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Good thought. Or maybe very low action snapping on the frets (or even the strings hitting the pickups if they're super close)? I just tried with a dual-humbucker guitar sitting beside my on my Helix floor and I don't hear those same kind of noises with a clean path. But if I intentionally smack the pick into the pickups, it does sound kinda like that.

If you listen to his sample clip, the sound he's referring to are right at the start of his picking attack. I don't think they're the common clicks you get from CPU underrun or buffer size.

Hmmm.... have you tried picking softer? ;) Just kidding. I don't use Reaper so I'm not sure, but is there any way to reduce the record level as it comes in? Maybe the incoming signal is indeed clipping but it's getting reduced when it records?... (e.g., in FLStudio I can put insert effects onto my record track, and specify whether they're pre/post. If they're pre, it's possible to reduce the recorded level even if the input is too hot, thus it would look 'ok' but still might be clipping). Are you using Helix as an ASIO device? Or something else like Windows Directsound? It should be using the ASIO driver -- there will be a way to configure this in Reaper. If you've updated Helix to v2.92, you have input clipping indicators now. On your guitar signal path, the input block (the little circle at the start of the path) will turn green with an input signal, and if it clips it will blink red. Try hard picking on your guitar and watch that indicator -- see if it turns red or stays green. If the indicator does turn red, do you have the Input Pad turned on for the guitar input? You said you have the 'input gate' turned on, but if you mean the noise gate on the input block for the guitar, that's something different. If you really are using the input noise gate, try disabling it and see if these clicks remain. I have some nagging suspicion that depending on how your decay and threshold settings are set, maybe it's causing this behavior.

Again, I have to respectfully say 'ehhhh.' The low impedance headphone options that exist now came about because of portable battery-operated devices (phones, iPods, etc.), which can't drive the voltages necessary for higher-impedance headphones. But the output impedance of those devices is usually WELL below the 12ohm output impedance of Helix Floor and LT. Assuming the headphone amp in the Stomp is the same, then it's true for it too, but we don't know since L6 never published its output impedance. Does it matter? Yes, it can, absolutely. Here's a page with a much better writeup on this, which even shows an example of a 10-ohm output impedance causing a significant/audible 6dB variation in frequency response for a set of 13-ohm headphones, causing bass roll-off and midrange emphasis: http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/02/headphone-amp-impedance.html I never said that headphone impedance should match the output impedance of the device. I said the headphone impedance should, as a good rule of thumb, be at least 8 times greater than the output impedance. Again, for Helix Floor and Helix LT, that's 12 * 8 = 96 ohms. Low impedance headphones are 'extremely solid device' for most modern portable battery-operated devices, which have very low (<<12 ohm) output impedances. Helix, for whatever reason they chose, does not fall into that category. Headphone impedance that is too low for the source driving it can be just as bad as it being too high. There is a sweet spot and it has a rule of thumb for a good reason. Sorry to beat this dead horse, but I want this forum to have accurate advice, and for this specific case I think your advice needs qualifiers added to it.

I understand what you're saying, and I mean this very respectfully, but I'm not sure that advising 56ohm or less headphones for Helix is good advice. The output impedance of Helix Floor is 12 ohms. That is quite a bit higher than most modern audio devices, like smartphones, mp3 players, etc. Low impedance headphones exist to work with devices that have very low output impedances. If you attach a pair of low impedance headphones to a headphone amp with high output impedance, that can be *harder* for the amp to drive than a pair of high impedance headphones. That's because the voltage drop across the load of the headphones is greater, due to it being closer in value to the impedance of the output. In its most basic form, it's just a voltage divider circuit, so a low impedance pair of phones on a high impedance output is not a recommended configuration. It might be ok; it might not -- it depends on the voltage and current capabilities of the amp. This is where the commonly advised 8:1 rule comes from -- the rule of thumb is that headphone impedance should be at least 8 times greater than the output impedance of the headphone amp. In the case of Helix Floor, that's 12 * 8 = 96 ohms. The reason for the value of 8 has to do with the perceivable effect it has on response, and theoretically that's at the threshold where any negative effects of the impedance mismatch shouldn't be audible. FWIW, the reason I mention all this is I've seen quite a few complaints about sound from Helix in headphones here, and on other places on the web, and almost universally they are using lower impedance headphones. On the contrary, I don't think I've seen any complaints from people using high impedance headphones, and have also seen a fair bit of praise from people who say their Helix sounds great with their 250 or 300 ohm headphones. good article on it here: https://www.headphonesty.com/2019/04/headphone-impedance-demystified/

