OmniFace

No, I only posted here. Figured support looks at these, but perhaps that's incorrect. Will forward this to them directly I suppose.

Maybe the DT Series guide will help? The Quick Start sections walks through changing the Pod's output settings to L6 Link. Instructions say to adjust the output settings. Connect the amp via the AES/EBU cable. Then power on the cabinet. Things may be different for the PowerCab than the DT, but the key is probably your output settings. When I get my HD500x back from a friends house I'll try to remember to try this out with my PC212 cabs. I have a helix at home and it's pretty much plug and play.

Have you tried boosting your mids further? You stated you can afford keeping the mids low, but mids are in fact the key component for guitar, especially when mixed with other instruments. Are you making this assessment about the mids when playing with the others? Or when you're playing alone? In my experience most PA speakers are a bit mid scooped to begin with. Is the EQ contour button on? Those are usually a smiley curve EQ to boost lows and highs. Sounds great for processed music, but for live bands that's probably not a good thing. It may also be a matter of your guitarists tone stepping on yours as well. If they're dominating the frequency spectrum and volume, the whoever is loudest is going to win. That just how the psycho-acoustics of our ears work (see frequency masking). See if you can get them to carve out some space for your guitar, and you boost the same frequencies. If they're lead, have them cut out some lows to let you fill in that space, for example. You can help with this automatically by also staying out of each others way in the riffs you play. If you're both playing in the same register, one of you move the riff up an octave, or preferably two. Both will cut through a lot better. If you've ever tried mixing a band, it quickly becomes clear how difficult it is to have two guitars playing in the same spectrum both cut through. You might be surprised at the crazy EQ you may need to do for them to both be heard. How big are the PA speakers you're using?. You may also have the High Pass Filter enabled in your EQ or Cabinet Emulation that removes some mud. In a recording, that's a good thing. But live, that lack of low end thump can also make your rig feel less than desirable. Do you have access to more PA speakers, or larger ones? A sub perhaps?

Do you use a Tube Screamer with a low Drive in front of the amp model? This cuts some lows, and the additional grit from it creates some harmonics in the signal that helps. This is especially useful in low tuned or extended range guitars. The idea is to cut some of the lows going into the amp model and then if you boost the lows later they're "tighter" sounding and less "boomy"/"flubby" sounding.

Yeah I use two, one on each side of stage. Makes us less reliant on floor monitors. Glad to hear it's happening in other cabs, and not just mine. Simple enough to fix, and avoid, as long as you know what's going on at least.

Found an intermittent possible bug in the PowerCab 212 when daisy chaining two together with a Helix. I was able to reproduce almost 100% for a bit while writing this up, but then sometimes I can’t. ———— Steps: Connect guitar to Helix Connect Helix Line 6 Link out to PowerCab 1 Line 6 Link in using an AES/EBU cable Connect Line 6 Link Out on PowerCab 1 to PowerCab 2 Line 6 Link in Power Helix On, then PowerCab 1, then PowerCab 2. Turn volume up in both PowerCabs to half, and turn up the volume on the Helix to whatever. Make sure both have sound. Turn the volume on PowerCab 1 down to zero and verify PowerCab 2 still has sound. Mute the guitar. Continuing to play appears to negate the issue. Turn the volume on PowerCab 2 down to zero and wait 5+ seconds. Turn the volume on PowerCab 2 back up and wait 5+ seconds. Now try to play guitar. Result? No audio. No signal indicators on the PowerCab 2. PowerCab 1 appears to stop sending signal. Green signal lights appear on PowerCab 1, and turning the volume up works. Restarting PowerCab 2 does not restore audio. You must restart PowerCab 1, and then audio on PowerCab 2 will work again. —————— I tried swapping the order of the PowerCabs in the signal chain and got the same result. Whichever amp is in the middle of the Helix and the other stops sending signal when the volume is set to zero, and nothing comes in to the amp for a bit, but only if the second cab is also set to zero briefly. ————— This is a minor issue, but may you have to restart your PowerCabs between sound check and your show. Or make sure you never set the volume to zero on the amps themselves. Ran into this the first few times I played with the amps live, and thought maybe I had to start them in a certain order. I was playing withy two amps today and investigating a new rattle, and I’ve figured out what’s actually going on for this problem.

