jorisgriffioen

What guitar are you playing? That makes a massive difference for these tones.

Hey jshimkoski, I'm a webdeveloper, can I help in any way? If you have a repo feel free to add me as collaborator -> https://github.com/GriffinSauce

True, but the visual supports the aural in some cases. Especially when different freq. bands cross each other.

Sure, I found fido083's suggestion quite aggravating. Sorry to jump on it so harshly. Anyway: yes let's wait and see, I've decided to keep the Helix for now because the discussion with DI is looking promising. :)

You're kidding right? You can't seriously be suggesting that I change my music because the equipment is not behaving as expected?! Again: we have songs at 190BPM, yes sometimes a moment of rest is better, but that should be up to me, not my tools.

Thanks for another red herring. Computers will not "always" have some latency issues. They will always have latency, but it is simply a matter of making it so low it's imperceptible or at least negligible. As I mentioned before, 20ms or more is perceptible. From my tests when it's under 100ms it's usable (no missed notes). There was a moment in time when live guitar processing was not possible at all due to latency, we're well past that, now we're at the next challenge.

50% faster would get it into acceptable range for me. I would absolutely appreciate it. Some switches are already quicker than others, those quick switches are fine. It seems especially the Soldano SLO is causing a delay, but I haven't done thorough investigation there. You predicted wrong.

Component cost does not directly translate to customer pricing. You're missing a few steps like R&D, any extra hardware you might need to support those chips etc.

Not entirily. You can load in the second DSP before you switch audio. No need to wait for the first one to unload. There will be no gap. There would be a bit of latency but that is the least of the problem. The problem is silence.

Completely agreed.

Done. Perhaps you could merge some of the ideas on there as well? There are quite a few regarding this. http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Delay-Reverb-Preset-spillover-on-Helix/727853-23508 http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Optional-Global-signal-path-Spillover/741927-23508 http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Enable-FX-Spillover-Between-Patch-Changes/800257-23508 http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Hold-DSP-1-or-2-on-preset-change-for-Global-I-O-and-Spillover/799158-23508 http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Tails-between-patches/789365-23508 http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Spill-over-and-no-audiable-latency-when-changing-between-prestes/793516-23508 http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Seamless-Patch-Change-Option/812943-23508 http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Reduce-or-Eliminate-audio-dropout-between-patch-changes/800260-23508 http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Seamless-preset-changing/804036-23508 http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Dynamically-allocate-DSP-resources/795206-23508 (it may be unfair, but if you tally up the votes across all of these it is the most voted for issue for the Helix) As a final note, because I think everything else has been said. From another thread: Force everyone? No, obviously not everyone needs it. But if there was the option to pay $500 extra for this I would in a heartbeat. Not to start another discussion but to tell you: yes, this is a serious potential selling point and a legitimate option.

That is true but it is to the order of 10 - 20ms, not three times as much. That's not even counting the fade in/out that occurs around the silence. All combined you're in the 150 - 200ms range of audible switching. Also, amp reverb and any delay you use has spillover across channels, there is almost never true silence.

Another point: no. It's not. Literally any other guitar setup besides modeling is the solution. A Marshall JVM has seamless switching, so does any other amp on the market, any decent delay pedal has tails, etc. If you want to prove that modeling beats "the real thing" then that is what you're up against, not just other modelers.

DI, I know. That's why I brought it up. It's not to grieve you guys but to point out how much of an issue it is. Seriously? You *just* typed the reason above. It creates an experience across patches that is seamless. Having delays spill over and instantanious switching of amps *is* that important. It makes the unit a whole different thing, it behaves like an integral part of a rig, not a container to multiple seperate rigs. The experience is drastically different. I guess if you've lived with this for a long time it doesn't matter to you. Of course everything is a tradeoff, but have you seen that multiple people have said they'd do exactly that? Trade a full DSP just for seamless switching. It is that important to these people. I just did a recording and am measuring a silence of 75 to 125ms between patch changes. This is with patches that just have amp + cab + reverb, nothing else. The human brain will notice a delay when it goes above 20ms. One of the factors is also that it is dead silence (which is logical, processing is paused). If there would be some way for you guys to smear out the last samples into that gap or something it would make it much less jarring. It seems like you've accepted this problem as just being a shortcoming of the device, I really hope not. it is the only thing keeping me from saying it's the best guitar product I've used ever.

