qwerty42

Yup, you've got it correct. Also, for amps that did not actually have a master volume in real life (e.g. old Marshalls), then Master defaults to 10 and that's where it should be for authentic modeling of the original amp.

One other very important thing: don't connect a stereo signal to a mono port. In other words, don't connect the headphone out of Helix to a mono port on the FRFR with a TRS cable. If the mono port is balanced, then doing this will cause a bunch of sound cancellation and make it sound like hot garbage. You can use a TRS connector into a balanced mono port for lower noise, but just make sure the signal is mono at the source side.

You're not also using a cab sim in the Helix, right? You need to be using an amp model only, not Amp + Cab (nor IR).

There have been a few reports of similar issues on this forum. In some cases it appeared to be fixed by a factory reset; in others it was a hardware problem. Before you give up, do what rd2rk said, and also try a different pair of headphones or speakers to make sure it's not your 'phones.

...and, restoring a backup is just as easy. Line 6 did a particularly great job there. It couldn't be much simpler. I say just update it. 2.92 has many good bugfixes. HX Edit forces you to back it up before you update it as part of the update process. Make sure you update it through HX Edit -- don't use L6 updater or whatever it's called. First install HX Edit 2.92, then just update Helix through there. Easy peasy.

Which of the blocks is clipping? It's the one labeled 'Return,' yes? (In the patches I gave you there are separate send and return blocks on Path 1). If so, it tells us this: Assuming the clipping indicator is correct (which it might not be), then using a line-level setting for the Return eliminates the clipping. That means worst-case scenario, we can still use Helix with your amps without clipping. Yes, routing this way requires FX Loops 1, 2, 3, & 4 to use both your amps. This is indeed what rd2rk was trying to have you do, and from the results I suspected it wasn't actually achieved. Any tone-robbing issues you're hearing from the line-level return should be fixable by simply increasing the 'Return' slider of the 'Return' block, or if that causes clipping, then boost the level on the 1/4" output at the very end of Path 1 instead. There isn't anything about using a line-level return that should be robbing tone, except that the level going back out to your amp at the very end of your chain will be slightly less, so add gain after the Return to compensate If you still hear tonal differences after adding some gain after the return block, then it's possible the 'tone loss' you're hearing was actually the clipping giving it extra bite/brightness Your options in the end are: Run Helix like this, splitting the Sends are Returns so the sends are instrument-level and returns are line-level. Trust your ears, and use it as it was before with the return 'clipping' until we can get Line 6 to verify whether or not that indicator is correct. For what it's worth, if the Return really is clipping and the indicator's working properly, it means your amp is the issue, because for some reason it's sending back a signal which is hotter than 'instrument level.' I will submit a ticket to Line 6 with my findings on the Return blocks lighting up well before the Send does if they are patched straight into each other, and see what they say.

Yes, keep it set up like in the picture, with the exception that the 'send' from the amp needs to go into either Return 1 or Return 3 on Helix, as per my instructions above. Please make sure you follow every step I listed so we can draw a valid conclusion from it. I only changed Path 1 on snapshot 3, since you said that was the one which was clipping. I split your send and return into separate blocks, so we can see for sure which side is clipping. (You have the option to either use an 'FX Loop' block with Helix which combines Send and Return, or you can use a separate Send and separate Return block. The way you had it setup before had an FX Loop block so we have no way of knowing if it was clipping on the send side or the return side). I also built the 2 presets and had you configure the global settings so that in one case, both send and return are instrument level, and in the second case, the send is instrument while the return is line. If you really are clipping a line level return, something really weird is happening and merits more investigation, because the Helix should easily be able to handle what you're doing with it. Anyway, don't overthink it at this point -- if you follow the steps exactly as I wrote them, we can go from there once we see what happens. Regarding your Powercab idea, are you sure you'd run out of DSP? You wouldn't be able to use multiple amp blocks on a single split path, but you could definitely have 3 amp blocks total and use snapshots to adjust their gain levels and output volumes. Since the Powercabs have built in cab modeling, you could skip the cabinet models in Helix itself and save yourself even more DSP. If you wanted to use the Powercabs as FRFR speakers instead, you could even merge your amps back to a single cab (or stereo cab) block on each path to save DSP. It takes some thought, but there are many, many ways to skin the proverbial cat with Helix. I see you're using some very DSP-intensive delays -- you might be able to consolidate them to a single stereo delay block and feed multiple paths into them. If you had DSP to spare on Path 1, we could also use its B path to offload a couple of your effects and send them down to path 2. It's all about balancing the DSP utilization of each path so you can cram the max possible into it.

