DunedinDragon

Wow...that's a lot of trust being placed in the hands of the current generations of sound people from what I've seen.

Flat Response is a term that's been kicked around as far back as I can remember in evaluations of studio monitors and to a lesser degree studio headsets. And that goes back to the '70s. It meant the same thing then as it does now which is a lack of coloration being added to the basic sound. I think that's more the heritage of where the FRFR thing comes from. There really wasn't anything in the live performance arena that could really be considered as flat response until roughly around the late 90's and 2000 in the same manner as what was being applied to studio monitors.

This is exactly what the Dual Harmony is for and would do this quite well. You don't have different chords you stomp in for each chord, you simply enter the key of the song and the type of scale you want to use for the lead, and the relative placement of the harmony lead part (3rd, 5th, etc.) and that's it. Turn it on for the harmony lead part, turn it off when it's over. Nothing to it.

First off, if you're going by opinions on the internet about FRFR speakers or PA system and it's coming from guitar players there's a pretty high chance you're going to be mislead simply because the VAST majority of guitar players don't have a single clue about live sound reinforcement to any depth and are simply parroting something they've heard but have no direct experience with. The K series of speakers is clearly top of the line especially the new .2 series. If they're saying they're not FRFR the first question to ask would be under what setting? Like most top of the line powered speakers such as QSC, Yamaha, and Line 6, they incorporate several DSP options to tailor the speaker to the situation for which it's being used. At a minimum they have a monitor setting that can be used to adjust the response of the speaker when it's placed in a floor monitor position to adjust for bass coupling which is the effect of low frequencies that build up when the speaker is placed on a floor. The new K series has an even wider variety of settings for specific uses such as speech or direct guitar. But the simple fact is, if someone says they aren't TRULY FRFR that's more than enough evidence to dismiss anything they say on a lack of knowledge about the term FRFR or anything to do with modern PA equipment. The term FRFR is a relative term used to describe speaker systems that have their own power amp and electronics. Generally speaking, embedded in that electronics package will be some form of electronics or DSP processing that compensates for the basic artifacts in speakers that tend to accentuate/deaccentuate certain frequencies. This is a natural and expected artifact of speaker design. No FRFR speaker is going to be truly "flat response" because that would sound very unnatural to your ears because of the way your hearing works and what is pleasing to your ear. Manufacturers will vary a bit in what they interpret to be pleasing flat responses, but in this day and age they're all pretty close. But one thing you can be assured of, if the speaker comes with dials that allow you to adjust highs, mids, and lows they aren't in the category one would use the term FRFR for. So FRFR speakers will have slight variations in frequency response curves, but you would likely be hard pressed to really distinguish the differences in practice or in a double blind test. For example, my band's PA system consists of QSC KLA line array speakers and KW subs. The KLA speakers are typically mounted on poles. I personally use a Yamaha DXR12 as my guitar monitor and we use DXR12's for our standard stage monitors as well. I can rotate the KLA speakers to face the stage and there is no distinguishable difference between what we hear from them and what we hear form the Yamaha's. On paper, the frequency response profiles are slightly different, but in practice, and in a practical sense, they are the same. The arguments that they are generally more myth than reality and are likely based on someone's "elitist" impressions based on their "golden ears" than reality. I'm not saying there aren't differences and I do believe you get what you pay for in the loudspeaker world. But those differences tend to fall more into the category of clarity, definition, presence, customizability, and articulation more than perceivable differences in frequency response. If you dial in your tone using an FRFR speaker you absolutely will have a reasonably accurate representation of that sound through any modern PA system. And what I mean by "modern" is a speaker with it's own amp and DSP electronics designed in the same way as described above. The tones I've dialed in using my DXR12 have been accurately portrayed through any number of different FOH systems ranging from super high end line arrays available only through distributors to standard off the shelf professional systems available at Guitar Center or Sam Ash. It will certainly be a more accurate representation that what you get from a traditional guitar cabinet after it's been mic'd. Where it will vary is if you are unlucky enough to play through a PA system in which the amplifier and crossover are separate from the speaker...in effect a passive PA system. It's the same effect as going through a separate power amp and a speaker in that the amplified signal is subject to the acoustic response of the cabinet and whatever natural deficiencies are in the speakers. When the amp and speakers are integrated the amp can be tuned to the speaker response and cabinet acoustic artifacts to compensate for such things.

Yeah..and that's exactly what I'm after. I was considering writing something like that myself but I just don't have the time with all my other commitments nowdays. All I really want is to figure out what IRs I'm REALLY using across my patches then I can make some decisions about how I want to manage it. Mostly I just want to get it down to a handful of IRs I tend to use and leave it at that.

