, come back in a few hours and play it some more and maybe adjust a few settings once your ears are fresh and you'll be surprised how easily to can get sounds that work for you. For people that are "gear heads" you can fool yourself into believing that gear and complexity will make a big difference, but in the real world that really isn't the case.

problem 1) There are some pretty wide range of what people like in their distortion settings and that's why there's a wide range of distortion effects available. One thing for sure, almost all distortions have some interdependency with the amp being used depending on the architecture/design of the amp. This is true whether it's a physical amp or a modeled amp because amps can add their own distortion based on the gain settings as well as the impedance. I can't speak to going through a traditional amp since I only used modeled amps and go direct to the mixing board. In a way using a physical amp limits the possibilities of what you can do with any selected distortion, whereas modeled amps are MUCH more flexible. problem 2) Using in-ears is easiest when your setup is more straightforward and simple. My setup is as simple as it gets. My overall tone is based solely on what's in my preset, so all I need to do for in ears in stereo is to send my XLR out Left and Right to two mixing board channels at Mic signal levels. Your guitar signal is now in stereo and will be represented in stereo through the front of house speakers. Getting it to your in ears is dependent upon how they have your in ears setup for monitoring. Typically you would send both of your channels along with a mix of any other instruments in 2 aux outputs configured for you specifically. but there are a ton of ways to do it depending on your in ear monitoring setup for the band. Bottom line, you just have to provide the stereo mix to the mixer, the rest is configured through the mixer for the results you want. problem 3) Managing your presets to be sent at a consistent signal strength is at the core of getting consistency in your output volumes. In my case I pre-measure the signal strength of all of my presets through a mixing board so that my signal strength on each preset is at roughly the same level. This is easier is you're using amp models because they provide many more options for how to adjust your signal level from the Helix. Chances are you hear a tone quality difference when you crank them up because you were listening to them at lower volumes when you dialed them in and therefore some of the tone characteristics were affected due to the Fletcher Munson effect and when the volume was increased the flaws became more apparent. I try to keep my volumes around 85 to 90 dbSPL when I dial in a preset as that will be a pretty honest representation of how it will sound at performance level volumes. problem 4) Amp sims, IRs and so forth is at the core of understanding how to exploit the Helix capabilities. I'd suggest to spend some time on Jason Sadites YouTube channel as he has a TON of great videos explaining and demonstrating all those things in depth.

I agree with @themetallikid. Over the years the Helix has had numerous improvements in making things simple in terms of creating presets, the most prominent of which are the favorites. By selectively using favorites along with a standard preset template I've cut my preset development time to 1/3 of what it used to be. It's all a matter of thinking about your particular workflow and process and using the tools that are already there rather than starting off with a blank slate every time.

Not to dissuade you from finding that IR, but you're likely to lose a TON of flexibility using an IR unless that person created a bunch of different IRs with different mic's in different positions. What you're trying to do isn't anything unusual and most of us can get a decent guitar recording just using the stock cabs in Helix and knowing how to set them up to get the sound we want. It's really not that hard.

You can't get an amp in the room sound because that requires a physical amp in a physical room. Once you mic an amp cabinet it becomes a recorded sound which is what is always the case in recordings. IR's, by definition are cabinet recordings. Generally something sounding further back in the room will be related to things like reverb or delays or an early reflections setting that's too high, but it could also simply be that you need more presence and "bigness" to the sound which suggests you may want to add some compression.

There is no capability to change the theme of HX Edit. It's never been a problem for me, but if it's a problem for you, you might consider putting in an entry into IdeaScale on the subject since Line 6 doesn't really monitor this user forum.