OmniFace

I have two PC212+s and one of them rattles with high volume while the other does not. The issues sounds like a loose wire or something. I missed my warranty window, so I'll fix it myself one of these days, but you should either return it for a different one or go through warranty.

The "Ext Amp" jack is used to control the channel footswitch on your amp or enable/disable reverb, et.. It's not for audio. Connect the Helix 1/4" Left/Mono Output to the front of your amp instead. Don't use amp or cabinet sims into the front of your amp, for best results. Or, use them, but plug into the FX return of your amp so the Helix is the preamp. The Helix is a complex beast. You should really consider reading through the manual in the future. At least read up to the end of the Quick Start section.

Very interesting speaker. Awesome that Celestion even provides a DIY cabinet design. I'd love to see some specs on the speaker alone and the DIY cabinet w/ speaker. That said, the PoweCab likely compensates for the EQ curve of the stock speaker. So dropping a different speaker in will probably sound a bit different. The PowerCab uses a 12" with built in tweeter as well, so the differences are probably minimal though. Would be sweet to get a few of these and make a 412 or something, or make some floor monitors.

"noise is added because it masks aliasing noise" I believe what you're referring to is Dithering, which is used when converting an audio signal into a lower bit depth. Normalization is simply raising or lowering the amplitude of the entire track. It doesn't alter the sample rate or bit depth of the signal. It merely says that a audio data point sitting at say -6 dB is now -4.7dB. But it does that for all data points, meaning that means that the S/N ratio stays constant. Both get louder or quieter in equal amounts at the same time. However, using an external interface rather than the USB does mean the signal has to be converted from D to A, then A back to D again. That said, I'd wager that converters these days are such high quality you may have to run them through conversion hundreds or perhaps thousands of times to hear a difference. Plus it means going through the interface hardware coloring the sound in whatever way that device does. That can impact the S/N ratio because the interface will introduce its own noise, and setting the Helix output and hardware input will be important.

"so it'll be 70Hz on the low end, too." Not necessarily. Having multiple speakers means more surface area. This results in better low end response. This is why subwoofer speakers are usually larger sizes like 15" or even 18". That said, the manual does state all PowerCab models have a range of 70Hz-20KHz. So, you're correct in the end. :) The 112 vs 212 presumably have their own EQ compensation curves (for multiple reasons), and the fact that they have the same response listed in the manual means they presumably account for the different bass response down to 70Hz. I bet the 212 has better low end response below 70Hz though, due to the doubling of surface area, but L6 doesn't provide a chart to look at.

This is likely related to:

Admittedly I only parsed much of this topic after the first several comments. But I don't think I've seen anyone point out how USB works. The USB B port is universally meant to connect a "peripheral" device to a computer. In this case, the Helix is a peripheral device. It will send data from the USB B port, but you need a computer with device drivers to talk to it... In fact the computer does the talking for the most part. It controls the conversation. Computers have the USB A port, universally meant to receive a connection from a peripheral device. You'll notice that any wireless MIDI device you can buy generally has a USB A port. Some could have the new USB C connector possibly, but I didn't look. Regardless, the device can talk over USB, but it's meant to talk to a computer. It's not meant to talk to another peripheral. You can't take a peripheral device and make it talk directly to another peripheral device. They don't speak the same language, nor can either control the conversation. For example, you can't connect the Helix to a Printer. It wouldn't make any sense anyways even if you could (like if everything had the newer USB C connectors). Both are made to talk to computers only. In short you can't connect a wireless midi device to your Helix without a computer in between. Unless Line 6 makes a wireless midi device specifically for this purpose, which can talk to the Helix directly and control the conversation as a computer would, it won't happen.

The cabs are basically FRFR. However, the PC212+ is only flat down to 70Hz I believe. The 112 would be higher. I've tried bass through my PC212+ and it doesn't work well. If you like the 60's rock midrange sound it's fine, but if you need the lows you'll need a sub to be happy - unless you're just doing low volume bedroom jamming.