Based on everything I've read, this isn't necessarily true. The output impedance of the device driving the phones does have an effect, and a device with a high output impedance might sometimes have a harder time driving low impedance headphones. (Edit: this is indeed different than how impedance mismatch affects guitar pickups. One is a source, one is a output. But if the the ratio of headphone impedance to output impedance is low enough, it can make the headphone amp struggle to drive the phones and may result in weaker bass or distortion, for example). Basic circuit analysis math with the two in parallel shows why this is the case. Somewhere in the past I already wrote up a post about this... I'll have to search and find it again. In short, the output impedance of the Helix Floor is not that low by modern standards, and by the typical guidelines of headphone vs output impedance, the Floor should ideally be used with headphones of ~100 ohm or greater impedance. I can't speak for the Stomp, because to my knowledge L6 has never published its output impedance specs, but I can say a user just recently had this same question here, bought the 250 ohm version of the Beyerdynamic phones for his Stomp, and replied back here and said they worked great. Lastly, measurements of the same kind of headphones that are made in multiple impedance versions do show slight differences. The lower impedance models tend to ring more with certain frequencies. FWIW, I have a set of 250 ohm (edit: oops, actually 300 ohm) Sennheiser HD600 that I use with my Floor. They sound fantastic and get loud enough to definitely cause hearing damage. I've also tried plugging in cheap low impedance earbuds that came with my phone, which should be way more efficient based on impedance alone, right? Yet, for similar volume knob settings they are not noticeably louder. They just sound like trash.

I think I'll get some of these too. Frequently having the Helix down on the floor in dusty places definitely isn't great for electrical contacts. Thanks for sharing!

Not sure where you got that number...for the Helix Floor, output impedance of the headphone out is 12 ohms. However, yes, that still means ideally you want headphones with 100ohm or more impedance. I've read a number of complaints here and on other forums of the lower-impedance Beyerdynamics sounding 'bad' with Helix, so I'm going to push back a bit on some of the other posts in this thread and say the main issue really might be the headphones themselves, in your case. I can say for certain my Senn HD600 sound fantastic plugged straight into Helix, and have seen a number of others say the same on another forum. It's not cheap, but a safe bet if you want new headphones anyway. A poster here a few months ago, the last time this topic came up, bought the high impedance version of the Beyerdynamic phones, and they reported back and said they worked great.

Very nice work. Your de-soldering is clean and your fillets on the new joints look great.

They aren't cheap, but... Sennheiser HD600. You won't regret it, if it's the Helix Floor you're using. (I don't know if the headphone amp circuit is the same in the LT and Stomp so I can't speak for them.)

I agree it can be confusing, but once you understand how it works, it also can be a benefit (not being limited to mono in between signal splits & merges). It'd be really nice if L6 added a feature that somehow indicates for each segment of the signal path whether it is stereo or mono, maybe by color-coding the path lines, or somehow displaying them differently for mono vs stereo (dashed vs. solid line? single line vs. double line?)

