cruisinon2

14 hours ago, HonestOpinion said:

To state the obvious, in many respects current modelers are a computer specialized to generate and process sound. Although modelers have in common the identical goal of emulating amps and effects and often providing a recording interface, where they differ from computers is the higher degree of specialization in the UI, firmware, and software that sit on top of the hardware. These can vary wildly from one manufacturer to another and seem, to some extent, have lent license to companies not being particularly forthcoming about the hardware that underlies them. You don't just slap the identical version of Microsoft or Mac OS and Office onto every single modeler. There is no comprehensive benchmarking application for modelers. Not having an identical yardstick applied to all hardware makes it less compulsory to provide hardware details that make it easier to predict how different hardware platforms will perform . In many respects this is a good thing as hardware is hardly the sole factor in providing the mojo that makes for a great modeler. Protecting intellectual property probably plays a role here as well.

 

Although modeler manufacturers tout certain specs they are particularly proud of, often they are not very comprehensive about listing just what is inside the box. When you purchase a computer/laptop there is almost always a description that informs you, in some measure of detail, exactly what parts it has inside - make, model, type, and speed of the CPU, memory, storage, I/O, MTBF, etc. Those specs give you a better idea of how much you should be paying, what kind of performance to expect, how long till the devices EOL, and what sort of processing and storage it may be capable of down the road.

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? ;)

9 hours ago, AMountain said:

Well, why - i described at least one cause; ...

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.

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. 

5 hours ago, aa0300 said:

I saw the new line of shuriken guitars, https://www.shurikenguitars.com/

 

No more variax!!! any reasons??

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.

2 hours ago, MGW-Alberta said:

Just curious about the difference between free ones on CustomTone and paid ones on MarketPlace.

 

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...;)

1 hour ago, rd2rk said:

Also, consider how happy you'll be when the next MAC OS breaks Soundflower.....

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...

Unfortunately posting in here won't help you... nobody who can help you win at this. If you can't open a service ticket, your only option is to try and get someone on the phone

Or just boost using the amp block's 'Chanel volume' parameter... for the 2 or 3 dB boost you'll need for leads, it won't affect your tone.

3 hours ago, PierM said:

 

I agree with many things here (it's all correct), but I'm assuming we are talking small venues here, so easy situations. Not talking complex FOHs, or stadiums etc.. 

 

 

Don't feel bad...nobody's asking me to play Madison Square Garden, either...;)

1 hour ago, PierM said:

 

Disagree with that.

 

Modeling is just like a recording; there is a mic, an amp, a cab, a room and pedals. The great thing of modeling, is that you can work your presets as if they were a mix in a daw, and the first rule for a good mix/master, is to make it sounding good and solid, in any speaker configuration. You dont do a different mix/master for every single speaker, or room size. Without that concept, modeling wouldnt make sense.

 

The volume variable can be easily managed through global EQ, to compensate the Fletcher Munson curve.

 

As soon as you have a good room correction (mandatory), and a good pair of reference studio monitors, I can garantee that 80% of the job is done, and it will work good in any condition, given the EQ for room and volume compensation. Of course Im not talking stadiums. That's a completely different beast, but I dont think it's the OP's problem atm...;)

 

That's a bit an oversimplified version of what Im saying;

 

 

Ok... so I'm not exactly sure where we disagree...

Volume is critical as you said (global EQ, Fletcher Munson, etc). Speaker choice perhaps less so, but still significant. No patch that I've ever tinkered with at a nice comfy living room volume through a pair of 5" monitors or headphones has ever worked at stage volume without significant adjustments... and that's difficult, if not impossible to do at home and outside a mix. If there something wrong with my ears or approach, so be it... but that's been my experience for years on end. As such, I've kept different set lists for each scenario forever... all of them tweaked in context.

On 10/8/2021 at 7:55 AM, Maxy71 said:

What I intended is ... I work for example on a patch at home, get a sound that looks fine to me....

Then I go to studio with my band, where I plug helix into the mixer that is connected to a couple of Alto TS312 

I try the patch... and it sounds horrible or completely different if I am lucky! 

This will always be the case, and the issue is two-fold:

1) You are switching to a different output device(s)

2) You are almost certainly playing at a much higher volume than at home.

Patches must be dialed in as you intend to use them, meaning through the same (or at least similar) speakers, and at or close to the same volume. There is no substitute for this... especially the volume, which is an ENORMOUS variable. This cannot be stated emphatically enough.... perception of tone varies drastically with volume. Nothing that you dial in at home with headphones will translate to live use without significant adjustments.

39 minutes ago, rd2rk said:

"Sewer of Wasted Time". I like it!