Way late, but the answer is obviously no. Line 6 would need to do an update to add the Input "Mode" option to the 1L input as well. Good request to put into IdeaScale? I'd love to see this too, since the PC212+ is stereo, and I use Line 6 Link to connect to my helix. That leaves both XLR inputs open for other uses.

No. With a traditional wireless radio it might work because it's just radio waves. But these are digital and two competing signals sending 0s and 1s will just cause interference and the receiver won't be able to convert those 0s and 1s into usable audio.

BTW you can also use the Relay G50 transmitter with the Spider V, and probably with the Yamaha as well since they're both designed for the G10. In the Spider V you can pick the wireless channel in the amp, but with the Yamaha you can use the mobile app to assign the channel, or sit and step through each G50 channel until it start to work.

The PC212+ is supposed to be flat down to about 70 Hz. I'm sure the roll-off after that is significant. It's really not designed for bass, which is fine. But like a said, a PowerCab Sub would be really cool to fill that low end in to make it versatile for guitar and bass.

Most of this thread is super old, but to add: I own two of the PC212+. These do not do well for more modern bass tones where lots of low end is desired. You could get away with classic bass tones from say the 60's that were mostly midrange though. Even with two of these it's missing most of the low end oomph. As Sub would be very helpful.

Ah. I didn't catch that this is for Bass guitar. It's bass, right? You're running a clean amp sound and some distortion on top of it. You're not talking about switching between a clean and distorted tone. --- Now that I understand the need, I would just try to set your two paths to two different output types and pan things center. Send your Clean out of the 1/4" output (set to Line level in the global settings) Send the Distortion out to the XLR output (set to Mic level in the global settings) Set your Global Settings > Ins/Outs > Headphones Monitor to Multi (1/4"+XLR+Digital+USB 1/2) This should mean your clean sound is on the 1/4". He can convert that to a Mic level with a DI box. Then your distorted sounds come out the XLR. (Or swap the clean and distorted signal outputs). Finally, your headphones use both at the same time so you can hear then together and panned center. If your sound man doesn't have a DI box you can get one for as low as like $20 bucks: https://www.sweetwater.com/c957--Direct_Boxes?sb=low2high --- The headphone jack mono adapter will work too, but you'll lose the ability to hear anything in stereo through the headphones. This will also let you keep any stereo FX if you wanted. They'll be mono for the sound guy, but stereo in your headphones.

The differences between A+D and B+C are probably pretty minimal. They're quite close to each other. You probably could hear a difference, but my guess is that it'd be so subtle it really doesn't matter. Who knows? Maybe someone with a Variax can use Workbench to emulate it and see how it sounds. :) One thing to keep in mind about "hot pickups" is that it's more than just volume from the pickups. You can always get a gain pedal (or add one to the chain in Helix) to increase the volume before the amp. But, hot pickups often distort the signal a little bit on their own just due to the nature of the pickup design. This results in some harmonics and tone characteristics that make it different than simply boosting the signal. In general, I'm not really one of those guys that worries about pickups much. IMHO, differences in pickups (of the same style, e.g. humbucker to humbucker or p90 to p90) are usually quite subtle. They differences they make are easily overridden by the signal chain, especially the cabinet and mic model. Even new vs dead strings are way more important than the pickups to me. IF I was going to concentrate on pickup selection it would be about trying to find ones that are more or less articulate. A hot pickup will "blend" the sound a bit more out of the guitar due to the previously mentioned distortion, while a less-hot pickup may be better at allowing you to hear each string a bit better. But hey, maybe I'm full of sh*t because I haven't gotten into swapping pickups.

Since this is about the Variax, I'd probably post it over to https://line6.com/support/forum/37-variax-instruments/ I haven't tried Variax in like 10 years, but my experience then was that they were quite good except palm muting always sounded a bit weird. I also didn't really like the guitars themselves and wish they made an installation pack. Warmoth came out with Variax routing for a while but you still had to buy a Variax and strip the important stuff out to move it. The newer models are a lot nicer though. The Helix is great. I have the Floor. LT seems to do most everything the Floor does, but has fewer connections. If you're not going crazy with routing, you probably don't need the Floor...