This likely won't fix the problem, but it will let us pinpoint it. I've attached two presets -- please try the following: In your Global Settings, set "Send/Return 1" to Instrument. Also in Global Settings, set "Send/Return 3" to Line. Also in Global Settings, turn off the "Guitar In" pad (it really shouldn't be necessary). Drop both of the presets I've attached onto your Helix. Put all your amp knobs where you had them before, when they were working with the first two snapshots but clipping on the third. Next, do this: Set up your amp's send and return cabling into Send 1 and Return 1 on your Helix. Load "Hemis_Snd1_Ret1". Make sure it's on the 3rd snapshot. Try playing and watch the Send and Return blocks on Path 1A. Is one of them flashing red? Which one? If it's the Return block, try lowering the "Return" slider within that block. Does that make it stop flashing red? Next, try this: Set up your amp's send and return so they are going into Send 1 and Return 3 on your Helix. Load "Hemis_Snd1_Ret3". Do the same as above. Are either the Send or Return blocks still flashing red? If not, does it sound good? If you need more output from the return, you can turn its level up using the "Return" slider in the "Return" block. Let me know what you find from the steps above and we'll go from there. I still think this may be a bug, but I think there's a solution here regardless. Hemis_Snd1_Ret3.hlxHemis_Snd1_Ret1.hlx

After lots of testing I've found the lagging output and compression meters bug still exists in v2.92, even after a factory reset. I've figured out a way to reliably trigger it a few minutes after reboot and will submit a bug report to Line 6 so they can replicate the issue and fix it. That said, I'm still not seeing a lagging tuner on mine, but given how it seems this is some kind of latency issue, maybe they are still related.

I need to do some more testing, but it looks like there might be a bug with the sends/returns and that clipping indicator...? If you set up a preset with a separate 'send' and 'return' block, and then use a patch cable from send 1 directly into return 1, and run a test signal through it, the return block starts clipping about 14dB sooner than the send block. This might be a faulty indication, with it not actually clipping, or it could be a result of the return's A/D having less dynamic range than the 32-bit floating point math that happens once it's in the digital domain. That doesn't seem right though, because the level meter for the send should be a level based on the send's A/D headroom. @Wondo100 -- are you using firmware 2.92? Which Helix device are you using (floor, HX effects)?

For anyone else that has this issue, this bug was introduced in firmware 2.90. If you have the problem, the very first thing you need to do is upgrade to firmware 2.92, which contains other important bug fixes too. After you upgrade to 2.92, you still might need to do a full factory reset like I described above to fix the lagging tuner issue. (This bug also causes the output meters and compression meters to lag, FWIW.)

Is the tuner getting laggy after your Helix has been powered on for a while? If so, you need to first create a full backup of Helix using HX Edit (very important! if you don’t, you’ll lose everything), and then do a factory reset of Helix by turning it off, holding down footswitches 9&10, and turning it on while keeping those held. After you see the note on the screen that it’s doing a full reset, you can let go of the switches. After it does the full reset, restore your backup to it. (Note: when I did this on mine, I did not restore Global Settings from the backup. I re-entered those manually. I don’t know if it makes any difference, this is just what I did and it fixed it for me).

The answers above are excellent. Just to throw my input into the mix, I bought a Floor about 1 year ago. I thought it was going to be complete overkill, because I already had a very nice audio interface for guitar, a mic preamp, and a bunch of great modeling plugins for my DAW. Now a year later, the Helix remains one of my all-time favorite purchases, and it’s pretty much the only thing I use now. Electric guitar, mic for vocals, midi, USB to computer, recording, playback, re-amping, you name it. It does everything so well in a single package that I just can’t be bothered to use the other stuff I have now. Also regarding the mic input and all the effects loops — I also thought I wouldn’t be using those much, but now that I have it I’ve found all sorts of uses for it in a variety of configurations. If you have it, you don’t have to use it — but if you want it, you can’t add it later if it isn’t already there. Good luck with whichever route you go, you really can’t go wrong with either as long as you are willing to take the time to learn how to use it!