Thank you, thank you... remember folks, the 9:30 show is completely different from the 7:30 show. Please don't forget to tip your servers...;)

Well that's new

7 hours ago, ericrardin said:

When I try to download something, this is why I can't download: 

 

Well that's new... on the bright side, Line 6 has actually done you an enormous favor. They have saved you countless hours of downloading and auditioning patch after useless patch from the Sewer of Wasted Time that is Customtone...;)

On a side note, I'll give 8 to 5 odds that you've purchased a stolen unit...

17 hours ago, Paulzx said:

 

Agree with your conclusion, you do just have to work around it, and accept you can't totally reproduce some stuff like that, I had actually said that before anyway.

 

To be totally fair, if I get closer to the monitor speakers and listen a bit more carefully, I can hear that the basic tone through the speaker is more like the thing I'm chasing, but by the time you've stepped back into a more suitable listening distance from the speakers, it's not as obvious, so maybe those HS5's are just too small to really project that detail in the sound. Unless you have an endless supply of speakers to compare against, it's hard to know what the differences would be to comment on that.

 

I'll know next week, at least compared to the HS7 as I'm swapping over to those specifically to test this

Let me save you the suspense...you can't "new gear" your way out of this problem.... because the monitors are not the problem. And the headphones are not the problem. The problem is that the monitors are monitors, and the headphones are headphones...you could spend the rest of your life trying to make one behave like the other, and you will fail. Every time. You must adapt to what they are capable of doing, because they're not gonna change...their frequency responses and projection capabilities are what they are. As such, you could invest in a pair of every model of studio monitor on earth, and none of those will sound just like your headphones, either. It's a losing battle. The need to make EQ adjustments from one output to another is inevitable, and that will never change. Learning to use different pieces of gear as they are intended to be used, and accepting the strengths and limitations of each, is the only way to get happy results. Anything else is an unattainable fantasy.

Either way, good luck...I have no intention of repeating myself any further. It'll either sink in eventually, or it won't.

9 hours ago, Paulzx said:

 

This is where I disagree with you. I don't think any tweaking will replicate that sound. It's not an EQ thing, it's more like a completely different device is creating the distortion. Try it and you'll see what I mean

A completely different device IS creating the sound. Your chosen output device accounts for a tremendous % of your tone...headphones are not studio monitors, and studio monitors are not a PA. And like it or not, EQ is the way out. The only way. Will you ever achieve 100%, indistinguishable continuity between headphones and other output methods? Probably not... because they are very different, they're used in different ways, and that will never change. If you want to though, you can get damn close... but not until you accept what's happening in the first place.

I have successfully navigated around this issue for years, not because I'm omniscient or some kind of savant, but because I learned how... stumbling along the way like everybody else. You can disagree all you want... but your predicament is not new, nor is your reaction to it... the steadfast rejection of what's actually going on is the default response of many. You'll find 1000 other threads around here documenting the exact same sequence of events. The same initial question, the same answers provided, and the same "Nope. Can't be." blanket rejection of said answers... it actually gets rather tiresome. We'd all love a miraculous solution that allows for identical tones to emerge, completely independent of what we're monitoring through, and the volume at which we're listening, but that isn't gonna happen, because it's impossible. Your only option is to make it happen with the appropriate adjustments. It's work. Annoying, time consuming, and at times difficult work... but on the bright side, you only have to do it once.

You get used to monitoring with one particular output method, and when you switch to another it's a gut punch, because all of a sudden it sounds nothing like what you're used to hearing, and initially it can be a bit confusing as to why. But that doesn't change the fact that  there's precisely one answer, which multiple people have already provided... and it is straightforward: Dial in your sounds through the same output, and at or close to the same volume as you intend to use them. Hit 'save'. Often. 

Or keep searching for a magic bullet that doesn't exist. No matter how convinced you are that you'll be the guy to find it, you won't. This is all about the physics of sound production of various different devices, how and at what proximity they interact with your ears,  and the biology of perception. You can't win a fight with any of those things... you can only learn to work around them, and manipulate your gear so that it produces something useful.

12 hours ago, Paulzx said:

 none of it sounds like that direct headphone sound

And it's never going to, not without (often significant) adjustments,... that's the whole point.The sooner you accept that, the easier this will get. Different output = different sound. End of story. There is no magic workaround, no push-button solution. Patches must be tailored for their intended use. That "perfect" sound that you dialed in at a nice comfy volume with headphones will not sound the same through studio monitors, or cranked to stage volume through some other FRFR/PA speaker.

I keep three set lists... one tweaked for headphones, one for studio monitors, and one for live use. EQ is your friend... and the need to make adjustments based on how you intend to use a given patch will never go away.

On 10/7/2021 at 7:44 AM, Paulzx said:

 

Absolutely - ear phones are not what you would normally use, but it's what I had to hand at the time - but that's not really the point, I experienced the same thing years ago when I did have head phones. Yes you'll get different quality on better headphones but the point is, the sound is completely different.

