victorcastro1

Input impedance is one thing, bypass is another. When turned off, even on a buffered bypass, the input impedance is not (or at least not necessarily) the same as the pedal when on. The buffer and the actual effects are two different things that get switched. Again, input impedance is not the same as a buffer. A buffer is an amp. The important part is the low impedance signal that comes out of it, making it less prone to be affected down the line by cabe length for example. Even if it was the case Helix was simulating a buffer, which it isn't, buffers exist to avoid signal degradation, but they do not come without their own short comings. Why anyone in their right mind would simulate buffers to such a degree that they would replicate the same issues buffers create in the real world while trying to solve a problem that simply does not exist inside a modeler? It's not about bypass.

Except there's nothing authentic about it, I'm sorry, can we get past this? But fine, you like the way it is, that's ok, all you'll have to do is to fix the impedance value to whatever you like. It will be "exactly" the same, and won't mess things up for the rest of us :). Why make it so confusing? o.O Why people make a big deal about bypass when it's not about bypass? Every piece of gear has its own input impedance that interacts with you guitar signal. Read the AVID article. Let's consider the video example, when I turn off the Fuzz Face, it's not that the Fuzz Face isn't in true bypass mode or whatever, it's the case the the AMP has the input impedance that supposed to be for the Fuzz Face. Every block was modeled with it's respective input impedance in mind, that's the only way for it to work like it's real counterpart. Do you understand that this is not about bypass? The analogy works to an extent, but suddenly people are asking for TBP option in each block and that only makes everything even more confusing. Now all of a sudden what you set in block A will make block B affect the rest of the signal path. Do you get that? The simplest way is to "fix the auto setting". Like the way it is right now? Fix to whatever value you feel sounds best, it will work the very same exact way.

As I said, yes, it would solve my problem, but it would only make everything more confusing by adding another parameter while adding no extra functionality. Fix the auto setting and add the input impedance as a new parameter, that would indeed create more options for tweaking.

Please explain a single case where this would be beneficial in anyway, and I think it would even makes things even more confusing. Yes, it would solve my problem, great, but it would be a a bad way to do it IMO. Want flexibility? Add the actual input impedance as a parameter and make the auto setting as I suggested, now you'll have maximum flexibility, because each effect could have whatever input impedance you want.

You guys are still too caught up with the concept of true bypass vs non true bypass and it's not about that. Every piece of gear has an input impedance that makes it interact with the signal from the guitar, passive pickups are a lot more susceptible to this. Input impedance of a circuit is measured when the signal goes through the actual circuit, it has nothing to do with a piece of gear that's turned off.

As I understand there's actually an analog circuit that's digitally controlled, the input impedance isn't modeled.

If you read the whole message, you'll get that that's exactly what I'm asking. Every circuit will have an input impedance, bypass has nothing to do with it. To ask an amp to have the input impedance of a Tube Screamer is as unreal as a winged unicorn. You still seem confused abou this , but the auto setting to search for the first active block is the closest option to real life. What you then ask, to make the auto setting to search for the first active block and add the option to change the input impedance of each effect, this would be interesting I think. But for now I'd be very much happy if just the auto setting behavior just got corrected.

I still think you're being a bit defensive by saying that this was a design decision, like it's just a "difference of opinion", and I can't look at it like this. I think nobody here is crucifying anyone, I'm not saying anyone is a bad designer or product is s#it because of it. I'd very much would like to know how this decision came to be. I've tried again and again to find a post from Sean Healey when he still was with Line6 where he answered a post I made on Facebook a while ago saying that he thought Helix tracked the input impedance and that he was puzzled by what I was saying. Every thing I know and every piece of inside information I could get points to a mistake. But mistakes do happen, it's ok. Just fix it :) Thanks! :) Posted video and audio on TGP showing the fuzz into amp situation, here it is to further illustrate the problem: Better quality recording using the very same presets I used in the video: https://soundcloud.com/victorcastrooficial/inputimpedance/s-bqolk

The fact is the same tells me nothing. Eleven Rack offered it before both Line 6 and Fractal, so? Different decisions, yes, but it doesn't mean one can't be better than the other. You see, I'm not mocking Helix or Line6, there's no need to be this defensive. I could get anything else, still keeping Helix. I like it better as a product - but it doesn't mean I have to think it's perfect. I have my criticisms, but I make a distinction in my head, like: there's things I'd like it better if they were different, like the list of amp and pedals modeled; there's things I "know" they would be better if they were different, and the input impedance is one of those I just know, and every reason I have is explained in the OP.

