kylotan

I don't understand this. The PA is usually in front of the stage, so all we'd hear is the muffled sound from the back of the speaker. That's not ideal for monitoring from. I'd be lucky to hear it at all with a drummer thrashing away next to me. (Also, as already stated, in a small room the PA is usually there to help the sound carry to the back, and the people in the middle near the front are relying on stage sound anyway.)

Haha. I would use a JCM 800 as a clean amp. And for dirt? Well...

Just returning to this reverb today and sadly still finding it unusable because of this problem. With the mix up to 100% you can play with the mod mix parameter and easily see that the modulated signal is up to 12dB louder on the right. With the mix at more regular levels it's still noticeably off-centre and hard to correct without collapsing it to mono.

I don't think that's particularly true. Look at the European metal scene and you'll see much of it using Peavey, Engl, Orange, Blackstar, Laney, etc. These have a range of relatively distinctive tones, typically much less scooped than a Recto, and higher gain than a 2204. I think we have a total of 3 amps by those makers modelled - Orange OR 80, ENGL Fireball 100, and Peavey 5150 - and the OR 80 isn't particularly a metal amp compared to the Rockerverb or Thunderverb anyway. Now compare that to the fact we have at least 7 Fender amps and 9 Marshall models, and it's clear there is a lot of effort put into giving the clean and crunch players a ton of their favourite amps and channels, whereas those of us who play modern metal are stuck with just over a handful of usable amps, most of which are Mesa/Boogie variants. And don't even get me started on the lack of an HM-2 pedal! :)

No, the dongle approach isn't practical for me (and I don't trust the XT Live to last forever anyway - the main output is already broken so I can only use it with headphones). Looks like I will probably just have to work harder on recreating the tones in the Helix!

I think they were just saying that sometimes you have to consider different approaches. I have one band where I need about 10 different 'sounds', and rather than try and do without a couple of them, or trying to find some combination of 4 snapshots and 4 stomps, I just have 2 adjacent presets that give me whichever permutation of 8 from 10 I need for specific songs. If you can get away with 10 stomps, then there is a global setting to enable that many stomps, and if you can get your 4 amp 'channels' onto that somehow, you might be okay. You also might be able to repurpose the expression pedal toe switch for something, and if you don't use the volume pedal at all you could set that to fade another effect in. But if you absolutely need to be able to vary each of 8 effects and 4 amp 'channels' each with their own button, then no, I don't see how it can be possible.

I bought Metal Shop, and I think my XT Live came with the Power Pack and FX Junkie packs built in. Seems like I might have to pay for the Platinum version of the plugin to get these, which is a bit out of my price range.

'In the box' is audio-engineer slang for 'on a computer'. I'd be using Pod Parm as a VST in the Studio One DAW.

I have a Pod XT Live and Helix Native, and in trying to recreate some of my old Pod XTL sounds, I'm finding that the 'legacy' effects in Native are from the Pod HD range rather than the XT range, sounding distinctly different in some cases. So, which hardware is Pod Farm equivalent to? I'm considering buying it if it can give me a Pod XT 'in the box'.

If you have a pre-amp block after the Return then you basically have pre-amped the signal twice. Sometimes that works well and gives you the character you want. Sometimes it doesn't and you would want to disable or remove your preamp block and just use the physical one (or vice versa). Same goes for the Cab block - you can use it if you like, though it's rare that you'll want to have that effect applied alongside the real-world cab. But it's your choice. If your tube amp has a usable tone of its own, I would recommend starting with the 'standard' approach - send block to a real preamp, no preamp or amp block in the Helix, output to a real cab, no cab block in the Helix. The purpose of the send/return blocks is that you can have some external processing done outside of the Helix in the middle of your Helix effects chain. In the 4CM method this is typically used to have the amplifier's pre-amp act as an 'effect' and you can have other effects before and after it, as well as finally sending the output back to the amp for the power amp stage. If you don't use the 4CM then you typically send your Helix output to the main amp input - that means you have all your effects before the preamp, whether you wanted them in that position or not.

