Digital_Igloo

1) Correct. You can, however, connect a MIDI cable between Helix's MIDI OUT and MIDI IN and use Command Center messages to freely assign whatever you want. Snapshot recalls are CC69, values 0 ~ 7. You can also repurpose FS1/FS7 to act as Snapshot Up/Down; just press and hold both one or more times until they read SNAPSHOT ^ and SNAPSHOT v. 2) You can assign parameter control to a footswitch or a snapshot. To assign a parameter to a footswitch: Press and hold the parameter knob. Helix jumps to the Controller Assign screen. Press Knob 6 (Learn Controller) and then the desired switch. Set the Min and Max values if desired and press HOME to exit. You'll see the parameter's value appear white and in brackets. To assign a parameter to Snapshot control: Press and turn the parameter knob. The value appears white and in brackets, indicating it's assigned a controller (in this case, the Snapshots controller). When a parameter is assigned to a Snapshot, its value is remembered for each Snapshot; so each snapshot could have a different lead boost value. Just select the Snapshot and turn the knob.

Helix Native 1.00 will indeed be artificially limited to match the DSP usage of Helix, but this is per instance. You can always just open a second Helix Native plugin. Of course, this isn't very elegant, especially for plug-in users who have no interest in hardware preset compatibility, so sometime after launch, we'll add the ability to remove this limitation.

Not anymore; sorry. :( You pretty much had to be one of these bugs when we announced Helix Native last NAMM: Beta starts today.

The comment isn't what's infuriating. Many of us who've worked many years at NAMM used to play a game. We'd grab a full line catalog from a particular manufacturer and see if we could figure out which other companies' boxes were blatantly, shamelessly, spinelessly ripped off. Not sure if this manufacturer got wind of the game or what, but they stopped making full line catalogs a couple years ago. For the record, that company was not InMusic Brands.

:angry:

Here are the full steps for next time: Use the joystick to select the cab block. Touch-hold the desired Stomp mode footswitch and press Knob 6 (OK). Use the joystick to select the IR block. Touch-hold the same switch and press Knob 6 (OK). The scribble strip will read "MULTIPLE (2)". While one of the two blocks is selected, press BYPASS. This bypasses one block but not the other. At this point, pressing the stomp switch will toggle between the cab and IR. TIP: Touching that footswitch repeatedly will now instantly jump between the cab and IR parameters, so you no longer need to use the joystick for block selection. Ignore the E.

Deafheaven are pretty much the poster children for this genre (trainspotters will argue they're actually "blackgaze"), but my favorite doomgaze band is probably Spotlights.

Helix Native 1.0 is our top priority. Later, Helix FW 2.30 for Floor, Rack/Control, and LT will add new amps and effects and will drop with the new HX Edit application, which is a from-the-ground-up rewrite of the Helix editor that matches Helix Native's UI/UX. Helix Native will also be updated to Helix Core 2.30, and will continue to receive updates until its features are in parity with the hardware. (For example, it won't support snapshots right away.) Going forward, the plan is to update Helix Floor, Helix Rack/Control, Helix LT, and Helix Native at the same time, so they always have the same models and features. This has required a metric ton of fundamental architectural changes, but in the end, this effort allows us to release firmware and software (and future hardware!) more quickly and efficiently. It also opens the door to some pretty nutty things in the future. Line 6 is ALL IN on Helix.

Would one favorite per model suffice? How important is it to have multiple model favorites?

Helix Floor and Helix LT have identical MIDI specs.

This week I began swapping out POD Farm (and a few Scuffham S-Gear) instances with Helix Native on my will-never-be-finished record, so it's definitely working. We're in serious bug squashing mode and hoping to stretch into beta this week. The beta team is MASSIVE. Sadly, anyone expecting to download Helix Native on June 21 should probably curb their enthusiasm.

Feel free to search for one of the half dozen or so tuner threads where I've already discussed this ad nauseum. Line 6 does not require nor even request that any of its employees engage in forum or social media communication. We're all here on our own dime, on our own time, often after hours. I can't speak for other Line 6ers, but technical support threads (which make up the majority of this particular forum) simply don't compel me to post, because we already have a stellar technical support and customer service team. Mention UI/UX, modeling engines, DSP allocation, MI product development, product pricing with regard to parts and labor, crazy MIDI routing, or doomgaze metal and I'll probably post (over 1800 posts so far). Mention the intricacies of sub-component modeling or amp design, and if Ben sees it, he'll probably jump in.

Except you'll also need our room, our location within the room, the exact dB level we listened to everything at (admittedly, we didn't bother with a dB meter), and our ears... If your set uses 10 presets, leveling them all takes a few minutes at the venue. No getting around it.

