hefonthefjords

I can fix this for you but I'm not doing it tonight because it's 4am and I need to be up to leave for a weekend away in 4 hours. I can rebuild the preset from the raw code. I'm home on Sunday, if you can wait till then bump this thread and I'll sort it.

I knew straight away how to fix it because it behaves as though there is an external EXP 2 connected when there isn't and I understand how digital systems detect and record the status of hardware so I know that if it's in this state with no cause then it cannot be rectified without presenting it with the requisite state change it needs to record that it should no longer behave in that fashion. To me it was blatantly obvious but I have a lot of seriously in depth technical knowledge to work from. There is another thread somewhere on here from 2015 where some folk were working on creating a "patch translator" of sorts to allow importing settings from other devices to helix. One of those guys demonstrated how to decompress the bundles and setlists. They decompress to big JSON files too so it is actually very feasible to make small applications that could correctly convert presets from 2.01 to 2.10 to avoid the EXP problem entirely and to maintain the IR libraries as you describe. Really there is no reason that Helix editor shouldn't be able to manage both presets/setlists/bundles and IRs all in a oner to maintain the preset .hlx together with any IRs used in the preset and load and unload those IRs to their correct slots. The current system is very disorganized.

"Bundle" is the lollipoping dumbest word for it ever. Call it what is is; "Complete Backup". Setlist at least makes sense.

There are a few faults regarding this. The above LED Dim/Off bug. Also, if you swap snapshot button positions the assigned LED colour gets left behind and you have to manually change it.

Did a bit of digging into what causes this problem. Seems that individual .hlx presets are stored as plain text scripts. There is an entry for each snapshot designating which pedal is selected which i guess must not have been there before as shown below. "snapshot3" : { "@ledcolor" : 5, "@name" : "Lead", "@pedalstate" : 2, "@tempo" : 120.0, My guess is that for whatever reason this entry is not added in the import or rebuild process for old presets and Helix doesn't enjoy it when it can't find that entry. Because these files are plain text it would be mega easy to make a standalone translation app to translate .hlx from older firmware to work straight away but it seems that the .hlb and .hls files are compressed so it's not as simple to conform them from older firmwares to the new 2.10 syntax. Anyone know anything about zlib compression and wanna throw me some hints on how to extract and recompress them?

Are you on floorboard or rack version? Can you send me a preset to investigate via dropbox or something? This deffo worked perfectly for me and a lot of others so there has to be something unique about your configuration. Maybe we can identify it.

Yes, I tried that first. It doesn't work, which is why I wrote a guide on exactly how to fix it completely and properly. Doesn't work. My instructions above do.

To clarify, I saw it rebuild right after installing the new firmware, then after resetting globals at which point I reloaded my backup and then again on the next boot after reloading my backup. If it ever chooses to rebuild I always just let it finish just in case.

I was that kid that took the VCR apart to find out how it worked. :lol:

It only did it twice; first boot after update, second boot after update. On the first boot I reloaded an entire bundle and immediately powered off again then carted it off to band practice. When I booted it at band practice it did a rebuild again and hasn't done it since through two more reboots.

Nae bother. Maybe they'll throw me a more difficult one next time! :) This shouldn't be a problem ever again. It only happened this time around because they now save the status of which EXP you have selected per snapshot (meaning you dont have to manually switch back to where you started in the snapshot anymore!!).

Mine's rebuilt the presets twice. I didn't notice any difference between the first time and the second time. Not sure why it does this after the update. Couldn't see any reason for it.

Solution for this problem provided here... http://line6.com/support/topic/24048-fw-210-expression-pedal-question/?p=183609

I'm a genius for a living.

Hey, I noticed this straight away at band practice tonight, it seems to only happen with presets imported from an older firmware - here's how to fix it. Select your preset. Change to any snapshot in the preset to trigger the problem. Unplug your guitar cable (with your guitar connected - IMPORTANT) from the guitar input and plug it into the EXP2 jack for a second then unplug it. You should now see "EXP1 EXP2" in the expression scribble strip again. Click save twice before doing anything else. Switch to the next snapshot. Repeat for all the remaining snapshots in the preset. Finally switch back to the snapshot you want to be loaded by default when you load the preset and hit save twice again. Your preset will now function normally in the 2.10 firmware. The reason you have to keep your guitar connected to the cable is that you have to create a short circuit within the EXP2 jack and then remove it so that the Helix thinks it had an expression pedal connected for a second. When it sees that this connection was removed it will default the EXP2 function back to the internal expression pedal, thus solving the problem. This status is now saved with the snapshot which is why you need to repeat the process for each snapshot. This solution definitely works on the floorboard Helix. I presume it will also work with Helix Rack but I don't have one here to test it on.

Sometimes mine disconnects of it's own accord. A simple unplug and replug of the USB fixes it. Not sure whether it's the computer or the Helix at fault. Never been a serious problem.

I had my Helix out on it's first ever gig on Saturday, playing bass as that just happened to be the first show that came up since I got it. Was great. Sounded ace. We had a bunch of covers in the set (it was a party) and I had all the right sounds for each track. Was ideal.