I'd not be surprised if I was the one who made this thread back then lol Thanks! Technically it's not really about bypass, but I get what you're saying. IMO this is not the best solution, but I think the idea is get greater flexibility, and if that's what you want, there's a better way. The auto setting should work as I propose, but instead of adding the a "true or non true bypass" parameter, the new parameter should be the input impedance itself. It would not be global, not per preset, but should be set for each effect block. I've thought a lot about this and I really think it would be ultimate way to handle this is maximum flexibility is the goal. Thanks! :)

Very sorry for the long post, but I truly feel it's necessary... Some might already know me from The Gear Page and it's been pointed out that maybe I should post this here in order to have a bigger impact, I'd reach more people really invested in making Helix better. Recently a couple of threads about Fuzz and Input Impedance came up, it seems a good time to push this idea forward and greatly improve our experience while playing w/ Helix. I'm a big fuzz fan. When I started getting heavy into dial in my tones, I found this problem... I dialed my Plexi tone, sounded great, then I added a fuzz face model in front of it, again it sounded great, but when I turned it off, the tone of the amp alone was gone, it sounded muffled. After asking around and some research I found that the culprit was the input impedance, more specifically, the auto setting. Input impedance influences tone and feel, it has to do with the interaction of you guitar signal and the first thing it hits on your pedalboard. To make a pedal behave on a modeler like its "real" counterpart, units use analog circuits to mimic the different input impedances you'd find in a regular pedalboard or amp. For example, usually amps have an input impedance of 1M, but if you put a fuzz in front of it, they usually have an input impedance around 10k, and that's what the guitar will see. A lot of people get confused and say that "well, if you bypass the fuzz, the input impedance is the same", but that's not exactly right. We have basically true bypass and buffered bypass, true bypass acts like there's nothing really there, signal goes straight through; buffered bypass makes the signal go through a buffer, and a buffer itself is actually an amp, and in this case the input impedance will be whatever the input bypass of the buffer is. We will ignore the buffered one. A buffer serves the sole purpose of avoiding signal degradation caused by long running cables - and it doesn't come without its own short comings, anyone that has triad a fuzz face after a buffer knows it - but because inside a modeler it doesn't happen, we can think Helix as a kind of paradise where there's no place for Bob Bradshaw, LA Sound Design, Gig Rig, Pete Cornish and a bunch of other companies, whose sole purpose is to make sure your guitar still sounds like your guitar after going through a metric ton of cables and gear. We'll assume everything is true bypass, because, as we don't have to worry about signal loss through cables, that's the best option, no question about it. Back to input impedance. Everything being true bypass, that means it's going straight through, so the input impedance the guitar sees is of whatever is the first block that's actually on! Going back to my example. In this ideal world, what should happen when I bypassed my fuzz? Signal would go straight through and would see the input impedance of the amp! Turn the Fuzz on and it sees the input impedance of the Fuzz Face! Nice!... Except it's not what happens in Helix. The auto setting doesn't search for the first active block, it goes for the first one, being on OR off. That's why it sounds different! When I turn the Fuzz off, Helix isn't changing the input impedance, so the guitar still sees the low input impedance of the Fuzz Face, making the amp sound just muddy, muffled. Tha auto setting as it works right now is doing pretty much nothing useful. Why? Because what it does is fixing the input impedance to whatever effect is first. If you have a compressor first, impedance will be fixed at 1M, as long as you don't change the signal path, specifically the very first effect, impedance won't change. But nobody changes the signal path while playing, so it's not really useful. Takes away the guess work to find the input impedance of the first effect, but by fixing it, makes everything that goes after have the same input impedance, making the models not nearly as accurate as they could be if the input impedance was set properly. Fixes? Two main ones are usually proposed. After a few FW updates since release the input impedance went from a global preset to the input part of every preset, great! It also can be assigned to footswitches?! GREAT! But it only works for very simple cases. It would for just fuzz-amp. I'd assign the input impedance to the footswitch that turned the fuzz on and off and make it change the input impedance from 10k to 1M. Good! But it doesn't work that great when you put just another pedal in. Let's have Fuzz-Tubescreamer-Amp, all three input impedances are different; when playing the amp it would be 1M, turning the Fuzz on would make it 10k, but now if I turn the Tubescreamer the impedance should not change, but if we assign the input impedance change to its footswitch, it will do just that. But then snapshots came and had to be it, right! Not exactly. By itself it works, but it's extremely limiting and you take in consideration the combinations of pedals I could have using the stomp mode. I'd need 4 snapshots to deal with the fuzz-ts-amp case and set the impedance accordingly, that's not really practical - and the stomp mode is still crippled. Isn't there a definitive fix? You guessed, fix the auto setting of the input impedance. If after everything I said you don't believe me, here's what the competition has to say about this: From http://community.avid.com/blogs/avid/archive/2010/04/06/the-truth-about-true-z.aspx (and a great read if you want to understand what input impedance actually does. Spoiler, it's not about bypass) "Typical guitar modeling processors have a fixed input impedance, which can limit the accuracy of the modeling. Eleven Rack's True-Z circuitry is designed to solve this problem by automatically changing the input impedance to closely match the impedance of the first active effect in the Eleven Rack signal chain." From http://www.fractalaudio.com/downloads/manuals/axe-fx-2/Axe-Fx-II-Owners-Manual.pdf "The Axe-Fx II recreates this effect by switching various (real) resistors and a capacitor in and out of the signal path. In Auto mode, the impedance is automatically set based on the first active effect the input "sees." Normally you will want to leave this on AUTO..." Here's the link to the ideascale where I proposed the auto setting fix: https://line6.ideascale.com/a/idea-v2/862873 Vote up!

