Digital_Igloo

Not in front of Logic right now, but if you press Option-K, it opens the key command window. There, you can assign incoming MIDI messages to specific QWERTY shortcuts in Logic (I believe there are over 1000 now). Then, on Helix's Command Center screen (MENU > Knob 3 (Command Center), you can assign those messages to specific footswitches.

That's just the way bitcrushers work—you're not hearing a dry signal as much as elements of the bitcrushed signal that have yet to be affected by the current bit depth and sample rate values. It's not entirely unlike how frequencies of an EQed signal appear unaffected by the current Hi Cut and Low cut values. There are certainly ways to beat your signal into glitchy submission, but it typically takes pretty extreme settings. One cool thing to try is Delay > Bitcrusher on a parallel path. Instant lo-fi echoes!

It's not bad news as much as how all DSP-based technology works. There are plenty of workarounds, and again, we'll keep investigating ways to improve things. Maybe we're working on something right now...

This is normal. Logic's Bitcrusher plugin does the exact same thing.

Firehawk 1500 sounds really good with Helix. We don't currently have plans on creating an engineless Firehawk FRFR amp as the hardware would be virtually identical—a slower DSP and less UI, sure, but I'd be surprised if that dropped the MAP by more than $100 or so. If you're not interested in the modeling, look at Firehawk 1500 as a really loud (132dB!) stereo/wet-dry-wet FRFR that happens to have a backup amp/effects modeler built in, just in case your modeler's stolen before a gig. And unlike other amps, it sounds great with acoustic guitars, vocals, and stereo keyboards.

Pitch Wham is a model of DigiTech's Whammy pedal, and Simple Pitch and Dual Pitch are variations of the same algorithm, because using Pitch Wham (or two Pitch Whams) as detuning/pitch blocks was a pain. We'd love to create an ultra-transparent polyphonic pitch algorithm, but have bigger fish to fry right now. IdeaScale, etc.

Except Helix doesn't render audio offline; it processes in real time. If everyone sat down and agreed "Hey! Let's stop upgrading our DAWs and buying fancy new plugins and softsynths. Everything's perfect the way it is right now", a few years from now, yes, faster computers would mean smaller buffers could be used without pops and clicks, and latency would improve. If Helix and Fractal owners all got together and agreed "No more models! No more features! Everything sounds awesome right now so stop making it better", Helix 2 and AxeFX 3, with their next-gen SHARCs, would likely have faster preset switching time... and nothing else. That's never gonna happen. The pursuit of features and ever-more-granular modeling will always be pushing the limits of whatever processing is available at the time.

Every year people think full mix throughput monitoring with a DAW will be useable, but more and more advanced plugins and DAW features keep our buffers the same size. My studio's throughput latency is actually higher now than it was in 1998. But it sure sounds better today! Developers and their users will always find ways to fill up extra horsepower. Unfortunately, technology doesn't stand still waiting for people to agree on what is and isn't acceptable latency or preset switching time. It's something we wanted to get into initial shipping firmware, but controllers-to-Variax parameters turned out to be a beast. Hopefully we'll reattempt it sometime in the future. I mean, they're the only Home screen parameters you can't assign controllers to! Omissions like this keep me up at night, seriously. Agreed—would be sick to assign B-bender to a momentary footswitch. Or toggle between a sitar and Les Paul from FS5. Or ride your guitar's volume and/or tone knob from an expression pedal.

We'd just make the models that much better and the lag would be the same. The reason something like a Zoom G3 can switch super fast is because it's running a relatively simple fixed signal flow with relatively tiny models with relatively few parameters. It's kind of like asking: "Why does it take four days for The Anaheim Convention Center to get everyone's NAMM booths out and swapped for the next convention when it took my buddy and I an afternoon to swap out his entertainment center?" The amount of data that Helix needs to remove and then add when switching patches is potentially gargantuan—upwards of a thousand values or more. Regardless, there are always things we can do to improve things. Helix is far from baked. Also, don't forget about 8 TEMPLATES > 02C TwoTones A-B that lets you instantly switch between two tones with zero gap and spillover delay+reverb, 8 TEMPLATES > 02D TwoTones Blend that lets you manually crossfade between two tones with the expression pedal, or 8 TEMPLATES > 03D 4 Tone Switcher that lets you turn four completely discrete serial tones on and off with zero gap.

Cool! Love The Cult. "She Sells" is one of my favorite songs.

Dom is "very confident" that 1.06.1 should be available tomorrow morning sometime.

Nearly all factory presets have a looper, but they're per preset, not global. Should take two seconds to delete it: From Stomp mode, touch the Looper switch. Press ACTION and then Knob 3 (Clear Block). If you're not into loopers, removing the Looper block will give you a bit more DSP horsepower (and an extra stomp switch, obviously).

Sorry, guys. Just got a call from Dom, and 1.06 isn't quite ready for primetime. QA just found a rare bug with the new Helix librarian that's serious enough to make us hold off until early next week. We'd rather take pitchforks for something late than something not ready.

We're not waiting for Apple any longer. Stay tuned...