What you're describing is within a hair's breadth of being a UUID or GUID scheme, which is probably the most reasonable and industry standard way this whole nightmare of name resolution for IR's and slots should be resolved. I'm hopefully waiting to see if Line 6 will introduce some form of more sophisticated IR management scheme in the next FW update. If not, I might be interested in using the utility you wrote to at least do some basic housekeeping on my IRs. It sure would be nice if they'd pin that utility on this Forum so at least we could easily download it and use it until Line 6 comes up with something better.

It's probably not so critical in this person's situation. As he said they play wedding events and such, so for most of those people it will be the first and the last time they'll see the band so they won't be comparing them to what they've heard before. It's a bit more important if you have a following that always shows up at your events as they have an expectation about what you're supposed to sound like. Particularly if they own CD's of your band and such. That's when consistency gets to be pretty important.

There's an easy fix for such things. Get a new drummer. One that can act like a pro not like a high school kid in a garage band.

A TS212 is nothing different than a typical PA speaker. Lots of people use a direct line from bass amps into mixing boards for FOH and there's no problem. The same would hold true here. The only difference in cases where the bass goes into the FOH is there's typically a sub doing some of the very low work (< 120 Hz), but that shouldn't have much of an effect other than losing some very lowest frequencies. Route the Helix in a live situation into the mixing console and you have the same thing as coming direct from a bass amp.

Incidentally, this metadata naming thing can also be used to your advantage. For example, lets say you export a patch to the disk drive named "My Cool Patch". Now you'd like to annotate the My Cool Patch is designed to be used on a Stratocaster. You can change the name in the file system to to "My Cool Patch - Strat". When you import it into Helix it will still show up as "My Cool Patch". But it's a nice easy way to annotate info about the patch without it showing up in the title of the patch in Helix.

As AlexKenivel points out, I wouldn't count on very many sound men providing two channels for your stereo signal. Typically they don't want to deal with it and once it gets projected out into the audience area the stereo separation is marginal at best. Of course if it's your PA you can choose to do it, but with over 30 years doing live sound reinforcement, you're not going to get the effect you want in 90% of the venues out there once it starts bouncing around in the room.

The DXR10 is perfectly capable of such things. You have to remember these type of FRFR speakers are designed to be PA FOH speakers, so they're more than capable taking whatever you give them. I personally use a DXR12 on it's own at home to dial in my patches.

Don't get too locked in on high cuts as they are really affected quite a bit by other cabinet parameters such as mic, distance, and early reflections. Also if you choose to use dual cabinets there are often cases you may find you really don't need any cuts depending on the mics, distance, early reflections and how you mix the dual cabinets. And then you have IRs which is a whole different animal. Also bear in mind that often what you hear when close up to your monitors is quite a bit different than what you (and your audience hears) when positioned a bit further away. I keep about 6 feet of distance from my speakers when dialing in patches. I can't tell you the number of times before I started doing that when I got into the live situation my sound was very dull with no articulation or clarity. That's why you don't see PA speakers positioned right in front of people. They're all pretty harsh until you give them some space.

What in the world made you think the Helix was plug and play?? I guess if you just used the presets that came with the unit it might be, but to take advantage of all the versatility it provides it's about the furthest thing from plug and play I could imagine... ;)

First, you need to go to the following link and read ALL of the directions for the Helix Editor 2.10 Release notes. http://line6.com/software/index.html?hardware=Helix&name=All&submit_form=set Read all of the directions first, and you'll see a "Get Download" button at the bottom of the release notes. Select that and the necessary things will be dowloaded to your PC. You'll then execute that download and it will install the Editor, ASIO driver and the Updater. Follow ALL of the directions carefully and you will end up with everything you need installed and ready to go. If you follow all the directions in the Helix Editor Release Notes you do not have to separately download the firmware upgrade because you will have updated the firmware as part of following the directions in the Helix Editor download. If you pay attention and perform every step as it is outlined you should have no problem.

I use the LA Compressor quite a bit to achieve that kind of mildly compressed tone on slightly crunchy songs typical of 'Start Me Up' or 'Honky Tonk Women', or even early Doobie Bros. stuff like 'Long Train Running'. I also use it quite a bit to even out finger picked clean ballads on my Gretsch. It's a much more subtle, less aggressive compression than you might get with the other compressors and I typically place it toward the start of my signal chain. For my purposes I typically match up volume-wise with the gain a tad below 5.0. I put the Emphasis (which is really the amount of compression) up around 8.5 to 9.0 and the Mix at about the same range as Emphasis. Peak Reduction seems to work best to my ears around 3.5 to 5.0 on what I'm trying to do, but that parameter can vary quite a bit depending on the guitar, amp, cab, and mic. I've only really used it as a compressor so I can't speak to it's limiter abilities. Anyway, that's generally where I've found it to be useful for me.

