malhavok

Strong advice to not try to replicate the settings from HD500X. I made this mistake. You'll spend a lot of time and it won't work. You'll be really unhappy with the sound and you'll wonder if you should have put out the money. Instead, start from scratch. You'll get awesome results much faster and learn the unique capabilities of the unit. One thing that will happen if you try to use it the same way as HD500X and like a lot of multi-amp tones with lots of effects is you'll feel like you run out of DSP much faster. Get used to how you can use both Path 1&2 together to get as much horsepower as HD500X. Something that will catch you off guard is it is much better at detecting internally when you've used up all DSP and options will be "greyed out" as "unselectable" which means you don't have enough DSP left on that path. Learn how to daisy chain the two paths together to be able to use as many blocks as you may be used to.

I just made a vid to show this off to a friend who was having trouble finding it:

I can certainly say the 1.10.0 patch format is not compatible with the 1.06.5 firmware. They changed the schema of the patch files. They are not backward compatible. If you didn't back up the 1.06.5 versions you are stuck.

Are the great? Are they bad? Who knows. Opinions and all. Remember, the SM57 is not the greatest mic on the face of the planet but you can make a million dollar record with nothing other than a bag full of them.

You could use a parallel path for the distortion pedal and use EXP to balance between the two signals.

This is true from a pure DSP perspective that Helix is more powerful. From a "number of fx" perspective it is often less capable than HD500X and about on par with HD500. Throw two Plexi models on a patch and you've already consumed one entire DSP. You can then use the other to add a few effects blocks. In fact, with two Plexis and one Tile reverb there isn't even enough DSP power left on that path to add a simple Gain block. The "pinto vs. ferrari" comparison is much less accurate than "pinto vs. mac truck" since the mac definitely has a bigger, more powerful engine, but that doesn't mean it accelerates or corners faster. Each is made to do its own thing and appeal to a different market segment. Some will like one better than the other. Neither is a clear winner in all situations.

If you're going to spend money to make this happen you'll get far greater mileage from a small mixer. Even something like http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/502would give you far greater flexibility. Both Helix and iPad plug into the mixer and the mixer plugs into your monitoring system. You're then able to mix at will with the flexibility to add a few other sound sources like computer, other people's Helix, etc. I don't use the USB input on my Helix so can't comment on controlling the volume from there.

I've tried a few times. It comes out not even sounding close in some cases. I am finding I must recreate all my tones from scratch with the final sonic goal in mind.

I don't suppose "double-click patch to open it into current buffer" is on the list?

This is incorrect. You can use USB. It requires something like the CCK. It's the standard way you connect a USB camera, USB midi keyboard, or Helix, to an iPad or iPhone. http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD821AM/A/lightning-to-usb-camera-adapter

It sure would be a nice feature. In particular I'd love to have it for setting input levels.

You can use aux in, returns, or some other fancy tricks (like USB) but in any case all these options will require you to "wire in" a signal path to output that audio. It's not an automatic thing.

Yeah, exactly that! There is far too much internet devoted to which one is "better" or which one is "higher quality" of the two (or more).

Yes, but you will have to route the patches differently to accomplish it. You will use two mono loops for this. If the Lex is on 1/2 you will use 3/4 for BigSky. Yes, but they can't both access it in stereo if you want to maintain separation on BigSky out/return. Without regards to aforementioned limits of BigSky this is trivial to route USB this way.

My favorite wah trick is two different wah pedals in parallel before the amp.

Here is my update to the file. It includes full rename of all the amps and minor tweaks to cab naming. I like the speaker config to still be first and for the amps to show the years where available. All the fx are the same. PODX4Edit.txt