cruisinon2

The only cure for headphones that you don't like, is a new pair. I didn't particularly care for how the 240's sounded with Helix either, and I had used them for years prior... they sounded kinda "brittle", for lack of a better term. I gambled on a pair of AKG K701's, which I much prefer, though I doubt impedance has anything to do with it. The 701's are rated at 62 ohms vs 55 for the 240's, which is hardly a difference worth talking about. The 701's are fully open-back, though (the 240's are only semi-open) and have larger diameter cushions... so unless you're Dumbo, your ears should fit entirely inside, which I find much more comfortable (especially when wearing for long periods) than the 240's, which sit on your ears as opposed to around them. Ultimately, as with any other output method, any pair of cans you buy will add color to a greater or lesser degree, no matter how flat or transparent the brochure claims they are. It's always a gamble... buy from someplace that has a decent return policy so you don't get stuck with something else you don't like.

Of course. That's now the default justification for any and all instances where the rights of the electorate are trod upon, the endless expansion of the surveillance state, etc etc etc. "Pay no attention, there's nothing to see here... this is all about your safety. Now shut up and obey."

I can sum it up in for you: The companies are not concerned with consumers' best interests. The lawyers are not concerned with the consumers' best interests. And the politicians sure as $hit are not concerned with the consumers' best interests. Yet these are the three entities that will argue amongst themselves, grease each other's palms, and ultimately decide how the cookie crumbles for the rest of us serfs...you do the math.

It shouldn't, but unfortunately I think the answer to that is sometimes "yes"... Google the "right to repair" legislation, and you can read for days (and probably become alarmed) about what you can and can't legally do to things that you've paid good money for, and own outright. As far as I'm concerned, if I want to buy 100 Helixes (Helices?) and fill them with maple syrup, I should be able to do exactly that... but that's not necessarily the world we live in.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if your experience wasn't typical, there would be no reason for anybody to bother experimenting with different pickups, and the gazillion aftermarket options out there wouldn't exist...

Exactly my point. I could care less if one chip has 11 extra phemtobytes (or whatever esoteric units in which one wishes to measure) of DSP. Does it do what I need it to do? Does it sound good? If the answer to those questions is "yes", great. Sold. If not, moving on...

Ok... but a laptop might be called upon to do any one of 10,000 very different tasks, the success or failure of which might really be dependent on genuinely knowing what's under the hood so that you don't find yourself in a "you can't get there from here" scenario...but a modeler either does the one thing it's designed to do, and do it well, or it doesn't. And the assessment of said performance is almost entirely subjective and directly related to an individual's personal experience with these kinds of tools. In the end, I fail to see how a reading a spec sheet beforehand will aid in the above determination one way or the other, for one simple reason: I'm no dummy, but I'm also not tech savvy on a super granular, component level, either... you could almost tell me that Helix's innards consist of a really smart hamster named Lou, who manually implements whatever changes I make in real time on a tiny laptop, and I'd be hard-pressed to disagree. Similarly, you could rattle off the name(s) of the latest and greatest processing chips, and it wouldn't mean any more or less to me than if you called them Fred and Ethel... and I know I'm not alone in this regard. So it's not hard to understand why they don't bother to publish the majority of those specs...Joe Average neither knows nor cares, and for the minority who do, some are bound to whine loudly and publicly (just like Captain Video, above) about anything they've judged to be substandard. So if you're Line 6, what's the upside? The only question I need answered is "will 'Device X' serve my needs, or not?"... and I can't get that from a spec sheet. There's exactly one way to find out. Just my 2 cents.

I was thinking of upgrading my kidneys... how big should I go? ;)

Yeah, I get that... however, it's a safe bet that the overwhelming majority of users own just one Helix product. And even for those who do have more than one, it seems rather cumbersome to try and edit both simultaneously. So I'll stick with my original assessment...I would not have assumed that such a feature would exist, and it wouldn't surprise me if it never occurred to the guys who wrote the software, either.

Personally, I'd start by posting this question on some sort of engineering forum... just a bunch of half-bright guitar players around here. Don't hold your breath for any local epiphanies...;)

I doubt that's possible... the software simply identifies the type of device(s) that you've connected. I can't imagine why the devs would have allowed that to be edited.

Same reason as everything else in life...$$$. Variax is a niche product that the overwhelming majority of the guitar playing world is either completely unaware of, or not interested in. Now he's got a signature guitar that'll appeal to the other 99.97% of the market.

For the former, the only cost is the time you'll have to spend turning the patch into something you can actually use... and the latter requires you to pay for the privilege of doing exactly the same thing...;) Save yourself both the time and the money, and do it from scratch... in the long run, you'll waste less time and have extra beer money.

Take your shirt off and showcase your chiseled 60 year old abs...;)

Truer words have never been spoken, lol...I don't even remember what Mac OS I'm running now...At this point I only update if forced to by an application that won't run on whatever I have. Grew tired of every update $hitting the bed for everything else I connect to the damn laptop...