Digital_Igloo

Any custom labels are static, but you can repeatedly touch the switch until the color LED represents the state you want it to be in. Then save the preset.

HX Stomp's lack of a Command Center has to do with two things: It's first and foremost a stompbox for use on pedalboards, perhaps one that already has a MIDI controller (like a BOSS ES-8 or Morningstar). It only has three footswitches. It has nothing to do with the manual being too long, although I do hate unnecessarily long manuals. The biggest effort to add Command Center to HX Stomp would be the massive test matrix, but again, we've been hesitant adding robust controller functionality to a box that was designed to be a compact stompbox. Helix Floor, Helix, Rack/Control, Helix LT, and HX Effects were designed with master MIDI controller capabilities because they're intended to be the centerpiece of your rig. We're still looking into it. Stay tuned...

It should be noted that both Sascha and rd2rk are correct—it doesn't matter whether the two delay blocks are opposite bypass states when you assign them to the same footswitch. The stomp switch changes the bypass state of all assigned blocks; the BYPASS button changes the bypass state of the selected block only.

You can also engage it via MIDI.

To use HX Stomp as an audio interface at sample rates other than 48kHz, you'll want to install the HX Stomp driver, available here: http://line6.com/software/

Unlike Helix Floor/Rack/LT or HX Effects, HX Stomp isn't a MIDI controller, nor was it ever intended to be. Everything it can do via MIDI is explained in detail starting on page 48. Out of curiosity, what's missing from the manual?

Yes: Touch the Stomp footswitch you want to be momentary. Press <PAGE + PAGE> to open the Menu and press Knob 1 (Bypass Assign). Turn Knob 2 (Type) to select "Momentary." Press HOME.

As long as a Helix preset has no Amp+Cab, Amp, Preamp, or Cab blocks and everything is on one Path (1 or 2), it should load into HX Effects just fine. HX Effects presets load just fine into Helix; if it has 9 effects blocks, the 9th block is shuttled to Path 1B. Helix Native can load any Helix or HX preset but you may have to check the appropriate Hardware Compatibility Mode first; this is found in the Preferences menu.

I would argue that unless you absolutely must edit your modeler from your phone or iPad, or remotely control a Variax guitar over VDI, POD Go is a significant upgrade over Firehawk FX. It's fully editable from the front panel, is much more portable, and has a ton of models and functionality taken from our flagship Helix/HX line of products.

Yes, POD Go will respond to standard PC messages as well as quite a few CC messages (including CC69 for snapshot recall). Everything's outlined starting on page 38 of the POD Go Owner's Manual.

Clearly our sales guys would disagree, but I'd go as far as suggesting a used Helix Rack+Control over a new Helix Rack plus any other MIDI controller. And as far as I'm concerned, Behringer will always be in a bad rep era.

Behringer... <shudders> I sure hope you already had one lying around and didn't buy one specifically for Helix Rack! If I had an extra Helix Control in my office, I'd send it to you. It's a good 40-50% of the whole Rack+Remote experience (scribble strips, block selection, RGB rings, customizable names, controller assignment, hands-free Pedal Edit mode, Command Center, a metric ton of additional visual feedback at your feet, dozens of other features...) and over the life of the product would save... weeks or months of programming time? But I'm clearly biased.

HX Stomp has normal MIDI DIN implementation; unless that particular adapter swapped the pins for some crazy reason (highly unlikely), it should work.

Unfortunately, the fixed EQ uses maybe 5-10% of the DSP required to make one of the Pitch blocks stereo. In fact, the very reason we locked in the Preset EQ, Volume Pedal, Wah, and FX Loop is because they all use very little DSP (we'll admit it—so your entire signal flow looks bigger!). It's the exact same thing that other affordable-ish modelers do, including ones made by us in the 90s and 2000s.

The market for $1000 solid state amps is virtually non-existent. Don't take my word for it—reach out to a guitar store friend who has access to (expensive) MI Sales Tracker data, or perhaps metrics from a massive MI retailer like GC, Sweetwater, AMS, Anderton's or Thomann and check to see if I'm right. Let's pretend for a second that we could. The market for $1000 solid state amps is a desert, so why would we put effort into a risky-at-best proposition when we can put that same effort into something that's an all-but-guaranteed hit? Anyone who's "been around the business world" surely understands the concept of limited resources and ROI. If we were a tiny upstart with a dozen employees and could sell a great-sounding $1000 solid state modeling amp direct through the mail, we might be able to pull a profit. Except Line 6 isn't a tiny upstart; anything we sell needs to sell tens or hundreds of thousands of units to make any effort worth it. And this is really important: not only do we need to convince ourselves that we can push a box with those sell-through numbers; we have to convince GC, Sweetwater, AMS, Anderton's, Thomann, and many others that they can push a box with those sell-through numbers. So when when their extensive data on the ~$1000 solid state modeling amp market conflicts with what we're trying to sell them, that's a non-starter. I've told this story multiple times, but here goes again: At one time, I used to question loudly—online—why no one made a truly professional keyboard controller. Then someone did (Infinite Response VAX•77), and it was expensive, and I needed to put my money where my mouth was. It's worth every penny, but the company shuttered a couple of years later because, like me, they overestimated the number of people who felt the same way I did. In a similar vein, quite a few users have asked for a bean version of Helix. I'll personally reach out to many of these people and straight up ask them: "Would you actually pay money for one?" The vast majority would not; they just want it to exist for the "complete Line 6 product line" warm and fuzzies. I'm not saying we'll never make a killer high-end amp again; I'm just saying there's a LOT of nuance here, and claiming we can just slap HX modeling into a wooden box and generate another hit product is devoid of said nuance.

