kringle

More great stuff! I haven't had chance to mess with it yet, but it's at the top of my todo list when I get a chance. I am suspecting now my input is way too low as I usually run master volume at 50% so I have adjustability during the show and I have an amp mentality where I am expecting the PC+ to drive the volume/power even if the volume to it is low.

OK, now you have me interested in retrying a few things and that video is a good view into his workflow. I'll share what I find.

waymda, What's your situation like? I play small 50-200 person venues without house sound and most are not acoustically designed for live music. I'm playing with bass, acoustic drums, singer, and another guitarist. We play Pearl Jam, STP, Killers, Foo Fighters, Black Keys, Green Day, Chili Peppers. We're definitely competing sonically even when we do our best to EQ the three guitars into their own space. by comparison, it's no where near the cutting power of a PRRI, Mesa Amp, or a pair of good PAs. I could easily see if you are playing more open songs, you are not competing with another guitar or full band, and the songs are slower & cleaner... yes, then they would do great. Just like it works fine for me at home. I think it comes down to your band, what music you play and your venues.

Sweetwaters great, get majority of my gear there, so might as well test, if it's really for home use - you will probably like them a lot let us know what you think - maybe do a similar thing to what I did and have the 7CM amp hookup at similar volume and see how they compare.

I thought I'd share that I have the Helix & a single PC112+, it's great for basement, but that's it. I tried gigging with it a few times and it becomes invisible to the ears. My guitar amps have the ability to move air and project the sound, the PC+ simply can't do that. It's loud but has no ability to cut through a room or hold its own against even a fairly quiet Bass cab, drums and the other guitarist's amp. It was really surprising because at home it's so friggin' loud. So after the PC+ failed to provide the right balance and multiple attempts to figure out why. I gave up - I moved my powercab to basically be a monitor - and it doesn't do that well either - still gets drowned out. Running my helix to the soundboard and out to a pair of 10" or 12" PA's at 30% volume is infinity better then a maxed out set of PC+. Keep in mind, we don't play loud when gigging My PC+ sits at home unused now. I did play around with my helix into PC+, a Mesa Amp & 12" PA side-by-side at home, set to the same volume to my ear. Flipping back and forth with no changes to the helix; the PC+ is void of any PUNCH... if I hit some muted chugs, it will be loud, but you feel nothing in your chest with the the PC+, the Mesa amp is like a punch to the sternum, and the PA is closer to the amp, miles ahead of the PC+. so this reaffirmed how weak the PC+ is, it's not at all on par with a basic PA. I'd caution moving away from an Amp with Cabs or even a set of PA's to the PC+ either in 2x format or 1x in stereo, it's a lot of money and I worry you might end up hating it. I agree with JLondon said - and my opinion is this will depend very much on what music you play, we're mostly alt-rock, some modern alt stuff, not too heavy. And modeling is definity passed the threshold into a full viable alternative for live music, makes my life significantly better and we mostly do covers so I can dial in true-to-original tones for every song and that brought us up to a whole new level of sound just by spending some time on my helix patches. EDIT/ADD : Missed the part where you were going to use the PC's for home or practice gigs. if that's the case, they probably will be good for that. I'll still leave my comments above in case anyone stumbles here thinking PC+'s are good for gigin' !

Alright, I give up though on trying to figure it how I would do an offline update. I downloaded the new firmware but can't find any way to do it through HX Edit or Line 6 Updater. Can someone share the trick to do an offline update? Update: I figured out how to get the offline update to work: The Line 6 Updater won't work if HX Edit is running. What's happening is that since HX Edit isn't able to do Helix updates, the only way out was to cancel the update process. but when you do, it appears the HX Edit app is closed, but it's not - it's stills running as a services. You need to kill HX Edit through task manager (on windows system). Then run Line 6 Updater and it will see the Helix. For some reason, HX Edit blocks Line 6 Updater from seeing there is a Helix attached. I tried 6 more times with this latest 2.92 update through HX Edit but it was never able to download the firmware. when I was able to get Helix visible through Line 6 Update, it instantly downloaded the firmware and did the install. So clearly it's an issue with HX Edit not reliably downloading the firmware.

The past two updates, it hangs at "Beginning Firmware Download" I have to try 5-6 times to get it to download the firmware. when I watch my network meter, HX Edit never tries to contact the server and no firmware flows. for 2.91, after 6th time, it just went strait through and downloaded in a few seconds. It's not my system or network, I've confirmed that each time - I think it's something odd with HX Edit. beyond that, the upgrades once they download have no issues.

My Upgrades always fail on rebuilding preset #260. is that the third bank, 4th preset? my thoughts are 128 presets for bank 1, 128 for bank 2 making 256, then bank 3 would be the 4th one is #260? or is there some odd logic like it starts at zero? Also does anyone know how to force a rebuild again so I can confirm the bad preset?