The key for the D20 is to use the built in XLR DI output with no cab connected (or the load box enabled) to go into the PowerCab. However you connect the rest should be OK.

How low is it? As noted above, you often want the average volume to be around -18dB in your DAW. This is "dB Full Scale" or dBFS. That correlates to around 0dB that you see on an analog VU Meter. (0dB = -20 dBFS). If you're too far below that, it means that your signal chain within the Helix is probably too low. You'll need to turn up the Channel volume on each. Or use a Gain block at the end of the signal. If you're close, I wouldn't worry about it. You'll only lose a little bit of signal to noise ratio, but guitar amps are already noisy. So just turn it up in your DAW with the clip gain or a gain plugin to compensate if needed.

Why do you need the two signals panned on stage? Your description sounds like the sound man is getting both the clean and saturated signals and has to blend or switch them for you. Shouldn't you be sending the sound man the same output as you headphones where you choose to switch between clean or saturated mode yourself?

I have two PC212+ and use L6 Link for my connection. I have not noticed any hiss from either amp. I'll need to double check though. Is it possible you're not using a real AES/EBU cable (110 Ohms)? Maybe you're just using a regular XLR microphone cable, and the incorrect impedance is making the digital signal noisy?

Using a Helix amp (no cab) and a Speaker model in the PC212+ should send the speaker model to the XLR out of the PC212+. This has a mic simulation on it, that you can control in the PC. You can choose different mics and distances sort of like you do when using a Cab model in the Helix. If you don't like the sound of the PC212+ mic simulation outs, I suggest you play around with a different mic model and distance setting. I have 2 PC212+ amps and a Helix. I wanted to check out the mic sims on the PC vs the sound from the amp itself. So I set up an Amp with no cab sim in the Helix and sent it into one PC212+ with speaker modeling enabled. Then I took the XLR out of the first PC212+ and ran it into my other PC212+, so that the first amp had just the speaker sound, and the other amp had the sound the FOH would get from the first amp. They were both very usable. I'm quite happy using FRFR mode on the PC212+ and the cabinet/mic sims on the Helix the majority of the time. I mostly don't use the PC speaker modeling at all. Using a cabinet sim on both the Helix and PC isn't "wrong". Just a little strange. :) You'll be applying two big EQ curves onto the signal.

FYI there's a bug if you have 2 PC and use L6 Link. Turning down the "center" PC volume to 0 can cause it to stop sending any signal to the second PC when you turn the volume back up.

Tone is VERY subjective. What sort of tone would you like to get closer to? Here's some basic advice Make sure the guitar strings are fresh. Dead strings won't produce a nice tone to work with. Pickup height will impact your tone a bit as well. Start with an empty patch in Helix. Add an Amp sim with no cabinet. The Powercab has speaker models already, and you don't want to use a cab sim with the Powercab speaker models. It will probably sound muddy and muffled. The PC also has a Flat mode made for when you want to use the Helix cabs, but I'm guessing that's not what you're interested in. Set the Drive where you like, but possibly dial it back slightly. The Drive knob is preamp gain which is "tighter" sounding. Most metal tones come from preamp gain. The Master volume knob will provide poweramp gain, which is "looser" sounding and feeling. Non-metal tones probably use this more. When playing by yourself you'll want the gain to be higher than it probably should be. If you're playing with other people or tracks, you'll want to turn the gain back a bit so you keep some articulation. Adjust the EQ as you want, starting with all knobs at center/12 o'clock When playing at bedroom volumes you'll need to have the bass and treble higher. When playing at volume with a band you'll need to turn the bass and treble down a bit. You'll probably want more Mids than you think if you're a newer player. You might do this with the Helix Global EQ instead so that you can easily turn on/off the bass/treble boost. Look at Fletcher-Munson curves for more info Turn the Helix output up so that you're getting a yellow signal LED but not the red clipping. According to the PC manual, this is the ideal level for realistic speaker modeling. Turn up the amp sim output if you're only getting green on the LED and not any yellow. You may need to turn up the volume by adding the LA2A compressor after the amp. Turn up the PC to a desired volume. If you like metal, you may wish to put a Tube Screamer (Scream 808) or Horizon Drive (Misha's pedal) in front of the Amp sim. Turn the Gain all the way down. The idea is to use the pedal to push the preamp gain a little bit and roll off some of the lows that get muddy. You can then turn up the bass on the Amp after. Sending bass into the Amp's distortion will cause it to distort the low end first, making it sound muddy. Sending in less low end into the amp first will let you distort the mids and highs better. Then turn up the bass on the amp to regain some tighter oomph. If you like non-metal tones, the same idea applies with the other distortion pedals. Keep the gain lower and push the front of the amp a little to get more Drive from the amp. You can drive more preamp gain or master volume gain this way.