AHHH, you're right. After the update it can be done via snapshot. Now it has to be done by extra expression pedal. I didn't know that per snapshot setting was there. New things to play with all the time!

Is there an option for EXP position as per snapshot already? I don't remember that being a thing....

Edited because nonsense* phil_m - I don't think you understand what's being asked here. OP - There is no way I can see to do what you ask without having a second expression pedal connected in some form, either via midi or as dedicated EXP2 or EXP3. Bummer.

Hey Mitch, I get your wavelength on this. It's interesting from a technological standpoint - "better" or "worse" is irrelevant. I'm down with that outlook. To directly answer the original question, nobody here knows exactly how they are creating the cab emulations. Your theory of stacked impulses is sound to me and I agree that is one possible method that could deliver what Helix is doing but I'm not convinced that is what we are looking at here. I'll try to meander through why I think that... *begin speculation* From what I understand about the way the HX modelling system works, they are using a profiling system similar to that of the Kemper at a component level to create or "capture" algorithms that represent each section of the circuit in, for example, an amplifier in order that the final emulation of the complete device has the same interactivity between its controls and reactivity and dynamic quality in the complete emulation as in the original device. Now, given that this is their supposed approach to circuits it stands to reason that they would be applying a similar approach to cab and mic sims in order to maintain a uniformity within their platform for the actual processing (less different means less difficult when it comes to programming code and hardware). If that is the case then my understanding is that to actually stack impulses would require a much greater processing overhead than the Helix hardware allows for (given that you can only load a couple of IR before it poos the bed) leading me to think this cannot be the method they are employing and it would be more logical for them to take a similar approach to how they are supposedly creating the amplifier or effects emulations. My idea of it is that rather than stacking impulses what they are doing is that they are instead combining a bunch of distinct algorithms for each option within a cab block and "generating" a single impulse based on the selected options entirely separate from the audio path and then conforming the signal to that single generated IR. I think this because this method minimises the DSP heavy process of conforming a signal to an IR to just a single instance while still providing all the options for variability we seem to have in the box with comparatively little processing overhead. The group of algorithms generates the IR once upon configuration and then the only realtime process that needs carried out is conforming the signal to that single IR. *end speculation* What think you?

Cant you do this by just connecting the ipad and helix as distinct devices to the mac and using the mac to route your audio and midi between all three? I mean, that's what core audio is for, innit?

In terms of usage scenarios, it does seem like an oversight to not have included mono (and thus DSP conserving) versions of the reverbs given that the scenarios where people will actually be making use of a stereo signal path are going to be fewer and further between for probably the majority of users and usage scenarios. Realistically, for me, the only time I will ever actually require a stereo effect of any kind from Helix will be in recording sessions. Helix is primarily a live performance tool and given that there are not many guitar amplifier out there with stereo poweramps there are not going to be many people actually able to make use of stereo anything in a live performance situation. That's not to say there aren't loads of people who will make the effort to do stereo effects live but they will certainly be on the outside of the bell curve of the total number of users. It would indeed be beneficial for a larger proportion of users to have mono reverbs if said mono reverbs did indeed use less processing than their stereo counterparts.

I wouldn't say I was underwhelmed but I did return my Helix after two and a half weeks because it (running firmware v1.12) was incapable of doing what I require of it without the snapshots feature in order to avoid running into the 8 assignments limitation and the preset change dropout. With no way of predicting how long such a thing might take to show up in firmware I wasn't willing to run the risk of losing a few hundred quid to the second hand market as my previous experience of relying on firmware updates that are "coming soon, honest" tells me this is always bad practice as a customer. Otherwise it was a pretty excellent unit. The audio interface is the new bar for devices like this, the modelling is generally excellent, the level of tonal customization is fantastic, the number of available effects is excellent and the quality matches the price, the hardware quality is fantastic with a solid structural build that I'm pretty sure would last a lifetime although I was constantly paranoid about dropping something or knocking something over onto that massive (and very lovely) LCD which was obviously not well protected at all given that a normal pressure touchscreen poke with a finger upsets the display. I had the impression that dropping even something as low mass as my phone or a zippo on it might remove it from the game, never mind a mic stand or mic or accidentally whipped connector on a cable during a show. I cannot stress enough how good the audio interface is though. Even with the preset change dropouts and limited control assignments, this is an excellent if not the ultimate studio recording tool for a guitarist. Simple re-amping. Multichannel recording. An excellent mic preamp which +48 available. OMG AN IEC CONNECTOR THANK THE SWEET BABY JESUS. There are a LOT of great things that make the Helix significantly better that all but one or two solutions with which, on balance of features and execution, it is likely on par with but at a better price point. Functional downsides I might mention, not including the actual reason I returned it, would be perhaps too small a number of bass amp and cab emulations provided and that you have to effectively waste a large amount of available DSP in order to create a signal path to send a separate cab emulated signal to XLR for FOH whilst sending a non-emulated signal to a guitar cab on stage. These are things that were not showstoppers but certainly were downsides to the product and are apparently going to be addressed in firmware (again, always skeptical of this "it's coming soon guys, we promise" patter from companies). Currently I'm in a horrible limbo of indecision as to whether to purchase it again.

Excellent. Voted for it.