gsking1

I think the Helix sound pretty good doing 1/2 step down with distortion. I bought Glenn DeLaune's patches and some of those have a 1/2 step down and I like it. Don't know what the settings are off hand. However, if you want another piece of gear to do this, you could try a Whammy DT or Drop. I recently picked up a Whammy DT for practice and like it much more than I expected. It can drop several half steps easily. The whammy DT also has other great detune and octave settings. I think these work best with some distortion and as the first pedal.

Ditto... I agree with this.

Ditto to this. Our axes made some good good sounds this morning.

I think its up to your preference, tone you are going for and your guitar. I normally set mine to 1M for my main PRS with humbuckers (which is what I play 95% of the time).. I played around with the lower settings (120K I think - or something like that) one night with my single coil strat and it helped tame the "ice-pick" highs I normally get with that guitar (combined with some tone knob adjustment). Here's a little info on Auto also: " If the distortion pedal is the first block on Path 1, Helix can automatically set its Guitar Input impedance circuit to match. Just set Global Settings > Ins/Outs > Guitar In Impedance to "Auto."" From: http://line6.com/support/topic/17865-overdrivedistortion-tones-not-sounding-good-at-all/?do=findComment&comment=153365 Hope that helps.

Yes it will sync to internal BPM from tap tempo, but not BPM coming in from external midi. Hopefully in the future.

Well I'm on a Mac so it could be different and this is just a guess. I assume the sample rate options would be listed in Cubase preferences. Try unplugging any other audio interfaces also. Did you install the driver?

I did provide a solution to the original complaint, and that's fine if you don't like it. I'll admit I do find "the tone" of this whole thread a little silly. The patch change is not "unbearable". Yes there is a very slight delay, but equipment like this always has some limitation that requires you to do something a little differently.. There are methods to switch sounds quickly that have been mentioned by others using some paths and you can toggle multiple effects at once. Try some of them.

My guess is phone nearby or hard drive noise as others have said. Are you using a good USB and other cables? Any other mixers or other devices connected as well?

I suppose you could get an a-b switcher and two helixes (helices?) to switch between tones ? When going to the 3rd or 4th tone, change the preset for the helix that doesn't have sound coming from it. Way too much stomping for me, but it could work.

I tried Helix as an audio interface this morning for an hour on iMac 2011 with El Capitan (latest) and Ableton Live (latest) and jammed out on some loops. It worked great and had no issues! I used a separate M-Audio Midisport 4x4 to connect a midi foot controller, so didn't get to try Helix's Midi interface. This is much better than a few weeks ago (on earlier El Cap version), when I got the random cracks and pops - so I'd consider that fixed. So for everyone on El Cap, chances are that its fixed, but if you are still having issues, try these troubleshooting tips (I've been messing with computers and audio for many years and these are kind of general but often work). 1-disconnect other audio cards (for my test I disconnected my trusty presonus firestudio mobile interface) 2-re-boot 3-check your audio software (for me Ableton preferences) and make sure sound card settings are correct and you are running a sample rate of 48K everywhere (or at least be consistent) 4-only run audio applications you want to use. i wasn't running the helix app, just basically Ableton with some plugins 5-make sure you set up your monitoring correctly (for me I turn off monitoring in Ableton and monitor directly from helix) 6-check sound settings in system preferences to make sure using helix both in and out and not any other device (yeah I know you can aggregate devices in mac, but its never been optimal for me). So.. this is cool and I could see using if I didn't already have the Presonus Firestudio mobile as my main interface. Its good to have this option of USB audio on Helix. I don't mind leaving the Firestudio on all the time with iMac, but can't leave the Helix plugged in all the time since I will also be taking the Helix to Church or elsewhere occasionally, so that is more plugging and unplugging (and If I ever have issues, they usually crop up for me when disconnecting or changing audio or midi devices - which is then fixed by a reboot and checking settings). I'm not advocating that anyone switch to El Capitan, just saying it worked for me during my little test. If you have a working version on Mavericks or earlier, you may be better off sticking with that? Hope that this helps someone.

Try making sure you are using the same sample rate (I use 48K) in all applications and disconnect any other audio devices.

I weighed the pros and cons of Helix vs AX8 for two months and I'll say that I eventually chose the Helix because of the eye candy, bling, and easy programming. I might actually use all those great sounding effects now that I can easily see the scribble script name, with a nice color coded button and display. I am happy and think the effects, amps and cabs sound much better than the HD500X, Line6 answered almost every "complaint" I had about the HD500X and more. Whether it sounds better than the Ax8, I can't answer that because I've never sat down with one and am still on the waitlist, and probably will be for another month. I might have tried an AX8 if it were available. I'm still intrigued by the AX8, and all the purported Ax8 sound quality hype, but that will now need to wait a couple years. I say purported hype, because you can't really assess these units unless you play it in your situation and most of what I know about AX8 comes from Fractals forum, which seems to have a strong bias. The bottom line for me is that the Helix does sound great, significantly better than the HD500X (to my ears), and is super easy to program and use. At this point I'm going to stop over analyzing this and get to enjoying playing the Helix. Great Job Helix designers - I only ask that you continue to improve this great product.