Digital_Igloo

The dim/lit state of the LED reflects the state of the assignment. If the delay is off, the LED is dim. If the delay is on, the LED is lit. Why would anyone want a delay block that's OFF to be reflected by a LIT green LED? That's incredibly unintuitive. Let's try this again: Say you have four blocks: Distortion, Mod, Delay, and Reverb. When you load the preset, you want Distortion and Mod on, and Delay and Reverb off. When you press FS2, you want to toggle all four blocks so Distortion and Mod turn off, and Delay and Reverb turn on. You want, oh, let's say the Reverb (off) to be reflected on the switch LED. Use the joystick to select the Distortion block. Touch-hold (don't press!) FS2 and the Quick Footswitch Assign dialog pops up. Press Knob 6 (OK). Repeat step 1 for the Mod, Delay, and Reverb blocks so all four blocks are assigned to FS2. Note that they're all currently on. Touch the switch (don't press!) until the Delay block is in focus. Press BYPASS to turn it off. The switch is dim green. Touch the switch again until the Reverb block is in focus. Press BYPASS to turn it off. The switch is dim red-orange. Press SAVE twice to save your preset. If my above step-by-step instructions aren't working, make a video or something and post it here. Maybe there's a bug or something we haven't experienced. Exactly. You're not choosing the state of the LED, you're choosing the item that's in the state you want. Repeatedly touch a multiple-assigned footswitch and Helix jumps all over the place, selecting all the blocks that's assigned to that switch. If one of those blocks happens to be bypassed, and you want the LED to be dim, choose the block that makes the LED dim.

I've read more Helix-related forum posts than anyone on the planet, and this is the first time I've read about confusion regarding bypassing multiple-assigned blocks. There are, however, requests to be able to assign multiple switches to the same block, but that appears to be completely different from what you're asking. Forgive me if I'm missing something. If you mean the ability to bypass one of multiple blocks assigned to the same footswitch, just select the block and press [bYPASS]. Done. If you mean the ability to disable footswitch control of a block when it's assigned to a footswitch... don't assign it to the footswitch. Can't make a movie, but here's a walkthrough: Say you have four blocks: Distortion, Mod, Delay, and Reverb. When you load the preset, you want Distortion and Mod on, and Delay and Reverb off. When you press FS2, you want to toggle all four blocks so Distortion and Mod turn off, and Delay and Reverb turn on. You want, oh, let's say the Reverb (off) to be reflected on the switch LED. Use the joystick to select the Distortion block. Touch-hold (don't press!) FS2 and the Quick Footswitch Assign dialog pops up. Press Knob 6 (OK). Repeat step 1 for the Mod, Delay, and Reverb blocks so all four blocks are assigned to FS2. Note that they're all currently on. Touch the switch (don't press!) until the Delay block is in focus. Press BYPASS to turn it off. The switch is dim green because the Delay is in focus. Touch the switch again until the Reverb block is in focus. Press BYPASS to turn it off. The switch is dim red-orange because the Reverb is in focus. Press SAVE twice to save your preset. Now when you recall that preset, the switch will be dim-orange, and when you press the switch, the Distortion and Mod turn off and the Delay and Reverb turn on. TL;DR: Pressing the switch toggles all assigned items, the BYPASS button only affects the selected block, Helix remembers the current state of all switches. A bit of history: POD HD500X could also assign multiple items to a footswitch, but its red LEDs always reflected the state of the block earliest in the signal flow. With Helix, we made it so the switch can reflect whatever block you want; just keep touching it until you see it.

Something's amiss, even without a firmware update. If the 1/4" and/or XLR outputs are set to line level (which they are by default), you should be getting serious volume. Is the headphones output really soft too?

FWIU, SHARCs don't deal with shuttling audio back and forth very easily without incurring latency. TigerSHARCs (like those in AxeFX II XL+) work much better in this regard. This was probably four years ago, but we had many weeks of conversations/debates about it—in the end, there was no easy way to make two SHARCs appear as one big DSP without artificially crippling model allocation or routing, and that eventually led to the Path 1/Path 2 paradigm. So when some people say "just throw more DSPs in there!" it makes my head hurt. Dual-DSP systems are much more complicated than single DSP systems.