Just curious what happens with Line 6 Link and 4 PowerCabs? With 2, it automatically splits the signal into stereo right? If I added a 3rd, does the third get one side? Or does it flip to mono on that one? If added a 4th, does it Go back to stereo? I’m betting no one has done this, and it’s more of a thought experiment. Just thought it’d be interesting to know. I’m trying my bass through my 212 PowerCabs right now, and noticed after my most recent show (using guitar) that I’m getting some rattling in on of the PowerCabs at certain frequencies. Gonna have to crack it open and tape things down I guess. So I set up both of my 212 cabs with my bass and the rattle goes away because I’m turning the Helix volume down to compensate for twice the power. The low end out of two is improved a bit. And obviously the more speakers and power, the better it would handle even more lows. So imagine 4? Have a nice stack of PowerCabs on either side of stage, and maybe 2 more on top for guitar... #drool

Actually I’M talking about the full Helix. So I have the Ferrari, but wish it was a little faster. lol Maybe I’ll buy the stomp or other one and use that to help offload some processing.

Figures. I really wish the Helix had just a hair more power, or better efficiency. It's just not quite enough to have a proper dual amp/cab setup and the other pre/post FX I want on a single path. I end up having to push a few to the 2nd path. Since patch changes have a pretty audible gap, I need all these things available to flip on and off with snapshots. Which is a bummer, since it'd be really nice to be able to run two instruments through the Helix at once (guitar and bass). If they could just squeeze out like 1% more DSP for each effect it could unlock one or more blocks for additional processing. Alas. I'll wait for Helix 2 for that I guess. lol

I hear that the HX Stomp is supposed to get 8 blocks for the Helix 2.0 Firmware update. Anyone have any idea if that's indicative of an under utilized DSP chip? Or is it efficiency improvements to the algorithms themselves? I'm mostly hoping for getting improvements in efficiency, because it would allow me to choose some different options on a path that has lots going on...

See this: https://line6.com/support/topic/53563-host-sync-doesnt-control-modulation-lfo-start Basically, the LFO for the tremelo is always running at the defined tempo. So depending on when the tremelo turns on, or the DAW starts playback, the cycle may be at the top, or bottom, or somewhere in between. Looks like the hardware works the same. Even down to the Bass Pod XT I have. If your tremelo effect is minor and just giving you the "warble" you would use from a Fender amp or something, then the timing doesn't really matter. But if you're using more extreme tremelo sounds like I'm trying to do, your best bet is to try to find the sweet spot to start playback from, and freeze the track for the tremelo effect at least. Or try to use another tremelo plugin.

I'm writing a song that uses a square or saw tooth tremelo effect synced to the beat with a 100% intensity for the primary rhythm element. I've found that though you can sync the tempo to the track, you can't control the start of the tremelo cycle with the DAW to sync it up with other elements. This means that each time you start the track, the phase of the cycle may not be what you expect. That makes it very difficult to sync up properly... For example, I've set up a sine wave generator, then an instance of Helix Native with a single Modulation > Mono > Tremelo: I've then set up my DAW to enable the effect at a particular spot in the "song" so that the effect would theoretically start the cycle the same each time. Then, I rendered the same section of song 3 times and added them to the project. As you can see, the first bar is the solid block sine wave, and then the tremelo effect is kicked on. You'll notice that the phase of each cycle is quite different, even though they all are turned on at the exact same time. (Three may have been me accidentally leaving one unmuted before the next render) Next, I attempted to bypass the Helix plugin entirely, rather than just the tremelo effect block. The same behavior is exhibited. The start time of the cycle is entirely unpredictable, and appears to simply be running non-stop after you load the plugin into memory or something. As suspected, this is true for other Modulation effects as well. Here's the same test using a whole not with the Script Mod Phase effect: Helix Native needs to honor the Host Sync's start event (assuming that actually exists) to reset it's LFO for Modulation effects. Otherwise, results are unpredictable and potentially unusable during rendering. :( I haven't tested the Helix Floor pedal to see if the bypass/enable of a trem effect resets the LFO, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had the same basic problem...

Awesome I'll check it out!