The post you're replying to is over two years old ;) But that said, if you connect Helix to your Mac, it can be used as your system soundcard. Headphones plugged into the Helix headphone port will let you hear everything including your Mac audio, and you get the added benefit of almost zero latency by monitoring straight from the Helix. I've seen so many posts like this I'm starting to think Helix should come with a big sticker on it that says "If you connect me to your computer via USB, plug your headphones or monitors into ME, not your Mac/PC!" ;)

This is why I suggested adding one new setting under the Guitar In-Z options, called "Auto w/ True Bypass". This retains the old Auto setting, so existing presets don't get changed unexpectedly, but would make it trivially easy to set any old or new presets to use 'first active block' auto-impedance. Everyone wins, ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom.

I generally agree with the above, but just want to highlight a couple things: - The reason the input impedance circuit exists in Helix is to re-create the characteristics of the pedals they've modeled. It's not an 'optimum value' for each pedal's sound, but rather, it's the real-life value (or darn close to it) of the real pedals. - I think that simulating this via only an EQ or filter of some type on the start of each pedal is not going to be as accurate. They way pickups respond to impedance varies according to the specific pickup (humbuckers/single coils; whether you them switched in a way that has multiple pickups active, etc.) To match this correctly, you need the analog reality of the circuit. You could get in the ballpark somewhat if you had an EQ with options for different pickup types and configurations, but the input impedance changes the response/sensitivity of the pickups somewhat too. Line 6 was going for accuracy; that's why they did it this way. Fractal Audio does the same thing in AxeFX. - My own opinion, for whatever it's worth, is this could be 'fixed' for everyone if every pedal just had a switch for 'true bypass' as an option. If set to 'yes', then when bypassed the next pedal downstream sets the Auto value of Z. If the next pedal downstream is also true bypass, it goes to the next, and so on, all the way up to the amp which of course won't be true bypass. If people are trying to re-create a real-life rig in Helix and make it sound/feel the same, there are some cases where you probably don't want the pedals to be true bypass, although I agree that would be rarer than wanting them to just stop coloring the signal when bypassed. However, we've already seen how much confusion the existing way of dealing with impedance causes, which is pretty simple -- so adding this would probably be another nightmare can of worms. @Digital_Igloo : Maybe a great compromise is to add one more option to the Guitar In-Z settings, which is "Auto - True Bypass", which would make every pedal behave as true bypass (so the first active one sets the impedance), and still keep the existing Auto option without changes. This would be backwards-compatible with old presets, so nothing would break there, but it would be a very simple edit per-preset to change the behavior too. If that option was added and then made the default setting for new presets, we probably wouldn't have to see another one of these Input Impedance threads again :) Whatcha think?

Best of luck with what you decide to use next! Maybe some day you'll circle back around to a full Helix ;) On that note, I have a curiosity I've wondered about: I own Bias FX2, Bias Amp 2, S-Gear, Thermionik, Ignite, ReValver, and some others I'm sure I'm forgetting. They all have a different 'feel' than my Helix floor, but to me it feels somewhat less dynamic, yet it also makes it easier to play because it takes less effort. What I mean by that is, while those other plugins are capable of fantastic tones, to go from 'full soft' to 'full hard' attack is a smaller range of picking strengths compared to Helix. (Of course this is affected by the ASIO interface you use too, but this seems to be true even when I'm using my Helix as the dry input). In other words, it seems like the response curves are different, where most of those plugins feel pretty linear from 'soft picking' to 'hard attack', whereas Helix feels more like an S-shaped asymptotic response curve. As for which of these is more realistic, I can't say. I have far more experience with modelers than I do real amps. But I often wonder if when people say the 'feel' isn't there, what they mean is they prefer the 'feel' of a more linear dynamic response.