I've been piping pink noise through the Helix Native mic+cab sims to learn more about them. I don't care at all about what the real units sound like, just about how they shape the sound. This is what I've seen so far: For pretty much any mic, increasing the Distance parameter causes some boosts and cuts in the mids, the frequencies of which which seem to depend on the cab. For instance, on the 4x12 WhoWatt 100, increasing distance significantly cuts 1.2KHz, whatever mic you use. In fact almost all cabs see cuts around the 1-1.5KHz range, with the 4-speaker cabs showing the biggest effects. On top of that, for pretty much any mic+cab, increasing the Distance parameter causes a low roll-off typically of between 6 and 12dB, and a small high-end cut, and a more gentle output decrease across the board. A couple of cabs also see small boosts in the mids, like the 1x12 Celest 12H. I don't think the proximity effect is being modelled because the low end reduction doesn't seem significantly different across the mics. Increasing the Early Reflections parameter causes a broad but small boost in the 300-500Hz range. I didn't measure to see if there was any actual reverberation/delay effect included. By averaging the response across all the mics for a given cab you can get a good feel for its 'signature'. For example, the 4x12 Greenback has a slight boost in the low mids, then a pretty smooth roll-off as the frequency goes up, except for a big boost between 2K and 6K. Good for taming the treble of high-gain, while letting it cut through at the same time. By comparison the 1x12 US Deluxe is almost flat right up to that 2K mark, falls off at 5K, but with a characteristic spike around 12.6K (probably now inaudible to anyone who played through the speaker when it first came out!) And the 2x12 Jazz Rivet is also pretty flat, with a smooth but steep rolloff after 5K, punctuated by a sharp notch at 6.6K. ...and so on. If, like me, you know nothing about the cabs and don't have a specific sound you're going for, it's definitely worth trying some different ones to make sure their particular brand of cuts and boosts fit your material. Arguably the flattest response, with otherwise 'default' settings, is the 2x12 Double C12N, with Distance at 1", and using the 67 Condenser mic. If you want a fairly neutral starting point, I recommend this. For the most low-end, the 4038 Ribbon mic is the one to consider, followed by the other ribbons. For the most high-end, the 421 Dynamic, closely followed by the 112 Dynamic, seem to be the best choices of mic, which seems to tally with the real-life frequency response charts. The 12 Dynamic mic has a significant boost around 700Hz, and which strangely isn't present in the frequency response diagram for the real life equivalent. Might be good for helping leads cut through the mix though.

I should have known someone would argue with this, even though I am testing this exact thing right now. In general the Pod XT had much more high end, and it's easy to check if you have access to both side-by-side. Sadly I don't have Pod Farm to test on exactly the same input recordings but I do have the Pod XT Live and so I played the same part through that and through Helix Native. Pod XT Criminal (left) vs Helix PV Panama (right), same chords, same guitar, same amp settings, equivalent cab models (4x12, 57 on axis). No effects. Next up: Pod XT Blackface (left) vs Helix US Deluxe Nrm (right), same chords, same guitar, same amp settings, equivalent cab models (1x12, 67 condenser). No effects. Most of that Pod XT high end is probably digital aliasing noise that you don't want, the 'fizz' everyone used to complain about on Line 6 products before the Helix. (The unnaturally smooth falloff gives it away.) This is part of why the Helix is a much better unit. But I was never arguing that the Pod XT was better, just that it had more top end. Here I can see that although the low mids are about the same, the high mids on the Fender Deluxe model on the Helix are very reduced. Look at the characteristic peaks at 3.2KHz and 4.1KHz, both being about 24dB quieter on the Helix. That makes a huge difference to how bright it sounds and especially in reverb tails. The problem I have is that I created some really crisp tones on the Pod XT that are very hard to replicate on the Helix. Those imperfections of the old units have their own character which I enjoyed in my recordings. The new effects blocks often have these parameters available to match the real world units, but I'd like to be able to get the old Pod XT amps and their imperfections too.

That's exactly the type of answer I was hoping to get, even if it is exactly the answer I was hoping I wouldn't receive. :) So, to recreate my Pod XT tones, I just have to try and pick out something that sounds similar, right? It's hard enough trying to recreate the amp sounds - the Helix amp/cab pairings have barely any frequencies above 6Khz which makes them sound incredibly muffled compared to the Pod XT ones.

I tried using the legacy Analog Chorus effect in a Helix chain today, but it didn't have nearly as much depth as my original Pod XT version of the effect. However, I never owned a Pod HD, so I don't know if the effect was somehow dialed back a bit for that unit, and then perhaps that version was the one ported to the Helix. Does anyone know if this is the case, or are there other instances of the legacy effects not quite sounding the same in the Helix?

I have the Thon one. It's built solidly, the handle is decent. There's room inside for the power cable but not much else - maybe a 1/4" output cable or your guitar cable if they're short enough and you wrap them up tightly. Also the padding inside is arranged so that the Helix will eventually squash the foam down due to gravity, but I've had mine for about a year and it's still okay.