On IdeaScale, we get lots of requests for some magical tool that makes presets appear the same volume, regardless of the user's playback system, playback frequency response, playback level, room, ears, or even what other band members might be playing. This is quite literally impossible, not unlike requesting "Make it so my mix sounds the same on $50,000 studio monitors in a mastering room AND Apple earbuds on the subway." The human ear is very sensitive to level discrepancies, and if, for example, your headphones have a 1.5dB bump at 800 Hz (or your room has a standing wave at 800 Hz or your bass player's part is deficient around 800 Hz), any preset with a boost at 800 Hz will sound noticeably louder than another preset without one—because of your playback system, environment, and/or band members, none of which we have any visibility towards, and therefore, no control over. Any in-line measuring tools may tell you your presets are the same peak, average, and/or RMS level, but your ears will tell you otherwise. And we haven't even gotten to Fletcher-Munson. Every time we tweak Helix presets, we'll go through and adjust them by ear, at multiple playback levels, down in our control room, switching between Genelec studio monitors and an L2 FRFR speaker. Because presets must be level-adjusted by ear. There's literally no way to do it via measurement software, for the reasons given above.

Yes. Since my post above, we've added per-block bypass via MIDI: Press MENU and then Knob 1 (Bypass Assign). Turn Knob 4 (MIDI In) to choose the desired CC. Values of 0-63 turn the block off and values of 64-127 turn the block on. In lieu of step 2, you can also Learn incoming MIDI CCs. Just press Knob 6 (Learn) and send Helix the desired MIDI CC. Note that some CCs are reserved for global functions and cannot be selected or learned.

Yes. 2.10 was released on March 30. ;)

Basically, it was NAMM, and we didn't want our only Helix-related news to be Helix Native. Without some sort of bone, you just know the "how'd you forget about US?!" comments from Helix hardware users would've been deafening. If it weren't for NAMM, we probably would've waited to announce 2.10 until release.

A) Performance View is not as big and easy to see as scribble strips. B ) You're not "scanning across the scribble strips"—if anything, you're scanning when moving your eye between Performance View and the associated switch. C) Performance View is a layer of obfuscation. A required one that only takes a single button press to remove (Pro Tip: or holding MODE and TAP), but obfuscation nonetheless. D) Helix and Helix Rack/Control's scribble strips can show 10 stomps at a time. LT's Performance View can show 8. E) We might have other ideas for what Performance View might mean for Helix and Helix Rack/Control.

Yes, and Helix has a template for this set up and ready to go: 8 TEMPLATES > 02A 4-Cable Method. Press FS2 (labeled "HELIX PREAMP") to toggle between your MESA/Boogie preamp and Helix's modeled preamp.

It's technically feasible, but "Helix will never have a cupholder." ;) We've talked about this before, but basically, any public-facing company that promises something but fails to deliver puts themselves at risk. Publicly traded companies more so. Apple gets away with announcing stuff early because A) they have a massive team of lawyers who can manipulate the system to their advantage and B ) they have hundreds of billions in cash to defer revenue until said promises are fulfilled. Anything can and does happen. We could promise models A, B, and C and features X, Y, and Z, and the next day, Igor, Ben, Sam, Dom, and I could all be sniped by Apple, leaving Line 6 to hire and ramp up a new team (which can take many months). Don't laugh; it happens. Also, a competitor could blatantly rip off dozens of our UI/design/layout elements and then publicly claim they're the only modeler company that cares about UI. <_< No reason to preemptively feed them our user-centric design efforts beyond the hundreds of ideas already visible on IdeaScale.

No, but removing the number doesn't automatically make the other text larger. I'd have to create an all new font and the one that's already there is optimized to fit 16 characters on a 128x32-pixel LCD. We tested legibility with those in the building claiming to have the worst vision.

Theres a market for everything if you're willing to deal with a terrible return on investment. We blew out HD Beans at $199 at the end, if you remember. Back in '99 when computers weren't fast enough to track with negligible latency (unless you had Amp Farm on ProTools TDM), desktop PODs were a lifesaver. In 2010, computers were definitely fast enough. In 2017, we feel the studio environment is better served by a plug-in and audio interface with a decent 1M Ohm instrument input. But never say never... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-amARjIBdRI

Yeah, there's something amiss. There could very well be something wrong with your Helix, or perhaps something's tweaky with the test methodology, but full throughput in Helix should be sub-2ms. We've never claimed sub-1ms throughput, but Helix should be faster than other boxes that dedicate a DSP to amps, as we only have one DSP hop—DSP 0 (Path 1) to DSP 1 (Path 2), as opposed to DSP 0 (pre-amp effects) to DSP 1 (amp) back to DSP 0 (post-amp effects and Global EQ). FX Loops will indeed incur additional latency, but that shouldn't be much more than a single millisecond each.

Good eye. We were going to add a new Split block type and then realized it's way easier to just add those parameters to the default Split block.

Updated thread to 2.21 (released April 27, 2017).