I don't think it's doing quite what you think it is, but regardless, this is likely your problem: when you use the Y splitter and pan A full left and B full right, it splits the stereo input signals out to those channels, like you'd expect. BUT, those signals remain stereo after the split, so now on path A you have a stereo signal with the right channel silent, and on path B you have a stereo signal with the left channel silent. Since you have mono effects on A and B, when you engage those mono effects, it collapses the signal back to mono after the effect. When you bypass the effect, it goes back to stereo as explained above. So the end result is, where you merge those signals back together, you're not getting the same thing into your reverb with the effects active vs. bypassed. The reason I said I don't think it's doing quite what you think it is, is that with the mono effects bypassed, you're taking a signal that is already hard-panned left and right and panning it even more (it won't do anything except increase the volume when you do this). When the effects are active, you now have two mono signals that won't have any stereo image unless you pan them L/R at the merge. Thus as you've described it, with both effects bypassed you'd be getting a volume-boosted stereo signal into the reverb, and with both effects active you're getting a stereo image like you're expecting, but only 'slightly left' and 'slightly right' because of how the merge is panned. Option 1: You can change those effects to be stereo ones, which will make the bypass/non-bypass behavior consistent. However, when they merge you'll have hard-panned L/R stereo (with L being the A path, R the B path), which is a wider stereo image than you want, so you'll have to pan them opposite to merge them together for only 'slightly' stereo. Option 2: You can put a 'dummy' mono Gain block right after your A/B split, with the gain set to zero, which will collapse both A and B to mono immediately after the split (this gain block must stay active, not bypassed). Then you can use your mono effects and it will sound consistent whether they're active or bypassed. Bear in mind though, if you do this, you have to pan A and B somewhat left and right at the merge to get a stereo signal again; otherwise you'll be mixing two mono signals on top of each other.

We'd only be guessing, without your same woofer, monitors, and room :) You'll just have to try it and see. That said, I often plug my Helix into a set of 200W Logitech Z-2300 speakers (which are also a sub with a passthrough to the speakers), and to me it sounds great. Considering the Helix is modeling the kind of sounds you'd hear on a studio recording, then to me monitoring with "normal" home audio speakers makes a lot of sense -- but others will disagree since it's a matter of opinion :)

If you want to understand what it is and how it works, here's a post that should answer any and all questions: https://line6.com/support/topic/55903-disabled-distortion-pedals-muffle-amp-sound/?do=findComment&comment=336422

Hi, you need to use a blank preset on Helix, and set the output to "USB 1/2". Then in Bias, configure it so it's using ASIO Helix as the audio input, using USB 1 (it doesn't need a stereo input). For Bias' output, use USB1/2 on ASIO Helix as well. If you do this, you should only hear the processed signal from Bias. If you're hosting Bias in a DAW, then the same advice applies there too, but you'll be setting up the DAW itself to use ASIO Helix as the input and output, and then you'll route those same ins and outs to the Bias plugin.

You actually CAN do this, and I do it on purpose sometimes to fine-tune the stereo image of my presets I use for recording. There's a couple tricks: Option 1: Use the 'Dual Delay', set the mix to 100, set feedback to 0, and dial in a small delay on one channel. The smallest you can go here is 0.1msec. Option 2: Use the stereo version of the Simple Delay. Set the mix to 100%. Set the feedback to zero. Set the 'Time' to a very small value, e.g. 0.1 msec. Then, set the scale parameter -- this sets the delay of the right channel relative to the left. So for example, if you set Time to 0.1msec, and set Scale to 50%, your overall signal would have 0.1msec latency now, but you would also have an offset of 0.1msec*50% = 0.05msec between the L & R channels, with the right channel 'leading'. You can tune very tiny offsets using this approach (e.g. 99% scale with 0.1msec Time would give you .01*0.1 = 0.001 msec offset between channels). The downside is, the 'leading' channel will always be the right one, unless you use something like a 'Stereo Width' block before and after the delay block to swap L&R and then swap them back again. All the usual cautions regarding phase apply to this. If you take it too far, you'll start getting phasing/cancellation issues, so make sure to always check the final output summed to mono and through a good set of monitors.