Wow I had the same issue. Once you type in the field that prefill disappears, so your recoverability is zilch. Bah, anyway, I'm in, cheers!

Just an idea: maybe the memory of the looper can be used? I'd give up the looper for seamless(ish) patch changes, don't use it live anyway. (cue the one person that does ;) )

I was worried about this, coming from a tube amp and Digitech GSP with zero lag ... turns out this is really an issue on the Helix for me. :( The brainstorming for solutions is much appreciated but in the end I'm playing punk/poprock at 190BPM, I don't have any damn time to pre-select or skip beats or whatever. ;) This basically makes the unit unusable for me live. And thus too expensive to keep around. I'll stick around for a while to see if it's improved in updates but this is quite simply a dealbreaker. I really hope Line 6 doesn't support the "yes but you can create everything in one patch" story. It's impressive and creative, but also ridiculous when the whole point is that you can have entire seperate rigs in one unit. This seems to be a common problem for Line 6 though. Within one preset it's extremely powerful but you're missing the things that tie presets together: - levels matching - spillover - switching speed - global effects - global output choices (cab to one output, direct to another) I hate to keep harping on about it, but these things were solved by Digitech in the GSP1101 almost ten years ago. I know, dual DSP, but the technology doesn't matter, the experience for the player does.

So, guess what came in the mail today?! I've been playing around with the Helix for a few hours, everything is super clear. Serious kudos to Line 6 for the UX. Something I'm struggling with figuring out though is the optimal setup for a real guitar poweramp + fully modeled line out scenario: - Amp+cab -> XLR outs to IEMs / board - Preamp -> real poweramp (Randall RT2/50) and cab In an ideal world the XLR outs would get the full amp and the 1/4" outs would get only the preamp (since it's connected to a real poweramp+cab). My Digitech GSP1101 supports this explicitly, it seems with the Helix I should live with poweramp models being sent to my real poweramp? Does anybody run it like that? It would be cool if the poweramp could be seperated or the amp+cab block could split the signal to two paths or something. Just riffing ideas...

I don't see how that makes any difference. It's not like they released a HD500 for $1500, they made something way better and priced it to match... The margins are probably in the same ballpark.

I know. Show me yours, I'll show you mine haha ;) Yeah, I didn't mean as an example of a business decision but rather what continued development can do for a unit. The additional firmware does a ton more than just IRs, there are lot's of tweaks, fixes and features all over the place, even adding a new way to navigate that is way quicker and more intuitive. It's sad that Digitech didn't see the value in it. :(

Well yes but in the end the company is expending resources based on income. Some may choose to dig into their profit more in the sake of support but in the end that resource is finite, it *will* end at some point. It seems that Fractal may have a middle ground where every unit is so expensive that they have enough overhead to do a huge amount of development. But then I have no idea of their unit economics so that interpretation could be way off. I believe they have also in the past done things like paid amp packs. Anyway, let's hope they keep adding stuff and making the Helix even more awesome. :) The Digitech GSP1101 is a great example by the way. The life cycle of that unit was extended insanely. It was released almost 10 years ago and is still a great choice for many setups. I actually bought a Pod HD rack to replace the GSP and flipped it because it simply didn't win.

Very simple answer to this: if you pay a limited amount of money, you will get a limited amount of support. It's either that or pay-per-amp or a "pay to get updates subscription".

Nope, you can differentiate on many other things. Look at web development, great swathes of it are not new, but still there are an enormous amount of companies working in it that provide different value because they are good at different things. For instance: Line 6 is better at building a nice and usable UI than Fractal is, they might use the same DSP code but their actual product will be different. Next version comes out and Fractal uses some of Line 6's UI ideas? You push further on them or other areas that can be improved. The arms race then is not in catching up to the one thing that was blocked off, but to speed up in actual real innovation. I don't really expect the music industry to ever get there, especially guitarists are some of the most technologically conservative people out there. Either way, this is pretty far off topic so I'll leave it at that.

I wish music companies finally warmed up to the idea of sharing ideas and even the concept of open source software. Consider that Digitech has had the code to do this for a while and every other company has to reinvent the wheel. That has two effects: we get less value from our products and all innovation is held back by how good you are at developing things that have already been created by someone else. In short: copyright and patents blow.