cruisinon2

The question is a bit puzzling. 98% of a good metal tone (or any other genre for that matter) comes from the amp or amp model you're using, and how that component is dialed in. In this case, it will require some sort of high gain amp, or amp sim.... which the HX FX does not have. It's an effects unit... there is no amp modeling in there. Effects by themselves can't produce a metal tone, or jazz, or country, or anything else... they are just the fancy tiles in the bathroom, not the houses' foundation. What are you plugging your HX FX into?

Just put an IR block in the signal chain, same as you would for an effects block.

Such as?

I seriously doubt anything is damaged... and I tend to be suspicious of damn near everything, lol

As long as it's an option I can turn off...or have it notify me once, after which it leaves me alone voluntarily, lol. Every time there's a new Mac OS, my laptop badgers me continuously to update, until I finally relent so it'll shut up...

Unwanted electronic noise has a thousand sources...just about anything can fool a tuner into thinking it's hearing a note. It's happened occasionally with just about every tuner I've ever used. If it works as advertised when you deliberately play a note, then I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. Hell, I used to rehearse at a studio in a small industrial park, about 20 yards from some train tracks. I had a clip on tuner that would register various pitches whenever a train rumbled past... nothing's perfect, lol

Not sure what you mean by "latch activation", but you can assign any effect block to any footswitch you want, and toggle the block on or off. If you want access to both individual effects and snapshots, you have to run in stomp/snap mode, where one row of buttons has snapshots displayed, and the other the effects blocks you've assigned. It's all found on pgs 38-39 in the Helix manual.

Perfect! This illustrates my point very nicely, lol. Anybody who genuinely thinks that Everyday Joe Computer User can decipher any of that, much less be willing to trade their Macbook for a system that will require them to parse through reams of gibberish just to play guitar...is out of their mind. It might as well be written in sanskrit.

Well they don't invite me to their R&D meetings, but there are already 5 different Helix hardware devices...6 if you count the controller for the rack unit. I wouldn't hold my breath for any more "intermediate" versions. They've covered about as many bases as possible...certainly more than I thought they would. There will always be somebody who wants one more of "X', or one less of "Y", but trying to satisfy every conceivable whim is futile, and financially ruinous.

The fact that dedicated hardware is more mobile and convenient to use beyond the confines of one's living room, doesn't mean that the software version is any less robust in terms of performance or sound quality. I wouldn't want to tour with a laptop either... but what the audience heard would be essentially indistinguishable either way. The only difference is the laptop route is a logistical pain in the a$$, and my road crew would be drawing straws to see who gets to poison my lunch...;)

You're not gonna like this, but there's really no useful way to answer to this question...it's kinda like asking "what's a good amp to use with a Strat?" The only genuine answer is "the one(s) you like". FX are the icing on the cake, but the inherent characteristics of any amplifier are what they are, regardless... simply put, a Plexi will sound like a Plexi, no matter what you do to it. You either like it or you don't. Using a device like the HX FX is no different than having a giant pedalboard with a couple dozen individual stomp boxes. Delay/reverb/chorus/etc will all do the same thing to any dry tone...doesn't matter if it's coming from a Dual Rec, Fender Twin, or hot-rodded Marshall. Any amp that you like is the "right" choice. It's entirely subjective.

I rest my case... lol

Just trying to be emphatic ;)....I want stuff that's easy to use, too... and I certainly don't claim to be a genius. But the sad truth is there are a whole lot of people roaming around out there, for whom using a Linux system would produce nothing but a blank stare. That's why it'll never sell, and is also what Linux proponents don't seem to grasp... they think that because they understand it, and enjoy the process of making machines bend to their will, that everyone else is similarly capable, and willing to spend the time doing so. That just ain't the case...

Which is precisely why Linux will never be adopted by the masses... When it comes to computing technology, the average mouth breather just wants his daily dose of e-bliss delivered quickly, effortlessly, and thoughtlessly (with special emphasis on thoughtlessly). Linux is all but 3 of those things... it appeals to tinkerers who actually understand computers, coding, and problem solving. Whereas Joe Average, who divides his time fairly evenly between professional wrestling and Budweiser, couldn't problem-solve his way out of a paper bag.... I gotta hand it to the Linux crowd though... they are nothing if not devoted, and fanatical devotion to anything is always funny to observers outside the cult. Unfortunately (for them), they're devoted to a "revolution" that's been just minutes away for the last 20+ years...;)

Why? For the same reason that McDonald's doesn't have garden slugs in an deer-tick cream sauce, or chilled ostrich brains on the dollar menu....