Kids?! I don't have enough time for a dog. :wacko: Forest for the trees, my friend. I'll be the first to stress that one should always buy a product for what it does now—not what they think it will or should do. If Helix's current offerings don't suit you, then yes, there's nothing wrong with looking elsewhere. But here's a guarantee with 100% certainty—things are exactly the same at Fractal, Kemper, Roland, Korg, Universal Audio, AVID, Akai, Native Instruments, Moog, Apple, Google, Valve, Sony, REDD, Tesla, Audi, VW, and any other company that makes hardware or software of any complexity: There's a list of things the PM wanted to get in before release (prioritized largely by market value) but didn't There's a list of bugs the PM wanted to get fixed by 1.00 (prioritized largely by severity) but didn't At a certain point, the line gets snapped For the record, we were really happy with where we were when our line got snapped, and we'd like to think that's reflected in Helix sales and reviews. Fractal and Kemper also have forums dedicated to feature requests and bug reports. Both are filled with people bemoaning the fact that certain things weren't included or fixed from the beginning. Both would be out of business if they chased that dragon too long before releasing their products into the wild. So would Line 6; such is business. This issue isn't about features or bugs, it's about transparency. Transparency doesn't matter to most dudes noodling in their den, but it's mission critical to engineers at the Record Plant or guitar techs at Madison Square Garden. That's why Sony lists bugs and new features for their über-expensive broadcast video gear, but good luck finding what was fixed or missing in the latest PlayStation rev. That's why Apple lists hundreds of bugs and new features for Logic Pro X, but good luck finding what was fixed or missing in your iPod nano. Some people don't wanna know how the sausage is made. I get that. Good luck with your search. There's a ton of killer gear out now. :)

Big fan of Hammock. Check out Caspian if you haven't already; Strymon's El Capistan (and I believe Big Sky) are all over the new record. IIRC, Sigur Rós uses an AMS RMX 16 reverb for most of their records. The first two Joy Formidable records are awash in ParticleVerb. There's also a huge compliment of 90s shoegaze bands that relied on grainy Alesis Midiverbs and old Zoom multieffects to great effect (no pun intended). Ben and I have talked about maybe modeling them way in the future, after we get some cleaner verbs in there. Although the Bricasti's a $3800 box that does nothing but one reverb at a time, the old EMT 250 from the 70s sounds amazing to this day—I believe the UA plugin isn't even a model; it runs licensed algorithms from the real hardware. My favorite reverb is still probably the Ensoniq DP/4—not the quietest, but it seemed to sit in the mix just so. Years ago I bought the PCM Native Reverb bundle from Lexicon at full price ($1400), assuming that, for the price, it must include all the algorithms from my PCM 91 so I could go completely in-the-box. Nope, none of the pitch stuff was ported over; still need the 91 for its Rolling Thunder preset. Lesson learned. Other bands who make great use of reverb: This Will Destroy You ERAAS Foals Washed Out Verve's A Storm in Heaven

The DSP allocation filter (the thing that grays out items in the model list) is different for each Path/DSP. They don't talk to each other; that is, DSP 2's allocation filter can't tell DSP 1 "Hey, you won't fit over here!" At one point Helix had two completely different home screens—one for each DSP. It was done that way specifically to dissuade people from moving a block from one path to the other. In the end we decided "Nah, let's just explain it if people ask." It's something we could add with some effort. It's on our list, but way down because copy/paste (coming soon for the editor) is such an easy workaround.

Yeah, it's probably around $1000. VDI is two channels of audio (modeling and mags) and a third back channel going the opposite direction. Doesn't matter how you embed the data, if you want to use existing Variax guitars' VDI outputs and existing Line 6 modelers' VDI inputs using existing Line 6 radios, it's three channels, period (plus a forward data channel, but that is embedded into the audio stream). Your "some type of protocol" obviously precludes VDI, which is its own protocol. If you're talking about: some magic next-gen Variax along with... some magic next-gen multichannel bi-directional wireless system that works with... some magic next-gen Helix... ...we're all ears. Or if you're some genius digital radio engineer who knows something we don't, we're hiring. This thread isn't about rationalizing why we should make a wireless VDI system for $1000 (CLEARLY we shouldn't). It's about collecting data for the rest of the organization. Thanks everyone for your input. None of this comes as a surprise, but at least I now have some metrics to share. :)

Oh, there was plenty of MIDI craziness at Roland too, I can assure you.

And yet, here we are. VDI is three channels; three channels of wireless ain't cheap.

Yep. You can currently assign MIDI CCs to any home screen parameters (except Variax :angry: parameters), but not individual block bypass. It's something we'd really like to include, but I'm not allowed to talk about when or even if it'll ever materialize.

Thanks. Sometimes I get a bit snarky, but Helix is my baby and very few people understand the scope of what it takes to bring an MI hardware product to market. It's in insane number of moving parts. Line 6 is chock full of hardcore gear nerds; we do this because we love it.

You already have. I'm product manager for Helix, Helix Rack, and Helix Control. :)

It's not really. In some ways—and sales would vehemently disagree with me—I'd almost rather someone buy a different modeler altogether than attempt to shoehorn a third-party controller into Helix Rack. I'm a product designer; anything that makes the user experience notably worse is like nails on a chalkboard. Suffice to say, the advantages of Helix Control with Helix Rack are too numerous to mention; there's a good reason a single manual covers both. It's not a sales thing; it's a design thing. I promise. Per-block-bypass via MIDI CC is something we absolutely can, and should do. I can't make any promises, but it's currently towards the top of my personal wish list. My band controls Helix Racks via computer as well; I totally get it and agree 100%. However, we probably won't ever add deep SysEx to Helix Rack so, for example, the preset names and tuner show up on third-party foot controllers. It's not so much to dissuade people from using them as much as we'd rather develop models and features that make the experience of using Helix better, not worse. It's not unlike how Apple won't spend six months building in support for AAX ProTools plugins—there are so many bigger fish to fry. Or [insert better analogy here].

