gunpointmetal

You'll have to check your USB routing in Helix. It's possible you've routed audio to USB tracks and bypassed the physical outputs of the Helix.

If you connect your headphones or speakers to the Helix you should be able to monitor at the very least the clean channel while you're recording. I'm not sure if you can monitor the other USB sends from the Helix, but at least that way you'd have one sound that was not delayed by the software.

Just trying to clarify: You'd like to monitor the DI signal going into the computer on USB 7 along with the Clean/Saturated channels via the Helix outputs while you're tracking?

I really like reading Eric's posts just because he always sounds so stoked about whats just around the corner. I feel like he probably reads some forums on the can in the AM then giggles like a kid all the way to work, lol.

@qwerty42 pretty much nailed it. A big part of mixing/mastering is making sure that a mix sounds big and full at any volume, guitar on its own it would be very hard to manage that. As @cruisinon2 said, album guitar tones rarely sound as good on their own. There are also lots of little tricks used like side-chain EQ'ing, compression, using different tracks for parts where the guitar is on its own versus in with the rest of the band, that make everything SEEM consistent and "big" without that being the case. Metal and dense music especially. I remember for a long time people would complain they couldn't hear bass in metal, but they could definitely tell it wasn't there when it was removed.

I think you're over-thinking the suggestion a little bit. The quoted thing regard EQ is suggesting that a driven tube power amp will change the EQ slightly to have a low-mid scoop compared to a solid-state amplifier that doesn't change the tone at all. There's no real reason to do the EQ suggestion unless you're having an issues with the tone. A slight EQ cut is not going to dramatically change the tone, nor is it going to be accurate to every tube power amp one might come across. Use your ears and dial it in till it sounds good. My original post was directed towards the OP where he mentioned stock settings on an amp model, then having to do crazy EQ stuff after the cab IR to get it sound good. My suggestion would be to treat the amp model like a real amp that you're changing cabs with. If you have a Marshall dialed in for a Marshall cab w/75w speakers, you can't just transfer those settings over to a Mesa cab and have it sound as good/the same.

Think of it this way: You wouldn't just take your amp head from one cab to another and expect the same settings to work exactly. If you grab a different cab/IR you should expect to adjust the amp controls for the cabinet. I've only used a handful of OH ir's, but turning the virtual amp dials got me 90% of where I wanted to be, which is about as good as any cab/IR that I've tried except for ML Soundlabs. ML stuff sounds "right" to me for the most part.

If Line 6 doesn't have something for you, check for another update in Windows. v2004 JUST came available for my laptop within the last few weeks, and probably within 24 hours of it being out, there was a patch update for my hardware specifically. I didn't have any issues with Helix, but my other interface (Behringer XR18) driver wouldn't load until Lenovo released their update to the update. I can't imagine a Surface Book 3 would have hardware/software issues that wouldn't be addressed ASAP.

By the time you get it working as anything other than a headphone output you could have got a temp job and bought a real laptop.

Chrome OS is basically Android, and not too many audio devices work with Android. Since it isn't like Windows with various driver installation options and its not 100% class compliant, its rare to have audio stuff work. The main reason Android has such poor audio support compared to iOS is that there are literally tens of thousands of hardware configurations that stuff would have to work with.

Yep, sure did. I'm gonna mess around with it later and see if I need to reassign something and remove it to maybe break it of whatever software loop it is stuck in.

So I did this last night and it's still doing it. Even rebuilt a version of the pedal from scratch and its still doing it on that one footswitch.

I don’t have the issue using normal snapshot mode, just when I wanna set up multiple switch types in command center, and almost only with that first stomp button. But yes, setting both press and release to Snapshot 1 made it a one press switch. For the other snapshots I jump to just having Press assigned to the Snapshot and release to None works as a single-press snapshot change. I don’t know if it’s because I some switches assigned as momentary snapshot changes that jump back to Snapshot 1 or what.

So they ability to use command center to assign just about any function to any footswitch in stomp mode is pretty sweet, but I have a couple of issues/questions and couldn't find anything relevant with a search. Why do I have to set the footswitch color in SNAPSHOT settings instead of in the command center? If the color in the snapshot menu is "AUTO", wouldn't it make sense that the color would change according to what is assigned in Command Center? Why do I have to assign PRESS and RELEASE functions to the same snapshot to get some of the switches to change without double pressing? It's not all of them, and it seems to be mostly when I'm assigning something to the second-from-left switch on the bottom row (the first stomp switch, I can never remember how the numbers are laid out).

