kylotan

I find that almost any non-exotic reverb (i.e. not octo, particle, etc) does wonders for this, providing you keep the mix low - somewhere between 3% and 10% according to taste.

@tmullin1017 the lost assignments is a known issue. There's a thread over on the Native subforum and a few similar comments scattered around. Line 6 say they're aware but I'm not sure when a fix will come. I suspect it may be related to MIDI notes being lost but I'm unsure.

I don't think that's true. It's easy to set one block up in such a way that you might get output too high or low, and that can affect how subsequent blocks are going to react, especially amps, distortions, and compressors. I do check the gain staging on each block but mostly I just do it by bypassing all the blocks, checking the level, then re-enabling them one at a time and checking everything is still in range.

Seems to be a few problems relating to automation in Helix Native at the moment. I find that automation state, while saved with the plugin, just doesn't restore properly. Probably the same underlying issue.

Bug filed. Apparently they already know, if I'm understanding this correctly:

I'm not sure what an 'aux instrument' is exactly - I normally have Helix Native running as an insert on an audio track. When I had this working in the past, I had a separate instrument track where the 'Instrument Output' is the Helix plugin instance on the audio track (rename the plugin instances if you have multiple and they are ambiguous) However, it's also possible that you've set it all up correctly but are running into this bug. It mentions the assignment not saving but I've also seen it be accompanied by the assignment simply not responding.

I came to the forum today to report that Helix Native is losing my controller assignment between sessions. Looks like exactly the same bug. I'm using Studio One 5 in Windows 10, Helix Native 3.10. I can confirm that the assignment exists in the preset when I save it to disk, as I can see the "controller" section with what look like the correct values. If I reload the preset the assignment reappears in the UI, but it doesn't always actually have any effect. I see the MIDI IN light flashing but the assigned value does not change. At least not always - once, it seemed to work, and then stopped again.

I saw the Kemper Profiler Stage unit for the first time today. Looks amazing, similar price range to the Helix, with some things better and some things worse, I'm sure. And yet... still only 60 seconds of looper time. So, the Helix is in good company! I wouldn't be surprised if we see more looper time on whatever the next iteration of the Helix is.

Polyphonic pitch detection doesn't require any different hardware to monophonic pitch detection. However, the algorithm is more demanding and would require more DSP. I suspect the Helix has enough power to do it but it will probably end up being an expensive block to use.

They're not irrelevant if the whole idea of the Helix as an audio interface is that it routes the audio through the DSP system so that you can do stuff to that audio. It might be possible that the dry/DI outputs are lower latency. Or, it might not, depending on how they've set it up. Comparing to Totalmix - in the general case, mixing software is almost zero latency because you can do it on a sample by sample basis. But if you want to start doing frequency-based effects, that means you incur some latency because it's not mathematically possible to reconstruct frequencies from individual samples.

Yes, of course higher latency than a $100 Behringer. Latency isn't something you can just throw money at and it'll go away. The most zero latency part of a signal chain is a cable, which costs very little. Doing stuff in the digital domain takes time. There is no way around it, apart from to do less stuff.

The very nature of the Helix means it's unlikely to ever be as low latency as a dedicated audio interface. The audio pipeline through the Helix is somewhat like running through VST effects on a computer, and as such any or all of the following can theoretically add latency: input processing (e.g. noise gate) any audio processing blocks (amp, effect, etc) routing a signal path to another signal path (because path 2 can't start processing until it has the data from path 1, etc) the global EQ It's possible that disabling these will give you lower latency. It's also possible that it makes no difference and that the latency is 'baked in' due to the way the DSP is designed. But signal processing in the digital domain is almost never zero latency.

I think it's a fair assessment to say that the 'pure' distortion offerings on the Helix are a bit lacking compared to the variety of overdrives and fuzz that are available, for instance. You might have some luck with the distortions in the Legacy category which, although of a lower audio quality, could have the characteristics you're looking for. But beyond that, you might want to just stick with Fractal which has more to offer in this area.

I'm not on my monitoring system at the moment but personally I'm amazed you managed to make them all sound so similar. The Centaur, EQ, and IR must be doing a lot of heavy lifting.

How foolish of L6 to deliver the Helix's most requested feature! I'm sure it'll prove useless to the thousands of people that requested it over the years. The metering is pretty much the only thing that interests me in this update so I'll take it.