In order to not completely derail the thread, what OP described "is" a bug, it's the auto setting not doing it's job of setting the impedance for the first block in the chain. It doesn't do that in certain cases and it's most definitely a bug. It has nothing to do with the discussion that came after it.

If it was not really possible, there would not be the need for the snarky comment "If you'd prefer it to work another way (which is fairly obvious after over 9,000 posts about it ), pimping IdeaScale votes is the only path forward." But you see, some stuff do not need the approval of the majority to be factually wrong. Both might be confusing, but for the different reasons. The later I think it's more straight forward, and it adds to the tweakability, making it possible to make any block have whatever input impedance you see fit, the first does not allow it.

That would make things confusing IMO. A better way for ultimate flexibility would be to make the impedance track the first active block, but at the same time add the input impedance as a parameter for every effect. Some people seem to prefer how the amps react and sound with a 230k input impedance, that would allow it and, if anyone happens to prefer all impedances the same, that would easily be accomplished.

Not the same, but makes it each block work as intended. https://line6.ideascale.com/a/idea-v2/862873

The input impedance it's part of what makes a circuit sound the way it does. A TS has an input impedance of about 250k, a compressor a 1M. This suggestion does not work if I have a TS into a compressor for example. I could turn the TS on and have the impedance adjusted properly, but once I turned the compressor on, it would change to 1M, which should not happen because the first in line is a TS that has a lower input impedance, making it as fake as furry fish. It's not reacting like a pedalboard. It doesn't seem to cause any artifacts by changing through assigning a footswitch or through snapshots, I don't know where you you got this idea from. Why it's better to be constant? It's not about being true bypass. Every pedal has an input impedance when it's on, it's part of it and the way it sounds, it has "nothing" to do with bypass. Want to mimic a buffer from a buffered pedal? You have to look to the actual buffer. The input impedance of a buffer is ideally the highest possible, so fix input impedance to 1M. But for the sake of argument, let's say it's about true bypass vs non true bypass. You're arguing that this behavior is the better on and by doing that you're ignoring companies that have made a name by creating rigs that the whole purpose is making the guitar go through a bunch of gear and still sounding like it's plugged straight to the amp. Bob Bradshaw, LA Sound Design, Gig Rig, etc and also ignoring that today the norm from pretty much every pedal is being true bypass makes you think that's what everything thinks is best. Buffers only exist to solve a problem that has no bearing inside a modeler. But... It's not about true bypass. A Fuzz Face with the input impedance of 1M does not sound or behave like a Fuzz Face. A Plexi won't sound or behave like a Plexi with the input impedance of 90k.

It's a bug. If you move the block it will correct the input impedance, if you change the Auto setting to a fixed one and back to the auto setting it will correct it. The way the Auto setting works, that is, by setting the impedance based on the first block on the signal chain - being on or off, while not a bug, it's pretty useless. It's been discussed at length in other forums and this work around only work in certain cases. Auto setting should track first "active" block, or at the very least there should be a setting that did that. The way the auto setting works right now is very close to useless.

From the Fulltone TERC manual (clone of the original one): PRESET MODE (feature #5): This is the classic Tri-Stereo-Chorus slow chorus sound. PRESET mode only happens when the PRESET button is IN and the MANUAL button (#6) is OUT. You will notice that the INTENSITY knobs and the SPEED knob do not function when the PRESET is selected. But they do still work on Helix.

It is a bug, I've already created a ticket and support said they would fix it.

Man, those sound great! Made a couple of presets using just the Sm57 with the 2204 Mod, Shiva, Plexi, Mark Clean and Lead and they all sound just great! Thank you very much! Will be watching for the commercial pack! :)

Bump.

It took me a while to get back, sorry, but yeah it does.

I've been playing the Variax exclusively with my Helix, but even though I'm digging the tones I'm getting, there's this spiky thing going when I roll the volume back that's really been bugging me. So I got another guitar to A/B - same 1/4 cable and everything, no VDI - and it was much better with the vol pulled back. Can anyone confirm? If it's there, anyway to remove it?

Every settings it's possible to set to "don't force" is set to "don't force". Settings are set to global, so it's no a patch to patch issue. It will still turn off the Variax modeling.

I know, what I meant was that, if I had it set to the Variax magnetics on the input, I would not be able to access the Variax models, so I'm sure the input is set correct. So, the input is set at Variax, not the Variax magnetics. On the settings tab, the setting that the manual states it will make Helix respect the current state of the Variax is set the correct way, it's set to "Don't Force" - and the settings are set to global. What happens is that, if I have the Variax modeling on, when I change to another preset on Helix, it will turn the Variax modeling off and go to the magnetics, but I can still turn on the modeling.