Steps to reproduce: Are you using the full amp+cab for this? or separate cab blocks? (Don't know if the Stomp is different than the full Helix) If you use the full amp+cab, you could try moving the mic position in one cab section to see if it doesn't anything. No idea if L6 compensated for phase when adjusting that or not. What cab and mic settings are you using? Could also try adding the Simple Delay to one side with a 100% mix and 0% feedback. It'll let you set the Time as low as 0, and increment 0.1 ms increments.

I've read this thread a couple times and I'm still not sure what the real question is regarding stereo... lol But since I own 2 PC212+ and a Helix and use stereo set ups I'll comment: Stereo is the default when using L6 Link in this setup. The patch has to have something obviously stereo going on to be useful though. So a stereo mod, reverb, delay, etc, and no mono FX after. If you're doing a 7CM, you'd presumably have a bit of work cut out for you to properly send each side to one amp properly. I've messed around with the same stereo patches using a single PC212+ when I don't want to mess with setting up both at home. The stereo field on the single PC212+ is really good IF you are in the middle and stand close to the amp. As you move back, the stereo image starts to merge. However, the PC212+ has an internal stereo setting to expand that to 200%, which I haven't tried. That should hypothetically make it work better even further back. --- Two PC112 would work very well for stereo. You can space them on either side of the stage like I do, but they're small enough to fit nearly anywhere. They're smaller and lighter to carry. They're cheaper too. BUT, they're a lot quieter as far as I know. So if you're relying on them to provide stage volume, the 212 may be a better bet. That said, I'd wager that most gigs are just using a (real) mic' on the cab, the PC212+'s mic sim output on the XLR (if using the speaker mode), or just the Helix IR (if using FRFR mode). My bassist really appreciates having the second PC212+ on his side because he can tilt and control the volume independently of mine. So we're never having to deal with the sound man's guitar mix to the stage. --- IMO, the Stereo Imager in Helix 3.0 is probably the same effect in the PC212+. It's probably just playing with the phase to expand the two signals. But that's just an assumption. My primary use of stereo in my setup is to use the Double Take. I am usually using in-ear monitors, and the Double Take works awesome in headphones with a mix to make room for the vox and drums up the middle. But, I usually run a mono output to my PC212+ for gigging because the audience doesn't care. There's also phasing if the two sides of the signal are merged into mono. So, my patches are set up to add Double Take to the Digital outs as the last block, but no Double Take on the Analog Outs. I was using the external Mimiq pedal for this, but the Helix FX is pretty much as good in practice. I've tried Double Take with the physical cab sends and it's OK as long as the amps are far enough apart. But when they're close together, or using a single PC212+, the signal begins to collapse to mono and the phasing becomes pretty obvious. The Helix also sounds great. I don't feel the need to have a real amp in the chain at all, and the ability to simplify my load out is pretty awesome. I should qualify that I've never actually owned a real amp though. The Line 6 stuff was just always way more affordable, versatile, and able to be used in places like an apartment and or headphones.