Adam--

Polyphonic pitch shifter Quantizing looper Freqout model

I'd appreciate it if you could give a quick setup. As in cabling, ASIO drivers, etc. Normal rocksmith cable's input latency seems kinda bad, even though I can play VSTs in my DAW just fine on another PC.

The pitch shifter is pretty bad IME. Monophonic and a bit squirrelly. There are no user scales. If you run it low in your mix it's passable.

This stuff gets dicey fast. Take a book for example: how much is needed to claim copyright? A letter? A word? A sentence? A paragraph? A chapter? I think most would agree that copyrighting a single letter isn't reasonable. Now imagine if a book was broken down to its individual letters and distributed in such a way that no one person had more than 1 letter and the possible locations of the previous/next letter. How do you stop that? Nobody has a enough of it to be in violation yet clearly the work can be obtained.

.wav has no means of DRM; nothing is stopping you from a technology PoV. As far as 'derivative works' it would depend on the original license the IR's were distributed under. For example in software: GPL: 'You can have this for free. However, if you make a derivative work you have to also make your software free'. It's considered a viral license. LGPL: 'You can have it for free and do whatever you want w/it.' Commercial: 'You can't do anything with this. We will sue you if you even try to reverse engineer it (DMCA) to re-implement.'

It's not just a case of "don't use it". There are only so many engineering hours L6 can invest in the helix platform and the value to the users of what you're proposing is a huge waste to more than 99% of them. Your patches don't have anywhere NEAR the value of an adobe suite or a feature film; these things have mass appeal and an entire black market. Personal data can be sold to advertisers and your identity can be used to facilitate fraud. IOW, there's money to be had for stealing these things. Any given random musicians presets are essentially worthless to almost everyone except that guitarist. The reason your thermostat needs a password is because it's potentially on the internet.

I'm sure it depends on what you listen to but I hear far more harmonizing/pitch shifting than I do, say, tremolo or leslie.

1) So aren't better reverbs but those are almost certainly on their way. Like the reverb situation, leave the monophonic shifters in there so those that don't need the extra oomph can save some DSP. 2) I have to think that there are a lot of metal heads that run a pretty simple chain but want polyphonic shifting to simply tune down digitally.

Nice! Any chance of a multiband noise gate someday?

Do you have a PC at your rehearsal space? Otherwise, how would you transfer the tones?

I have to wonder how true they'll stay to the hardware. A couple examples: Can we put other VSTs in the 'effects loop' all in software? Is the # of effects loops limited by the actual helix hardware? When Helix++ comes out, which will be the reference implementation of native? If I use the editor will it randomly lock up the plugin? ;) Wouldn't it make more sense to use the real Helix just to offload some of the DSP to dedicated hardware? (Assuming you only run 1 instance)

But if one had a 100% perfectly flat mic, and a 100% perfectly flat PA, one's ears would 'distort' it the same way they do as when one is in the room w/an actual amp. I think that's what the OP is shooting for, not reverb or a modeling a 'sense of space'. You can get bogged down trying to find the perfect mic, position, distance, axis, etc and just think 'dammit, how about NO mic! I just wanna hear the @#$@ cab!' In fact, that's exactly why I decided to go the modeling/FRFR route myself. I got the tone I was looking for w/a tube amp and a closed back 2x12 cab. For me, it was perfect! Then I tried micing it... and years of tone searching were destroyed. The mic (and placement) was as influential to the overall tone as any cab or pre-amp. Sure, it sounded great in the room but what was caught on 'tape' or in the PA was totally different. That's when I decided I needed a good tone that translated to being reproduced better.

Sure, but I don't have a good surface and it's all the way down by my feet. First world problems. I'd probably use the hardware too if I had the rack version but paying more for less functionality (expression pedal) just didn't seem worth it.

It is not imported patches; when it locked up on me it was with an entirely new patch. In fact I was tweaking one of the Cali Bass presets so no IRs either, stock cab. FWIW I was tweaking the compressor via PC editor and hadn't touched the helix hardware in quite a few minutes when it happened.

I had the same thing happen; sound was still processing but I lost all control. My case was almost completely opposite of yours: nice low 70 temp, indoors, helix had been running less than 30 mins. I was working on a bass patch so was connected to my PC. The helix PC app also froze up (win 10).