FANTASTIC!! Super easy patching, no issues. my Floor definitely boots faster and navigating flows quickly from screen to screen... It feels like some optimizations were done! nice work! Great work on the compressor & gate meters! I can now see if they are working, or in my case NOT as the majority of my compressors were doing absolutely nothing!!! With the new visual indicator I was VERY QUICKLY able to find the right thresholds and set where I wanted it to be. It also appears you fixed the bug where helix floor would randomly on it's own switch out of STOMP/SNAP footswitch mode, and the only way I could get it back was rebooting between songs. really great work everyone - had a good 2 hours of playing and will keep diving in for more! I appreciate this great update!

that Mic is great, but it runs on phantom power, so you might need something like this to power to mic, before you can send it to the PC https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/M48PwrSupply--mackie-m48-phantom-power-supply Once you have that you would just need the right cable/adapter to get the XLR out of it into the 3.5mm jack on the PC for MIC IN. Quick retrospective - It's amazing how far far far far behind the music industry is and all the crappy proprietary connections. they really need to develop a simple interconnect international standard. it's kind of absurd that no device works with any other device, and nothing analog works with digital without something like this: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fifunny.co%2Fpicture%2Fok-i-m-all-set-to-listen-to-some-music-3OX14nGB4&psig=AOvVaw0UlIXkZd07OS8vXSkqfX9W&ust=1586036235851000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCPCmkMebzegCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD it technically can all work together easily, it's just the companies are unwilling to get together and develop a standard. like USB C did.

For iphone, yes, pretty easy to do depending on a few things. 1.) does your computer have a LINE IN audio? or only a MIC in? most desktops have both, laptops usually not. if it has a line in, you can just run out of your iphone using one of those apple lightning-to-3.5mm dongles. then run a 3.5mm from the dongle to the LINE IN. works the same if you have an audio interface and go that route, except one small variation is you need a special stereo to mono converter (1/4" TRS to 3.5mm Mono). these are directional adapters... it's a special one and not to be confused with the easy to find opposite adapter for taking mono signal and splitting the same signal to L & R stereo... make sure it specifically says for mixing down stereo to mono. if you don't get the right one-way adapter you will miss a LOT of the key components of the music, because you will only get LEFT, and anything on the right like vocals and guitar will not come through.

Here's my thoughts. Helix is not a good audio interfaces, Native only works after you figure out how to get your audio into a DAW. The helix as an interface has very high & noticeable latency, and then over network it will add to the latency. so you want to get that as low as possible. I know of two ways to do this. Option A is the easiest, simplest, cheapest but the tradeoff is has the lowest quality, but if you are just doing skype, this should be fine. Just use one good ambient Mic and run it directly into your PC, it will record the room acoustically... so whatever you say or play gets shared. if it's a focused mic, it won't work because anything a few feet away fades out. This has lowest latency as well. and it works perfectly with Skype because as far as the computer & skype are concerned, it's just a simple mic. then all your instruments just use real amps in the room. Option B is expensive and will be challenging at times but gives you the best quality. That would be to get a real PC audio interface (Presonus, focusrite, etc..) always get one with at least 4 real physical inputs, but I recommend getting more, 6 or 8, they go fast. From your post you will need 5 to start; Helix/Guitar, Bass, Acoustic Guitar, Mic, Computer. The first challenge is that with an Audio interface you will lose the ability to hear the computer audio (it's one or the other), which means that if you want to play a song from your PC or YouTube and have your student hear and you both play along (i.e. backing track), it will be silent - doesn't work. The work around is you have to use a cable from your PC to an 5th input in your interface... but now you have no speakers (since soundcard on PC is disabled), the fix for that is to run your speakers via the Output of the Interface... so now all your audio runs through the interface... the issue with this is now if you turn off your audio interface, you loose computer audio... also, interfaces (all of them) don't work well as computer audio, because they are intended to be driven with a DAW software (like StudioOne, ProTools, Ableton, etc...). Basically it's a pain in the butt if you don't want to do music and just want to do your day to day computer audio. I won't get into the plethora of problems, but for example.. coming out of sleep, audio might not work and requires fiddling, volume isn't controlled well by the PC any longer (need to use the interface knob), certain software hates when you mess with audio settings and often needs to be restarted, i.e. iTunes HATES audio interfaces, constantly messing with input and line levels, Some interfaces have software that flips to bypass mode for pure DAW controlling, so you loose audio if that happens. and doing all this is going to most likely cost you all sorts of money in cables too or multiple sets of speakers. So if my recommendation isn't clear yet - the short of it is - if you are just doing this for skype and you are not worried about recording and high quality - then just get a good room level Mic and be done. it all just works easy.