I have a friend who used to work in tech support. He called these "ID-10-T" errors. They are usually solved by exchanging the user rather than the product. ;)

I've tried, intentionally, to create phasing problems with the stock Helix cabs, and in my tests never was able to. I used same cab, different cabs, same mic, different mic, and varied the distance offset between the two mics in all of those cases, with the final signal being summed back to mono, and couldn't create anything that sounded like phase cancellation. If the Line 6 cabs really are IR based, like some claim, then they are probably MPT IRs, in my opinion.

Hi, please make sure you report this as a bug to Line 6. You're not the first one to report this, even on firmware 2.92. (Is that the firmware you're using?) If they aren't aware, it won't get fixed; and if they get the report from many, it'll get a higher priority. Here's a direct link to submit a ticket, only takes a couple minutes: https://line6.com/support/tickets/add.html If you can figure out a way to reliably reproduce it (it might be triggered by certain presets on your Helix), that will be hugely helpful in getting them to fix it. FWIW, firmware 2.90 and 2.91 added the new meters for input, output, and compression, but there was some kind of bug introduced that would make the meters and tuner lag. In 2.92, they improved it somehow, but under certain conditions the metering lag still happens. I found a way to reliably reproduce this in minutes and submitted it to them, and they've confirmed awareness, but I'm not sure if they know the tuner still has issues too. In the case of the lagging output meters, I can trigger it by changing to certain presets after Helix is powered on for a while. If I stay on the same preset it booted into, it's fine, but once I trigger it by going to another preset, the lag quickly grows over about a 60 second interval and remains until a reboot. At first it appeared that a full factory reset fixed it, but I've proven that to not be true. Here's another recent post with the same issue:

Did you somehow install the software without admin privileges?...

Hi, I'm sorry but I don't know the answer to this specific question, unfortunately. Some have reported that simply having a Disk 0 which shows up as 'online' in the disk listing is enough, without it being the drive that the OS is installed on. I haven't actually had this problem on my own systems, so I can only speak via the information that others have provided. If the disk 0 fix doesn't work, near the end of the thread that @HonestOpinion linked, there's a different fix someone posted which might help: https://line6.com/support/topic/49342-hx-edit-281-and-helix-native-starting-with-with-a-blank-screen-and-crash/?do=findComment&comment=331452 Edit: quick question -- it is HX Edit you're having issues with, right? Not Helix Native? If it's the trial of Helix Native and that won't start, I've seen that issue too and that's one I can help with. It's a different fix.

The 'Disk 0' issue is real, and Frank Ritchotte of Line 6 personally checked & confirmed to me on the TGP forums that their software engineers are aware and it'll be fixed in the next release. For now, even though it may be annoying, fixing the disk numbering in your system is likely to be your only fix until 3.0 comes out. If there's no Disk 0 present, then it won't launch.

At least for the tone in this video, it's absurdly close to a real one :)

Are your monitors plugged into Helix, or your Mac? If it's the Mac, that's problem #1. Monitors need to be plugged into Helix, even if you're recording via USB. The Helix becomes your sound card. Second thing I see -- your patches have an amp and cab running into another cab in some cases. You also have a path with an IR running into another IR. That isn't necessarily a problem, but it's definitely unconventional and is likely to yield weird/thin tones (maybe you wanted that, though). Tinny tones are often the result of phase cancellation, so make sure you haven't inadvertently flipped the phase of any of your paths where they merge, too. That kind of thing will sound fine through headphones, but as soon as you listen through monitors (or merge the signal to mono), it'll sound awful. If you post your presets and IRs here, we can take a closer look and see if the issue is with your DAW or your presets.

That is very odd indeed... how did you clean it? Just wondering if whatever you did changed something else incidentally (e.g., maybe a cracked solder joint that got bumped back into good contact again). Also FWIW, my Helix is only a year old and it has a very faint sound in the right channel with the Phones knob all the way down too. I'm pretty sure it's always been this way. It's barely perceptible but it's there, and you have to turn the volume up just a smidge beyond minimum before the left channel comes in and then they balance out. Patches that have higher output levels are easier to hear this with, while it can't really be heard at all with low output level patches.