OK... I'm not nearly tech-savy enough for this... I need the "Latency for Dummies" translation, lol. From what I can gather, something is good, something else is bad, and there may or may not be some other thing that's lying. That about right? ;)

A small pair of studio monitors is a great way to go...JBL LSR305's are great for the money, and don't have a huge footprint. The sky's the limit like everything else, but there are many choices in the sub-$300/ pair category that are practically guaranteed to give you better performance than something that was designed for video game sound fx.

When switching between snapshots, no.... because whatever changes you've made, they all exist within the same patch. A snapshot is the "current state" of one particular preset. But there will always be an audible gap when switching between different patches/presets... that can't be helped.

To the OP: What's highlighted above is critical... in other words, if you run Helix through a Marshall, it's gonna sound like a Marshall. Run it through the Bassbreaker, and it's gonna sound like a Fender. If you really want to use it to it's full potential, your output needs to be a clean slate... that means some sort of FRFR speaker(s). I'd also stay away from the gaming headset... in all likelihood the frequency response isn't anything close to flat. In fact it's probably deliberately bass-heavy, which may make EQing you'r patches a challenge.

I suspect that it's a Variax problem, rather than a defective Helix.... they are notoriously tempermental. Since you already tried re-flashing the firmware, I'd open a support ticket and see what advice they offer. If it's a hardware issue in the guitar, there isn't likely to be much you can do on your own.

20ms would feel off to anybody... that's closing in on slap-back echo territory. Something is out of whack if your latency is that bad. Never bothered to measure it myself, but I'm confident that it's nowhere near 20ms...I would find that unusable.

Seems he's got a pretty recent Mac, which means he has Garage Band... not the most sophisticated DAW out there, but it's not a toy either. I think it's actually a very good entry-level environment....one could be as dumb as a bag of hammers, and still figure it out. ;)

1) The 500X is an aging platform. It's not a bad unit...I used it for years, but at this point it is what it is. I wouldn't expect any updates, or further development at this point. Getting older stuff to work with newer OS is sometimes problematic... not sure if there's an issue with High Sierra or not, as I haven't touched the POD since I got Helix. 2) HX FX is a fine unit, but it is effects only...there's no amp modeling in there, so you'd need something else to get your amp tones. 3) Yes, you would need an interface to use Helix Native... works great for recording, which is what it's designed for... but you would be entirely tethered to a computer. I know you mostly play at home, but if you did want to use it anywhere else, it's easier said than done without dedicated hardware. Really just depends on your needs. What's your budget? The Helix Stomp might be an option for you... by the time you buy Native, plus an interface, you'll be spending about the same amount of money.

Nobody ever thinks that this could be the problem at first...I certainly didn't. But the truth is, it's is a whole lot easier to hear the guitar acoustically than you think. The raw acoustic sound of the instrument is easily ignored when what's coming out of the amp is the same pitch, but add alt tunings at close intervals, and you've got a recipe for super- annoying dissonance. The way to test it is to record just the guitar direct into a DAW using an alt tuning...no amp, no mics... then listen to the playback. If you don't hear two pitches simultaneously in the playback, then you've got your answer. Many of us learned this the hard way, after being convinced that there was something wrong with the guitar. The warbling you described could just be that the mag pickups are a little too close to the strings. Back them off a bit and see if it goes away.

I never said anything about "stupidity". What I meant by "not well thought out" was that you seem to be surprised by some of the reactions you've gotten. But honestly, it's to be expected...Showing up on an internet forum completely out of the blue, to ask for money from a bunch of complete strangers, will always look suspicious, and be greeted with skepticism for a good reason (especially if your audience is a bunch of cranky old guys ;) ): The world is full of scam artists. But I believe you, and I was not trying to insinuate that you're stupid, or a liar... so I'm sorry if it came across that way. It's just that your approach is a little off-putting, and more or less guaranteed to generate negative responses... that's all I meant, especially if anybody reading it has been scammed themselves. But you live and learn. Having stuff ripped off sucks, and I'd like to think that there's a special place in Hell for guitar thieves. ;) I hope you can get everything replaced. Merry Christmas!