I was thinking about this while I was building some patches last night. I don't think I want numbers, necessarily, but peak indicators would be awesome. Just a little white bar that sits at the loudest transient it's passed until something else comes up louder when you click on an output block. The main use I would have is doing things like corrective EQ'ing before an amp model or dirt where I would disabled everything between the eq and the output to make sure I had the make-up gain on the EQ set so the level didn't change because of the EQ.

Input gate is set as low as possible to eliminate any buzz/interference noise on high-gain patches, but definitely not set very aggressively. If I need a tight gate I'll do a couple of hard gates before and after the amp later in the chain. I'd really like to see some sort of "X" pattern feature in the hard gate where you can set the threshold based on the front of the chain and the gate after the amp model or drive pedals instead of having to run two separate gates.

High mids (imo) = 1kHz-3kHz Low mids (imo) = 400Hz-1kHz Cutting through usually happens in the high mids (depending on the music/rest of the band tones) Body usually happens in the low mids, but can also be "boxy" between the 400Hz-800Hz range depending on pickups/amp

This mostly is going to come down to communication between you and the other guitarist. If he needs to turn down a bit to improve the overall band mix, that's one consideration. If he's reliant on the "feel" (I so much hate that term, as its basically meaningless, but guitarists are notoriously picky about stupid stuff), then you might have to consider a live cabinet option. Maybe meet him in the middle and you can both run 2x12s for in-the-room sound with DI feeds for FOH from you both, so you can get an even mix for the whole band. I highly doubt his sound is any better than yours, its just more visceral because of the amplification and that's the aspect that he and your other band mates are enjoying. If you snoop around the Google machine a little bit you might be able to find a "far-field" IR that will make your PA/Alto sound more cab-like in the room, but mostly you need to converse with the other guitarist and your band mates about the issue and options for a solution. No matter how much more cut and clarity you add to your signal its still going to sound like an amp mic'd in another room compared to a 4x12.

What are you plugging it in to? If it sounds good, it is good. That being said, I can't imagine how something with no mids sounds like anything other than scratchy noises.

Lol, it took them almost a decade to repackage their tech into a floor controller. Did they ever release an official computer editor?

Essentially you're just asking for a longer thinner Helix LT with an XLR jack, and I don't think doing that while maintaining the DSP capabilities would lead a change in weight or portability other than making whatever case you put it different shaped.

14 1/8" x 9" x 3 1/2" is the POD Go size, 20x12 must be the box? Really the only way to make everyone happy would be to somehow make a bunch of 3" x 5" modules that were either footswitches, displays with DSP, or I/O panels and somehow have them all be interchangeable. Then someone could build a 5 DSP mega helix with 15 switches and 2 EXP pedals and 25 channels of I/O, or someone could build a single DSP micro Helix with minimal I/O and no switching options. As long as the Helix has been out people have been asking for user-specific iterations because they don't need 1 of the FX loops, or the XLR input, or they don't need switches, but they want more DSP, or etc etc etc etc... There's such a range of stuff with excellent modeling in the HX (now POD) family that I personally think software development is way more important than more hardware versions. A person can always run HX Native and go to town with I/O and switching via USB/MIDI if none of the hardware fits their needs.

There's plenty of options between the POD Go and the Helix Rack+Control. There's no reason to make "less footswitches but we added the XLR input and made in two inches shorter" version of the LT.

If the L6 cabs were that intensive there's no way they'd use less DSP than an IR block. I'm not expecting anyone from L6 to come in and give away the secret sauce, but I'm pretty sure you're not cycling through thousands of very slightly different IRs when you switch mics/positions. Thousands of micrometer-difference IRs are annoying as hell, and 99% there will be EQ applied after the fact in a mix, no matter how perfect you get the base tone, unless everything else you're comparing against doesn't change.

What do you think the stock cabs are doing? They're ultra-flat IRs with simulated mic positions at various settings, which is just a fancy way of adding EQ. Not that they don't/can't sound good, but they're not some magic algorithm. IME, especially for heavily distorted stuff, IRs are pretty much drag, drop, and play as long as you know the sound you're after. And so far, I haven't found a stock cab or IR that doesn't need at the very least a HPF to sit in a band mix.