The Mackie CR4 speakers aren't really studio monitors so to speak. They're really designed to be top end computer speakers, so it could well be they just aren't up to the task on hard overdriven tones. It's hard to say without any comparison to a high end set of headphones or anything else. I would say if you're getting the boxy tones out of the supplied presets that came with the Helix then it's a good bet the speakers just aren't up to that. You could always order a decent pair of studio monitors from Sweetwater or Musician's Friend and try them out. If they aren't an improvement you could return them.

We may have had this discussion before, I'm not sure. I was just curious if you tried to maintain any semblance of consistency as far as front of house. To each their own. I suspect the difference in how we might approach things probably has more to do with differences in music background and training more than anything else. I don't mind tolerating slight differences in what I'm hearing on stage as long at the overall sound of the band and the mix are consistent every time we play. But that just goes back to how I was brought up in the business.

My question is, if you're changing the presets for what you are using to listen to them, what's happening to the signal that's going to the PA? I would think the only thing that matters is what the audience is hearing. That's the important thing. That's why I dial in my preset using a system that will match what comes out of the PA, and I use the same system on stage. If, for some reason I was forced to use headsets that's not the audience's fault so why should they suffer?

Yeah...I'm turning into a DXR fanatic. I've had two of them for my Helix (one at home, one at rehearsal and for live performance) and I just replaced our stage entire monitor system with 3 DXR's. They're GREAT speakers!!!

I can absolutely confirm the Left outputs sum to mono as I use it all the time that way.

This really depends on what your stage setup is. Are you purely going through the PA direct through the XLR with no stage amp or FRFR? What's your monitor situation? How comfortable are you with the mixing board and what type of PA and FOH speakers are we talking about? All of these things factor into getting a good live setup. We can make assumptions, but they may not be accurate depending on what you're doing. Generally, if I'm going to be using someone's house PA I touch base with them ahead of time to understand what type of system they've got and how it's configured so I have some idea of what to expect and what I'll need to do.

From what I can tell Line 6 has done a pretty decent job in replicating the behaviors of the different amps. This is even to the point of the amps that overdrive when you turn up the amps master volume. I use a pretty decent cross-section of amps in my patches and the behaviors do vary quite a bit as I suspect they would with the real amp. I've had a lot of real world experience with some of the amps, but not so much with others. The one's that I've used most in the real world such as the Fender's, the HiWatt, the JC-120, and the Vox's appear to respond pretty consistently with how I remember those amps working.

Absolutely. The DXR is the only amp I own at this point. I use the DXR in exactly the same configuration whether I'm going through a PA or not. I keep it set up as a monitor, but positioned behind me as I would a traditional amplifier. I find that feels more natural to both me and the rest of the band and makes it easier for all of us to blend together. The good thing about that configuration is that the DXR projects MUCH better than a traditional amplifier does so it will be more consistent across the entire audience as would any PA speaker. The only consideration I might have is if I were playing a venue that was too small to have the instruments going through the PA, but the room was much wider than it was deep. In that case I might mount the DXR on a reguar speaker pole (but still behind me) to take advantage of the fact that the DXR projects wider horizontally than it does vertically, but I haven't run into that situation yet.

There's certainly some legacy in what they've learned through their years of experience in modeling. But it's less about OS and more about hardware DSP when it comes to the Helix. Clearly when you incorporate a newer hardware component (not to mention a DUAL hardware component) you have to re-write things to take advantage of the expanded capabilities. I'm getting the sense that, in the case of the Helix, it's as much architecture improvement as it is expanded processing capabilities. This is the reason they've been able to offer the Helix engine in so many different forms so quickly (Helix, LT, and soon Native). The legacy DNA in there is more likely knowledge about how to best model electronic components as everything has to be brought over to the new architecture and hardware, but the knowledge of how to best do that is corporate knowledge. In terms of your original question, I think even without using IRs there's more value. There's certainly more value than someone that simply uses the Helix as a multi-effects processor, but maybe less value than someone that uses ALL of the features including preamps, amps, cab/IRs and all the effects. But you're certainly gaining the benefit of the new architecture as well as the more advanced DSP capabilities and all of the expanded routing and connection capabilities.