Gah! Paparazzi is right. Sheesh... <backs away slowly>

Any pair of decent quality TRS > XLR M cables should work perfectly. Monoprice usually has 'em super cheap, but I'm typically impatient and just run down to my local big box guitar emporium.

FTFY. So what you're saying is that it's OUR fault YOU'RE not willing to walk across the street to the party? And WE'RE not helpful because everyone isn't moving one of the dozens of parties to a venue where YOU happen to be most comfortable?

Post what? Whenever there's an update, Tony or I do post it here. Always. Are you talking about 2.90, which has never been officially announced? We threw a party at NAMM with a sneak peek for friends only and they talked about it publicly... elsewhere. It's almost like you're paparazzi lurking by the Line 6 cafeteria door, desperate for someone to walk out. And when someone says "Hey! Sometimes after work the Line 6 guys hang out at the food court/amusement park/dive bar across the street," instead of, y'know, walking across the street like a normal person, you complain that our free time isn't spent dealing with you in the cafeteria. At a certain point, you gotta wonder if some of us exit through a different door on purpose.

Let's just say we have a lot of really smart people here who spend an exorbitant amount of time figuring out what products to make and at what price to sell them. It's not just their gut instincts, either—it's input from dealers, input from distributors, the competitive landscape, and a metric ton of very complicated business models built inside massive spreadsheets. If we weren't good at this sort of stuff, we would'nt have been here 23 years. Every audio product—even million-dollar studio consoles—"could" sound better. The trick is making a product sound as good as possible for a price that the market will bear. There are companies that do nothing but make high end expensive products, and they generally have very few employees and a MUCH smaller overhead. Line 6 needs to hit a wider set of price points than, say, Fractal Audio or Kemper. If someone prefers we fire 3/4 of our employees and turn ourselves into a boutique shop, that's certainly... an ethos. Besides, it's not like you can just slap a SHARC chip running the HX engine into a Spider cabinet with a Spider driver, charge another $50-100, and be off to the races. We've explained in the past how a "Helix Combo" would likely cost upwards of $2k and almost no one was interested, because at that price, the market all but demands t00Bz. We also offered to develop a wireless system compatible with Variax for $1000 and not a single person bit. Lexus couldn't exist without Toyota sales. The new Mac Pro (and the upcoming Logic 10.5!) couldn't exist without iPhone sales. Helix/HX couldn't exist without Spider sales.

POD Go Edit is available now, but as with HX Edit, it won't really do anything unless you have POD Go connected.

Say you have Snapshot 1 set to bypass all effects and Snapshot 2 has them on. If you set Global Settings > Preferences > Snapshot Reselect to "Toggle," pressing Snapshot 2 repeatedly will toggle between it and the previous snapshot (Snapshot 1). One switch, toggling all effects.

Exactly. It's not an attitude; it's fact. Full disclosure: In the past I've been asked by others in the building to post specific content and have always told them "no." As soon as I become a corporate monkey—or post anything other than what I want to post—all credibility is lost. Why doesn't Digital Igloo post more? Frank, Ben, Sam, and I post what we want, where we want, on our free time. That's a terrible attitude for a corporate monkey. I'm not a corporate monkey, which is why I don't post more. But you ARE a corporate monkey, so why don't you post more? Sigh... See you guys in a couple of months... Why doesn't Digital Igloo post more? ...

Unfortunately, the Global EQ can be assigned to the 1/4" and/or XLR outputs only. Because of Helix's flexible routing, Global EQ would have to be separate for every single pair of outputs, and to maintain DSP usage between Floor, Rack, and LT, we needed the exact same number of Global EQ instances—in this case, two. Fortunately, an EQ > Parametric block has the same parameters as the Global EQ and can be copied and then pasted into any preset.

In a 32-bit floating point system, they're only really helpful if you're clipping the inputs (which is nearly impossible in Helix, since it has 123dB of dynamic range on the Guitar In) or outputs (which is also really hard to do unless you're going out of your way to overload them). On older fixed-point systems like your GT-10, meters can actually be helpful because the inputs and outputs could clip; in Helix, they're sort of a distraction that could very well cause more confusion than they help; for example, we predict an onslaught of people complaining that 2.90's output meters belie the perceived loudness differences in their presets, the reason for which we've explained dozens of times before. In fact, 2.90 is called "The Always Level Presets By Hand at Gig Volume with the Rest of the Band Playing Update." Signal present indicators and gain reduction meters (on compressors and gates), however, are definitely helpful.