Yup... and that's the way it'll always be, for all the reasons that everyone has already outlined. It's not supernatural, there's nothing "wrong" with your Helix, nor is it deficient in some way compared to anything else on the market. You are simply comparing two completely different kinds of output devices.  They will never sound the same. Period. Pick any other modeler on the face of the earth and conduct the same 'experiment'... and you'll get the exact same results. 

12 minutes ago, Paulzx said:

Why is this the case that the Helix can produce this tone via the headphones but not to real speakers as such?

It's perfectly capable of doing both...

But different output devices will always yield different tones... it's inevitable. Headphones and studio monitors are fundamentally different. The cans are right on top of your ears... monitors are a mile away, relatively speaking, and positioned off-axis. The miracle, would be if they actually did sound identical... In fact, that's the fantasy that is requested time and time again on these very forums... but that magic formula doesn't exist. If you change the output, your tone will change. Period.

EQ appropriate to the task will forever be the only way to take a patch designed for one scenario, and successfully adapt it to another.

2 hours ago, PierM said:

 

Yes, all new stocks of G10 are with the TII, and it's usually specified in the product AD specs. Previous version is gone.

 

Battery life is still around 6.5hrs after a month, so I believe this is the max possible duration for my environment (there it can be a slight difference between cold and warm environments).

Well it's nice that they seem to have addressed the issue...still a little annoyed that I'll have to drop another $100 to get back the device I originally purchased. Oh well... life goes on. 

11 hours ago, Paulzx said:

 

Slightly surprised to read this. I could write a book on my struggles with the Helix but most of the issues were down to things I was doing, most notably using the wrong speakers. It's all about the output device and then on from that, how you EQ the sound. The Helix is totally capable of sounding good. There are people with demo videos that have it sounding fantastic in fact. I don't know their particular methods but it sounds very good.

 

Personally, I don't think most people really care if various amp models sound exactly like the real amps, I don't think people are chasing that. I think what most of us want are a collection of different amp sounds that just sound good when you play them, if they're a bit off from the real thing who cares, as long as what you've got sounds good?

 

If you're suggesting that the Helix or any other modeller can't sound great - irrespective of accuracy of the actual modelling - that's not really true is it?

Don't waste your time with that guy... he shows up periodically, usually when a new "Helix sucks" thread appears (or an old one resurfaces),  to vomit the same negative assessment of every modeler under the sun. His ears are better than yours, his experience more profound, and skills more refined. Just ask him... he'll be only too happy to tell you, because he can't help himself. You see, that's why he and he alone can tell just how substandard all modelers actually are, while you, wallowing in your "tone-deafness", continue to labor under the delusion that it sounds great.

Just know that if you continue to engage him, that's exactly how the conversation will go... he knows better, and you're just a poor slob who can't tell the difference between a pile of $hit and Thanksgiving dinner... this scenario ain't new.

Nope.

4th

10 hours ago, Davidperez18 said:

Now the Fractal AxeFX seemed to be a perfect solution for me, but there is no chance to even touch it before purchase. I wont blow over 2k£ (+ price of controller) for a piece of gear on the basis of an opinions on the web

Yeah, well that's the Fractal "mystique", such as it is... it's either buy and try, or  find somebody who owns one and tinker with it for a while.

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First question. Is the price on Thomann.de (around of 1k£ for rack unit) is what we can expect?

At this point, holiday sales and promos aside, things cost what they cost, no matter where you're buying them... the Music Mafia has made sure of that...;)

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Other question is about capabilities. Is it possible (or will be in future) to have deep editing possibilities like changing type of tonestack, preamp/PA valves or type of rectifier like in Fractal's units?

Probably not. Helix is almost 6 years old at this point, and while development is still ongoing, like everything else, it won't be forever... and to date, there's been no indication from above that they intend to mirror Fractal's bottomless pit of negligible impact parameters, between which...even if you had bat ears...you'd be hard pressed to hear a significant difference.

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How about of software updates, new amp models - what is general Line6's politic about that? I'm a former Line6 gear user, years ago I used to use POD XT Life, so I know what kind of politic Line6 was using (paid extensions - model packs). I'm just wondering if it changed since fusion with Yamaha Corp. Don't get me wrong, I won't complain if you do charge me for worthy expansions, but it would be really nice to feel more love and support from L6

Are there still free updates? Yes, and they'll typically contain a couple of new models. Will you see the Fractal frequency of updates? No, not even close, nor will you ever have 300 models to choose from, or whatever the hell the Axe FX is up to these days.

What you're asking for probably can't be done, as I don't think  parameters can be effectively "vanished" as if they were never there, just by clicking a box. They would likely have to create a  completely separate model that lacks any added parameters that don't exist in the "real world" device....and the odds of that
happening are slim to none.

Regardless, feature requests need to go in Ideascale...nobody "official" will see this in here.