BTW, I used to do this with the X3 Live. It was true dual path with up to 8 blocks or whatever, and I could make an entire rig for both me and my singer/rhythm guitarist. Then I made the patch changes and he could just play and sing. The HD500x wasn't powerful enough if I recall correctly, unless the rigs for each were pretty simple. Dual amping really took a lot of DSP. I can do the same in the Helix now if I'm careful about selections, but it would be nice if it just had a little bit more juice so I could squeeze in an extra Delay and or the Dual Cab sim or something. :)

I very frequently find that when I'm trying to navigate around the screen with the joystick that I accidentally spin it. This causes the model currently under the cursor to change, and I may not even be aware that I changed the model until after I saved a preset. Is there any way to make it so that you have to first press the joystick or something to select it before allowing the rotation to change the model? I assume no, but wanted to check before I popped the request onto ideascale.

I don't mean anyone fighting over switches. It's more about using the pedal as the Control Center. While that part is available already, it would be ideal to be able to run full rigs from one unit. That makes a difference for people like me where fellow musicians can't afford decent equipment. Or users who are touring and want to limit the amount of gear they are lugging around. Or for recording where I'm using one unit to handle a few people.

Ah interesting to know. You're probably correct that they have not compelling interest to upgrade without running out of supplies. Too bad. I'd like to see one with more power, because it would be handy to run more than one musician through it. You can now, but the options are pretty limited for the signal chain. If I could run a full rig in Path A and another in Path B that'd be pretty sweet.

Updating to 2.82 has fixed it so far. Now to fix the squeaky pedal situation...

It appears I'm mistaken. It's 2.81. Sweetwater did actually open the box and update it prior to shipping though. Just not sure when that happened. I'll back up and update tonight, and hopefully that will be that.

Yes. It was preloaded from Sweetwater with the latest.

I've had the Helix a couple weeks, and have been studiously setting up a single Preset and 8 Snapshots. Since Snapshots are my primary focus due to the large delay in preset switching, I've set the Global Setttings > Footswitches to "Manual Return" instead of auto. This was previously working fine. I could tap the Cancel button to return to Stomp box mode and enable/disable individual effects. Or I could use the Bank Up and Bank Down buttons to navigate around. Today when I boot up I find that I can't get into Stomp Box mode at all. Pressing cancel does nothing. Holding cancel will open Edit mode. Pressing up or down will allow me to choose a bank. I can choose any snapshot... I just can't get into stomp box mode? I'll try re-flashing later, but maybe I've just tweaked something weird. Anyone have ideas? I did muck with Global settings a bit to see what they did, and tried reverting some changes with no luck. ______________________ Coincidentally (or not...) The Bank Up and Down don't work as expected while in Snapshot mode. If I press Bank up, it will move one bank DOWN. Then pressing it again moves up as expected. Likewise, pressing bank down while viewing the snapshots will open up the next bank UP. Pressing it down again then moves back down. For example, I'm on preset 2A. Pressing Bank UP displays Banks 35 and 36. Pressing UP again displays Banks 1 and 2. Pressing Bank DOWN first displays Banks 3 and 4. Pressing DOWN again displays Banks 1 and 2. OCCASIONALLY no numbers will display at all and it will just say BANK on each. Pressing UP or DOWN returns to the expected BANK. Reversing the Bank up and down has no effect. It goes the wrong way the 1st time, then the way it was set the 2nd and 3rd. WTF?

The Pod HD500 was released in 2010. The Pod HD500x was released in 2013. It was basically just a newer release of the same unit using a newer DSP and some colored footswitch LEDs... Helix Floor was released in 2015. It is now 2019, almost 2020. In my opinion, it seems entirely possible that a Helix "X" could be released with a better DSP any time. And I for one would welcome a bit more power if it weren't for the fact that I just finally got one. Anyways, I obviously have no idea.

Thanks guys! Looks like the Super Serial is the way to go!

Seems the Serial vs. Parallel Routing "Super Serial" option might be what I'm looking for actually. Looks like a pretty viable alt is the "1 into 2" option on page 18 of the manual. You can apparently move the merge block to Path B and it will split Path A down, giving you the option of adding additional post fx to each path independently. Not quite the same as I was trying to do, but that could be handy.

Didn't they just do a giveaway of Brendon Small's Helix or something? That makes me wonder if they have a Helix II in the pipeline and are having artists try it out. It may be as simple as a Helix with more DSP. Since I JUST got a Helix finally, I kind of hope this isn't the case. lol