For me, I have Helix Floor and get blue screens and major issues. the root problem is the supremely evil Logitech ghub software. you can start by killing anything logitech in your task manager to see if things work fine... otherwise you may need to uninstall logitech product software. this has been an issue for 2 years (with Logitech) not helix. I think logitech incorrectly sees the helix/HX as one of their products and then tries to launch the drivers for it and screws up the system.. give that a try & let us know.

not sure if it's related, but my PC issues were caused by Logitech GHUB. it's blocks Helix and often causes system restarts and bluescreens of death.

That's great, gonna check it out, thanks for sharing. I am continuing to try some more this week on getting my patches balanced and consistent across outputs.. it may be quiet a few days for my results/learnings but I'll post them soon. I need to grab some PA gear in storage to test at volume and closer to live setting first.

phil_m - PowerCab I've used at home, as monitor on stage before IEM's, and for very small venue's It was the sole amp, but it underwhelms as a stage amp so I avoid that.

DunedinDragon - A lot of good information in your post for me to try - I am going to mess around this week with the main volume, I currently have it at 12 o'clock. I'll try the disconnect and re-balance a few patches to the new output level. and go back through. One way I just figured out how to meter each block... Run a looped tone in, then have a send block to the Interface with meter. I did this quickly and found a lot of variation across this older patch I had a lot of trouble with - as I move the send block I can get meter readings across the entire chain - so far it's ugly. gunpointmetal - My original pedalboard was pretty much 8 or so pedals all dialed in, I just throw it on the floor and play, never had to worry about anything, sound was consistent. although not accurate to original songs... i.e. instead of having 6 different phaser options, I set one phaser and it was on/off. so Helix gives me way better reproduction and flexibility, now If I could just dial across patches and outputs I'd be golden.

OK, this hits on a lot of it that I can't get figure out how to compensate for the shift from home to live. I use the interface with a pair of Presonus E44 studio monitors for all my patch building. This gives me great dynamics and range and the quality and consistency is always there. Then it's as you describe when shifting to Live it goes south in many ways depending on where. 1/2 our live events we use a Mackie mixer and brand new EV's EKX-15P which are FRFR. the other half can be FOH or other PA systems.

Guitar is same, volume of guitar is the same. yet I get that varied gain structure changes that's my concern, I am not changing the gain structure, depending on the output, the helix has different gain structures. Swapping guitars I understand - when I go from a clean Fender strat with noiseless low output pickups to my les paul's that is meatier and substantially louder... I know what to expect and can adjust input volume or accept that there's going to be a different. I have 120ish songs, which we play 40ish a night, I do 1 patch per song since each song is so unique. it's 40 patches a night roughly, a few are duplicates I just rename because it's easier to label and just go up 1 bank each time. I understand your thoughts on separate patches for bedroom & live - The challenge is I don't have standing access to venue sound so the best I can do seems to sound like crap live and while I'm live it's not like I can start adjusting the patch.

I get that - I'm just trying to swipe at volume so it's not so drastic. What's more concerning is major tone characteristic changes: Step 1 - Running Helix through a DAW it sounds like hot overdrive - I'm totally happy with tone. Step 2 - unplug cable from interface, plug into mixer sitting 2 feet to the left and it sounds like a fender black face at the same VOLUME Step 3 - unplug cable from mixer and plug into PowerCab 112+ and it sounds like a flabby clipped audio at the same same volume Step 4 - unplug from PowerCab and run to headphone amp - sounds like I'm scratching through a tin can, same volume. Step 5 - Listen via Helix headphone - WTF, sounds nothing like any of the other outputs!! If I stick with a single output - HAPPY ALL DAY!!! works perfect, no variation. I am attributing much of this characteristic tone change to the Helix, and from my hundreds of hours of tweaking to solve this variability - I've found nearly all of my issues are because within the helix signal chain from block to block there's a lot of variability in volume... so it's not a quality signal and path. Once I spend hours rebuilding and testing a patch across many outputs I can get it to sound OK across steps 1-5, yet still more varied than I think it should. Tonight, I am adding 3 songs to our setlist this week - I anticipate 2 hours or more for EACH patch to build and test so that it' plays nice across my IEM, FOH, Monitors, Mixer, etc... I accepted the fact I sucked at modeling when I first got the Helix - but now I feel it's not me - it's Helix, I'm not learning anything or getting any better at modeling.

It's not that simple unless you are staying in a controlled space with no changes. Playing 80 patches tonight, then tomorrow having to rebuild 12 of the 80 patches because they sounded like crap (while rest were good) before the next gig rolls around, only to realize that back at the house they sound FANTASTIC... so what's wrong - why did 12 patches turn to crap for that gig? And the next gig, it's 10 others that are off. My pedalboard and amp never have this issue DI'd or Mic'd - only helix gives me challenges. my pedals experience the same audio characteristics, from a Strymon to a Tube Screamer it's an easy dial in. Even switching amps or running house sound, I'll be within 10% of the original sound intended. With Helix - it's pretty radical change. again - I do like the helix - will keep it, I'll continue to struggle in a love/hate with it - it's still better sounding and a more convenient platform for me... But this is feedback to Line 6 that the experience managing across a show of multiple patches is really poor. No ability to see or manage the Output signal across patches is a poor experience, Patch consistency and troubleshooting experience is poor. documentation is poor. it's not easy to understand at times but there's a lack of resources to help.