This is one of the things that the Global EQ is great for. Since it’s global, it applies to all of your presets, and you can dial it in at the venue at performance volume to compensate for the room and loudness differences. When you’re back home, just turn it back off.

Are your adjustments at home done at the same volume as your live setup? If not, could just be the well-known Fletcher-Munson curve As volume goes up, our perception of what we hear as high treble frequencies goes up at a greater rate. It's a very real effect that has to be compensated for.

Ah, interesting, thanks for that observation! Maybe this is why it seemed like it wasn't working correctly at first. Good to know!

I think that's correct, yes, but I'd have to test it to be sure. That would be a useful bit of info to add for others if you figure it out before I have time to do so :) Also, I added a 3rd option to my post above to toggle the Guitar In-Z that I'd forgotten: instead of assigning it to be controlled by snapshots, you can also just assign it directly to a footswitch and then choose two values for it that the footswitch toggles. Then, assign your first pedal to that same footswitch for bypass on/off. Doing this will let you use a fuzz with low input impedance, but then when you bypass that fuzz it'll switch to your other chosen value. Using snapshots is of course a good option too, where it just directly recalls whatever value you stored for that particular snapshot. There's a few listings somewhere on these forums of the internally-set input impedance values for each effect if you need it--should be able to find it with a search. Using a wireless input like you mentioned above will indeed make none of this matter, because the guitar just gets the 1 MOhm impedance of the wireless transmitter. Of course, that also means fuzzes won't sound as they 'should', which is true of their real-life pedal versions too. You need that cable going into them straight from the guitar if you want proper vintage fuzz feel & tone. I'm not sure how the Variax dedicated port handles it, but since the Variax pickups are piezo saddles and it does the sound processing onboard, I'd guess that it also doesn't care what the input impedance is set to on Helix (the Variax electronics probably act like a buffer, but I'm just guessing here). Many people who use analog pedals intentionally use a buffered pedal first in their chain, which avoids all these tone-suck issues in general, because as far as the guitar is concerned it's like having it connected to your wireless transmitter. But the same caveats about fuzzes not sounding as intended still apply in that case too. Setting the Guitar In-Z to a fixed value of 1 MOhm should be just like using your wireless transmitter, and also just like using a buffered pedal first in a chain of real pedals.