Helix Firmware v1.06.0 Release Notes Helix v1.06.0 is a firmware update that includes new models, features, fixes, stability improvements, and optimizations. It is highly recommended that all Helix users perform this update! It is also recommended that you back up your current presets by using the Helix application to create a preset bundle, allowing you to install new presets as part of the update process. The easiest way to perform the update process is by installing the latest version of Line 6 Updater. Once you've connected Helix to your computer via its USB port (hubs are not supported), Line 6 Updater will recognize the unit and take you through the update process. Both the Helix application and Line 6 Updater may be downloaded here: http://line6.com/software/ New Amp Models Matchstick Ch1, based on* Channel 1 of the MatchlessTM DC30 Matchstick Ch2, based on* Channel 2 of the MatchlessTM DC30 Matchstick Jump, based on* jumping Channels 1 and 2 of the MatchlessTM DC30 New Effects Models Distortion > Teemah! (Mono, Stereo), based on* the Paul Cochrane Timmy® Overdrive Distortion > KWB (Mono, Stereo), based on* the Benadrian Kowloon Walled Bunny Distortion Distortion > Bitcrusher (Mono, Stereo) Modulation > Dynamix Flanger (Mono, Stereo) Modulation > Deluxe Phaser (Mono, Stereo) Modulation > Tremolo (Mono) and Tremolo/Autopan (Stereo), based on* the BOSS® PN-2 Pitch/Synth > Simple Pitch (Mono, Stereo) Pitch/Synth > Dual Pitch (Mono, Stereo) Filter > Autofilter (Mono, Stereo) * All product names are trademarks of their respective owners, which are in no way associated or affiliated with Line 6. New Features Swap Footswitch Assignments—This feature makes organizing Stomp footswitch mode a lot easier, especially when footswitches have multiple-assigned items or custom labels/LED ring colors. Touch and hold (but don’t press) any two stomp mode footswitches for one second. A dialog box appears, asking if you want to swap all assignments. Press Knob 6 (OK) When touch-holding a footswitch to invoke Quick Footswitch Assign (or touch holding two footswitches to swap their assignments), the dialog panel automatically closes after four seconds Bug Fixes In rare cases, assigning a parameter to a footswitch may briefly display the parameter’s value above Knob 1 (Parameter) on the Controller Assign page —FIXED After returning to a preset while the looper is active, the Looper block and/or half-speed footswitch’s LED may not properly reflect its state(s) —FIXED In some cases, a Command Center > CC Toggle footswitch’s LED may not properly reflect its state —FIXED Helix may fail to respond when receiving a huge string of MIDI PC messages while on the Setlist view —FIXED After customizing the name of an auto-assigned EXP 1 block (Wah or Pitch Wham), the Volume Pedal may become unassigned —FIXED General stability improvements Other minor bug fixes and optimizations Other Improvements When selecting banks by pressing FS1 (BANK UP) or FS7 (BANK DOWN), FS6 now appears as CANCEL, letting you dismiss bank queue without changing footswitch modes Expression Pedal 2 and 3 can now adjust values in Pedal Edit mode Factory presets leveled Additional improvements made to the factory preset bundle Resetting Helix Globals / Loading the Newest Factory Presets IMPORTANT! This procedure will completely overwrite all existing presets and setlists, as well as clear all user IRs and reset all global settings! Back up your presets and IRs before proceeding! Turn off Helix. While holding footswitches 9 and 10 (middle two switches on the bottom row), turn on Helix. Wait for the message “Will reset Globals and restore stock Presets, Setlists and IRs…†to appear and let go. Known Issues Minor pops and clicks may be present when Helix is streaming audio from a Mac® running OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) Minor pops and clicks may be present when Helix is streaming audio from an iOS® device running iOS 9.1 or 9.2 with Apple® Camera Kit Importing a Helix bundle while streaming audio over USB may cause the Helix application to disconnect

It's authentic. There is indeed a 1.05 for Helix hiding in our walls, but there's no point in releasing it, as the only thing that changed from 1.04.3 is a code merge with Helix Rack. 1.06 and beyond will support both Helix and Helix Rack/Control. Brand new Helix Racks/Controls will ship with 1.05, but 1.06 will be out before anyone gets their mitts on one.

We're taking this issue into our own hands. Not waiting on Apple any longer. Stay tuned...

Sorry—it's not the Mesa Mk IV, but that's definitely toward the top of our list.

Dunno. Line 6 has a lot of strict rules and guidelines regarding forum etiquette (which I routinely ignore at my peril), but none of us have anything close to "web ambassador" in our job descriptions, nor does Line 6 request much less expect much less require any of us to participate in any fashion. I jump all over the place (probably 30 or so sites—thanks, Google alerts!) and answer non-leading questions when they're asked. Other Line 6 product manager types avoid forum interaction like the plague; they're a lot smarter than I am. Besides, if there's a single Helix thread that people read, it's the 18,345-post, 1,414,171-view behemoth on TGP. Trust that within minutes, any notable Helix news will find its way to the Line 6 forums, Facebook, YouTube, and forum.fractalaudio.com. In other cases, stuff is dropped here first and then finds its way elsewhere. This isn't The Washington Post; people don't get yelled at for losing a scoop to the LA Times. Anyway, if it makes you all happy, here's a marginally juicy morsel, now that we're within spitting distance of NAMM: 1.06 will include 3 new amp models (all based on a single amp) and 9 new effects models.

We had initially planned support for controllers-to-Variax-parameters at launch, but it ended up being a lot more difficult/risky than we thought. It's still in my (gargantuan) Helix Wish List.

Yes—it can be accomplished from the Command Center screen

Variax parameters are the only home screen parameters that cannot currently be assigned to footswitches or other controllers.

Each Send and Return is mono. In the model list, you can select: Send: 1, 2, 3, 4, 1/2 [stereo], or 3/4 [stereo] Return: 1, 2, 3, 4, 1/2 [stereo], or 3/4 [stereo] FX Loop: 1, 2, 3, 4, 1/2 [stereo], or 3/4 [stereo]

Nope. My 15" MBP fits pretty snug. Unfortunately, a 17" is too big.

If you have a chance to hear Matt Bellamy's guitar tone solo'ed, it's very close to Plug In Baby. Everything sounds so huge on the record because it's paired with Chris Wolstenholme's bass tone. Muse is the very reason Helix has a Z.Vex Fuzz Factory and how you can control said Z.Vex Fuzz Factory from your Variax knobs.