Yes I did want to rely on the community for patches and it was a big part of the value of helix to me, the other part was a good set of default patches out of the box... which together gave me a great start on a catalog of unique guitar tones toward reproducing a signature guitar tone for a specific song (not perfect, but good enough for live in small venues). That's where it's really missing the mark for me from value/experience - most of that benefit is non-existent and I end up building from scratch in a very time-consuming way. During that time consuming build process is where I feel levels and other tools may help speed it up and make it more friendly... my idea of a good time is not spending 2 hours F'in with patch settings and not playing, only to find out what I finally just thought was good - sounds like utter crap when I switch from helix Headphones out over to to a monitor, or DAW, or studio monitors or PA, or PowerCab, or house sound... Something feels off if it changes so drastically - that to me is WRONG - something is WRONG here and I can't find it, and don't have any tools with the helix to help me figure it out and clearly I don't know enough about audio to figure it out on my own without extensive trial and error, regardless - The experience could be better, and I feel Helix leaves me hanging. Keep in mind, I'm not trying to build ONE patch - I'm trying to manage and balance audio across 120 patches as part of a show with ever-variable house sound, studio and practice locations. Meters will absolutely help with this. I can build some decent guitar patches quickly using the method BBD describes, and I'm very happy with them as far as general guitar tones. There could be other ways too - like a reference signal in helix that runs through the chain and does an audio histogram showing the signal variations visually, so you can pinpoint clips and lows from block to block. I'm sure there are quite a few ways to validate a decent end-2-end guitar signal. a simple histogram or level block would be a great troubleshooting tool. I'm just sharing what I find a big hole in the value of helix. but seems I'm in the far minority here which surprises me.

I understand why it caused reaction, the point I was trying to make was that Helix has a very wide range - along with its ability to be amazing comes the ability to sound like trash. What I don't like about helix is how substantially harder it is to find the "amazing needle" in the haystack of mediocre to bad. With all the power of helix, it's important to have the right tools and guides included that help keep you in the good-zone. so YES - it's an amazing tool that is much harder than it should be to make that amazing come through - too often the net-net-net result is the sound coming to my ears is on part with cheap digital rigs, and I'll acknowledge it's all me doing the dialing, so yes call it user error - but I find that so many in this community operate with user error equal to me, of the thousands of patches I've tried hundreds - any my opinion is <1% are well built, balanced and usable.... That's not good and you can't put that entirely on the community, that's the full user experience of helix that's lacking.

Helix helps with all this, but we're talking hundreds of hours to build these... and when I grab something off the community it doesn't fit with whatever my base level is, because the person who built that uses a while different base for how they approach patches, So I need to drastically alter their patch or build from scratch. I see that with some audio management tools, starting with simple leveling throughout the chain - could greatly improve Helix.

For context, I use the helix for live play and occasional recording, and to codamendia's point - it's more than a pedal board, it's my entire signal chain which includes mixing. Live, I run to mixes of monitors, PAs, house sound, and send outputs to two different pedals for singers for additional key tracking on their vocal fx pedals. Live I find that I might be spot on for a few songs, and then one is completely overblown and unbalanced. I also find that what sounds really good running through my PowerCab or into my home interface, mixer or DAW sounds completely different going to house sound or our live sound board (using the exact same patches, output and master volume) and I find it's been an enormous amount of hours/effort spent trying to get 60ish usable patches. Through all of that work, I don't feel I learned a valuable skill of modeling, I've just figured out how to endlessly tweak to reach "good enough". I wish there were leveling tools to build quality usable patches that work no matter the input/output or require just simply adjusting the input/output (which helix is easy to do with master control, or easy adjustment) what's missing is throughout the entire chain there is no way to ensure good levels. If there were "no wrong way" to build a patch - then I get it, my point is moot. but I find so many patches that are build WRONG, levels are off, there's clipping, excessive noise, tones washed out, something off I can't figure out. The probability of making a bad sound is far greater than probability of finding a great sound. I still love the helix, it has made my gigging better with having my per-song tone change so easily - I just find that it takes many many hours to make one patch that matches and fits into the rest of my setlist. it's exhausting and I don't feel it should be that time consuming - I think having some "tools" to help build quality balanced patches (one being ability to see level) would greatly improve this experience and thus, make me happier, let me play/practice more and ultimately find more value in the helix.