Nope, it's not new, and it's only confusing because whenever a post gets made about it, people who don't quite get it muddy the waters by talking in philosophical circles instead of taking 10 quiet minutes to understand how it works. For posterity, here is what's going on, again, from top to bottom. If you have questions after this, please read it again. First, let's talk about real-world analog pedals and amps: (1) First, we need to understand that input impedance (represented by Z) is a property of a circuit. Everything you plug your guitar cable into has a certain input impedance. Every pedal you've ever used has a certain input impedance. (2) Some pedals like fuzzes have LOW input impedances (e.g. 10 000 Ohms aka 10 kOhm). Some other pedals have HIGH input impedances (e.g., 1 000 000 Ohms aka 1 MOhm) (3) The input impedance of whatever your guitar is directly plugged into affects the sound of your guitar's pickups. This is because your pickups become part of the circuit, and the input impedance interacts with your guitar pickups to create what is essentially an analog low-pass filter. (4) If your guitar is connected to something with very HIGH input impedance, it will have no noticeable filtering, and will sound bright with all of the treble frequencies passing through. If you connect your guitar to something with LOW input impedance, the combined circuit acts as a low-pass filter, which attenuates treble frequencies. The lower the input impedance, the more the treble gets attenuated. (5) Ok, given #4, why would we ever want a low input impedance for something you plug your guitar into? Well, many old-school effects like fuzzes don't sound or feel 'right' without their low input impedance chopping the treble frequencies out of the input signal. Low input impedance is generally an undesirable thing for a guitar input, but at the same time it's essential to making some pedals/amps sound the way we expect them to in the real-world. (6) The interaction of guitar pickups + input impedance applies to the first thing your guitar is directly plugged into. If you have a pedal with 1MOhm input impedance first in your chain, and then a low-impedance fuzz after that, the fuzz won't sound right because your guitar is 'seeing' the 1MOhm impedance, not the lower impedance of the fuzz. Likewise, if you have a buffered pedal first in the chain, this will also behave as if your guitar is plugged into a high input impedance. (7) If you have a true-bypass pedal, and it's in the bypass state, then the input impedance of the NEXT pedal in the chain is what your guitar 'sees.' This is because a true bypass is basically like adding some extra length to your guitar cord and connecting it directly to the next pedal. Ok, now let's talk about how the Helix models input impedance: (A) The Helix/LT/Stomp have a variable input impedance circuit on the guitar input. This means there is an analog circuit on the input which can be switched through many different values of input impedance. It can go from 1 MOhm all the way down to 10 kOhm. This isn't a digitally-modeled effect -- it is an actual analog circuit that loads the pickups. (B) If your guitar is plugged DIRECTLY into Helix's guitar input, then your pickups are loaded by this analog input impedance circuit. If you have things in between your guitar and Helix, then those things determine the input impedance seen by your guitar as described earlier. (C) Every model within Helix (amps, pedals, etc.) has an input impedance value internally coded into it. No, you can't look at the value anywhere, but just understand that a 70s Chorus pedal has a 22 kOhm input impedance, and a Scream 808 has a 230 kOhm input impedance, and so on. These internally-stored values are based on the input impedances of the real-life pedals. (D) The internally-coded input impedance of the first block in your signal path sets the Helix's input impedance value by default. In other words, if the first pedal in your signal path is a 70s Chorus, the adjustable input impedance circuit will be set to 22 kOhm. This input impedance still applies whether that effect is bypassed or not. This behavior is realistic for pedals that aren't true-bypass, but is unrealistic for pedals that ARE true-bypass. Like it or not, that's how it currently works. (E) You can override the auto-adjusted input impedance by choosing a fixed value for it in the input block of your signal path. The parameter to adjust this is named "Guitar In-Z." The default value is AUTO which behaves as I described above. You can manually set it to any value you want, and that will be the new input impedance of the guitar input circuit no matter what is in your patch, and no matter their bypass states. (F) The outcome of the default Auto behavior is that if you have a pedal with low input impedance (e.g. Industrial Fuzz) first in your chain, and you bypass it, then whatever is next in the chain will sound darker, because it's behaving as if it, too, has a low input impedance. If the next thing in your chain was an amp, it'd sound like the amp's instrument input circuit had a 10 kOhm input impedance, which no amp will likely have in real life. Again, this behavior is how real-life pedals without true-bypass behave. This behavior is not how real-life pedals with true-bypass behave. (G) Line 6 chose to do it this way, and some people disagree with that. If they'd chosen to set the Auto-Z based on the first non-bypassed pedal in the chain, some people would be happier and some would probably not like it that way, either. If this really matters to you and is causing problems, you can either (1) manually set the Guitar In-Z to a fixed value; or (2) link the Guitar In-Z value to snapshots, and then manually set the value you want for each snapshot along with the bypass states of your pedals; or (3) link the Guitar In-Z to be controlled directly by a footswitch rather than snapshots, and then assign that same footswitch to toggle the bypass state of your first pedal. If you have plenty of DSP to spare, you can also split your patch into multiple inputs with different values and mute/unmute them, but that's a pretty brute-force approach IMO.

Well, if you think it sounds great in that video but yours doesn't, that leaves either your guitar, cable, or what you're listening through as the problem.

Correct. This is a confusing statement. You're saying with the TubeScreamer on (NOT bypassed), your 'tone and impedance should not change' if you remove it. Input impedance is a property of a circuit. The TubeScreamer has its own input impedance. Your amp has its own input impedance. It affects the tone of your guitar because of how it interacts with your pickups, and every device you plug into has its own input impedance that doesn't necessarily match anything else. The rest of your statement is just further confusing the original poster's problem. We're not talking about real pedals. We're talking about behavior of Helix under 2 very specific conditions, which should give identical tone. Re-read my post just above yours where I distilled it back down to exactly his issue. The more I address what you're saying, the more confused it's going to get again.