Step hard on the expression pedal's toe. You'll see the scribble strip change from EXP 2 to EXP 1 (or vice versa).

We've talked about it a lot here. Per-block bypass via CC is something we'd love to add, but currently, no, to bypass a block remotely, it must first be assigned to a toggle switch. I can totally see this being a bummer for those who sequence edits from Ableton Live or MainStage, but Helix Control is easily 50% of what makes Helix Rack a Helix. Using it with any other floor controller is... is sacrilege. :(

A user might sometimes surprise us by finding the occasional bug we weren't privy to, but it's rare. Outside of model requests for an obscure amp or pedal, I think there might be one or two viable feature requests in IdeaScale that weren't already in our Wish List before Helix was announced. If you guys notice it, believe me, we noticed it first.

This article does way more than I ever could.

Hmm... Don't remember that particular GR33 thing—that was before my stint there and I dealt primarily with synths and groove products. I'm using Helix with Logic and GarageBand all day every day with no issues (actually, Logic is open right now). Reason and Live have been tested by QA extensively as well. Something very well may be up with your particular unit; CS will have to confirm.

Historically, Line 6 accessories don't fly off the shelves. We ended up selling WAY more than expected.

Assuming your interface's outputs are line level, yes. The trick is that neither the Guitar or Aux input is true -10 or +4 dBu line level, so ideally, you'd want to go into one of the effects returns. Unfortunately, none of the stock presets have an effects return set as the Input block. You can do this really easily by selecting the Input block and turning the joystick until it says "Input Return 1". If you're on a Mac, you can also easily create an aggregate device and use Helix as an interface in tandem with your other one. Everything'll sound better and you won't have to worry about setting levels. Just set the Input block to USB 3/4, 5/6, or 7/8 and go.

We can't talk about what's coming, but heel bypass certainly isn't some left field "Whoa! We've never thought of that!" I can pretty much guarantee that aside from some of the more obscure amp and pedal requests, 99% of everything on IdeaScale was already in our gargantuan Wish List before Helix was even announced. We probably won't get to more than a tenth of what's in there (again, it's MASSIVE), but any feature that both gets enough votes and is feasible is something we not only consider, but likely already has been defined with screenshots and everything. A very small portion of what I design ever sees the light of day.

I was at Roland US for five years—know ALLLL about how MIDI works in their stuff—Mr. K was one of the inventors of MIDI (along with Dave Smith), and they follow the spec to a T, to a fault. Can't do tech support here, but make sure you're running the new Mac driver with OS X 10.11.4. Otherwise it won't work. What DAW are you using? We've tested Helix with a ton of 'em, and with the new driver, both multichannel audio and MIDI is working extremely well at 44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88.2kHz, and 96kHz. Provided you're running the new driver with El Cap 10.11.4, the only advice I'm allowed to give is to hit CS up again. Sorry. :(

No, we pay attention. We generally just don't jump in until we have a solution. Plus, we avoid posting in tech support threads like the plague, because it would literally add 20-30 hours to our work week. Some of us have new Helix features to design and amps/effects to model. :D

Here's the scoop. Certain brands of keyboards (especially Roland, but some older M-Audio keyboards as well) continuously spit out active sensing messages every 300ms. This basically tells the receiving device "Hey, I'm still here! Hey, I'm still here! Hey, I'm still here! Hey, I'm still here!" IIRC, according to the MIDI spec, the receiving device is supposed to display something like "MIDI offline!" if it suddenly stops getting a "Hey, I'm still here!" message; you know, something to warn you that you've tripped over a MIDI cable in your gigantic room-sized synth rig filled with eighty keyboards. These days, active sensing is all but unnecessary, is almost never used by guitar gear, and Helix wasn't too keen on it. The next rev of the firmware will effectively ignore active sensing so the dropouts should go away. We've tested it with Roland and M-Audio keyboards—all is well. A lot of Roland synths let you disable active sensing in their System menus, but the PC-180 doesn't. I know—I had one back in the day, and hated that my MIDI interface input LED would flash constantly. For those of you experiencing the same issue and can't wait for the next update, manually disable Tx Active Sensing in your keyboard (if it lets you) and all should be well. A few MIDI merge or MIDI thru boxes automatically filter out active sensing as well. This is kinda funny because I suggested active sensing might be the culprit a while ago and no one believed me. Ha! Okay, so it's not very funny.