pipelineaudio1

I'm still cracking up. 5 years ago, the internet was filled with posts screaming "why can't the USA be like Europe and A/NZ with guaranteed return laws in effect, comeon america, stop being so third world" When I saw this title, and first posted, I thought it meant our laws had changed and there were laws forcing companies to take returns now...Which would have still been hilariously ironic But this, this seems to be epic fail

I'm looking to buy Helix LTs for all of our kids' bands for our school. This joystick issue is frightening, but will it have any effect on programming from the editor? I don't want them programming stuff directly on the unit anyway

awesome!!! Ill be on the lookout for spiders then

Just tested though, the firehawk works well as a MIDI controller...and really, if you only want to use the computer for parallel FX it works OK as an interface, although, like the AMplifi, it has horrendous Round Trip Latency compared to the Pod ASIO drivers, in parallel that shouldn't matter much.

You can't cut the send from the guitar input to the Firehawk FX the way you can on the pod drivers, so at best you'd have a parallel signal. The XT live has a monitor fader allowing you to control the level of or eliminate the direct monitoring path, the Firehawk, like the Amplifi has no way to turn that off

Even the MOTUs and RME's will get ganked from time to time. What's crazy is, with today's multiclient drivers, they can often play along happy as can be, even with multiple sources...I have REAPER playing thru ASIO while guitar pro is playing thru WDM at the same time, no problem. What usually murders you and alerts you to a problem in the first place, is when some other program decides it wants to play at a different sample rate. Safest thing, honestly, is to set all the other sounds to your onboard soundcard. Of course that can suck when you want to hear both at once, without a mixer or something, but it sure is peace of mind! Another thing you can try is open windows volume mixer or whatever thats called, chose "playback devices", look at the properties for your line 6 device and under sample rates, just pick one of them, whichever you use the most. This will usually keep anything from switching sample rates on you, but not always. I'd do it for both inputs and outputs. Also, set windows sound scheme to "no sounds"

Yeah, what the hell was I thinking, its not like there's a forum here full of users or anything.

And here's the wah auto engage system

Since the XT Live can function as a USB interface AND sends MIDI over USB, I figured it might be able to fill both of those functions when using your computer to replace racks and racks full of amps and signal processing gear, such as in the REAPER Live Pedalboard Project So far so good, first test: Doing a fine job of sending CC's, I will next set up the auto engage for the wah function, remap the rest of the pedals so we have tap tempo and tuner and if that is all successful, I'll post a new set of files so anyone can try this as well. I'm betting the HD500X will work even better in this capacity. I'll give the Firehawk a try as well, though, due to the nature of its drivers, it cannot function as the interface, but should possibly work as the MIDI controller

This is kind of hillarious. Among talk of vendors is just how scary the return laws in europe for example are. People could return anything for any reason and if you didn't like that, you couldn't sell there. This was absolute murder on really small boutique mic and mic preamp builders. In fact I think I heard this exact talk from Line 6 guys at NAMM 2007. It seems crazy that the world has flipped upside down and now the US has the most liberal return policies? Its one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't hings

Eventually, some website or add on will grab it on edge as well. There's a few things you can do. Some of them are a massive PITA unless you have a switching system like a central station or that new cheap behringer one You can assign ALL of the windows sounds: webpages, alerts, the bing noise, whatever to the onboard soundcard on your computer and set your line 6 driver only for your DAW related stuff You may be able to chose "no not map thru this device" with varying degrees of success in audio device properties

Do you know if the guitar input to the spider actually uses the tweeter as well as the woofer? Looking for combos that can double as an FRFR and the amplifi hilariously, does not

Do you have no Line 6 ASIO drivers or are the Line 6 ASIO drivers crashing your ASIO apps? Those are two different things and the post was unclear. How are the Maudio drivers doing in your setuP

Exactly as I said, Chrome is grabbing your driver.

According to a not too reputable source, who was the source of many other articles published by equally or even less reputable sources, thereby clogging up my every google search on this question, the Helix LT's footswitches can only control FX and can't control presets, as opposed to the Helix Floor's switches. Is that true?

Thank you so much!!!!

Well, here is a picture of an EMG vs an EMG through a Line 6 Relay G30. To be absolutely accurate, you may or may not hear the clipping, as it follows a pretty decent psychoacoustic model, but it may or may not appear to be absolutely pristine thru the signal chain

99.9999% of my support calls over this issue come from something else in windows grabbing that driver. Its not just with Line 6 devices, but across the board. Hopefully you already set your windows system to "no sounds". At least that way *some* windows events won't trigger grabbing the drivers. After that its time to look for the next 400 billion processes which may try and grab that driver. An especially fun one is when another process grabs it and changes the sample rate. For more super happy extra funtime value, it wants to happen while a client is out there in the vocal booth with their headphones on, the sample rate switches, the mic preamp/A/D loses clock sync and the client gets a BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! at 0dBFS straight to their ears. Yay!

Feed a pulse to your helix and record both outputs at once to your daw and measure the time difference, if any better to be sure first

This misses 100% of the entire point of my post. If you actually want to know if there is a functional problem with the input, I outlined the way to do it. to your observation, I found that all of the firehawk tones I tested went over 0dBFS at the usb input to the computer. Because of the lack of metering on these types of units, I wouldn’t be in any way shape or form surprised if the stock presets on the helix we’re overloading like crazy. Thats is why you need to do the tests I outlined if you want to know for sure

FWIW I just updated the chart with both the Pod XT Live and the Firehawk FX. The XT Live absolutely devastates the Firehawk at any given buffer size. Its not good, but the Firehawk is REALLY bad. 15 msec at 64 samples. Hopefully the Helix drivers are better than either of these

Turn all effects off and record a bit using the helix as an audio interface....not sure if the helix drivers are like the pod drivers and allow recording a completely unprocessed input... if so, start there and see if it distorts...if it doesn’t distort there, try recording the processed input, but with all effects off...if that doesn’t distort start turning on blocks till you find the first block that records distorted.

If they’re anything like the other line 6 drivers, 44 or 48 will be fine and 16 vs 24 bit makes no appreciable performance difference as usual, it is extremely hard to find basic documentation from line 6, so if you could screen shot your helix asio control panel, I should be able to help you get it set up.

as rd2rk is saying, if its windows, you want to look at the power options on laptops, you definitely don't want the processor speed stepping. For my live and testing laptop, I have custom power plans set. One is the battery saver, and another has the cpu at 100% at all times. Speed stepping is one of those functions that can really have you scratching your head. I use a free program called "Power Plan Switcher" to make it easier on myself, a right click and a left click and you're set. I'm not sure how the Helix drivers work, but there may be configurable safety buffers as well. Its important to know that reported latency in a DAW is WAY different than measurable round trip latency. The numbers the drivers and the DAW give you are for entertainment purposes only

I doubt 256 samples on the Helix is really 8-9 miliseconds Even RME can't do that I have been compiling a chart of real, measured Round Trip Latency figures. I should have the Firehawk numbers of tomorrow. Line 6 drivers are good, but they aren't magical. http://kailuamusicschool.com/tech/round-trip-latency-roundup/ If you are using a DAW which shows you PDC per plug, be sure to check if the virtual instruments you are using require more than 256 samples of PDC. You can't lower your buffer lower than the most latent plug needs to operate if you are planning on monitoring thru in real time