mileskb

Let me be as subtle as possible.. Dear Line 6 engineers that worked on the Tuner display... Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! Thank You ! ....... and Thank You !!! (did I miss anyone?) :blink:

Cool. First it's probably a good statement on the b112D's... and also, obviously you created the patches to sound good. I just noticed I didn't mention that I was doing the comaprison with just amp/cab's. Basically just like going into a store and plugging in to an amp. Those should sound pretty good, all by their lonesome with a typical flat response amp speaker setup. They did.. so I thought, as it turns out my system wasn't really flat. So I made it flat and they all sound better. I was typing a stream of conciousness, and neglected to mention.... although I eluded... the models will sound best through an FRFR system. I only "thought" I had an FRFR system... some systems are more flat than others... and of course.... if you make a preset based on whatever system you have... just randomly added eq is probably not going to help... probably hurt. The ONLY way this works is to see if your system is flat FIRST. If it is..... move along... nothing to see. (or hear..) mine wasn't.

LOL yeah me too. I tried with a regular dynamic mic, and while the sound with and without the Global EQ is significant in the room, the mic's I used weren't responsive enough to capture the difference. I need to break out the tube mic... just haven't had time.

I totally agree with both. In strictly THIS case, I would likely bypass the global EQ unless the engineer asked for something.. As I said at the top... The idea was to see what would happen if I actually made it a "flat" system. It does sound better... on that system. Might sound like crap everywhere else... probably does... That wasn't the point. Everyone is aware Global EQ has a bypass right? As far as what happens on an album, that's a whole notha bowl of bananas. Recording, producing/mixing, mastering, all designed to make a recording sound good on its intended media. What Glenn noticed is absolutely spot on, however it's unlikely those guitars were recorded that way. That all happened after they were recorded. I always try to get the musicians to sound as best as they can "in the room" with as little technology applied as possible. Then once their gone, we try to make the magic happen.

Yeah.. what he said. I had typed a similar response but my pc froze... anyway.... The only thing I have to add is that I initially did this because Helix is designed to run out a FRFR system and I thought my system was flat, and it wasn't. Also... it might be possible to quickly test a house system if you have the mic and software at the gig. Just after all is setup, run the mic to the center of the room, and play the white noise through the helix. Route the mic through to your analyzer software and adjust the global to compensate. Not perfect.. but .. as Zooey said and I totally concur. I haven't seen a properly setup FOH system in years... ever that I can remember. I generally bring my own main eq and put it into the main inserts when I'm running FOH. I don't usually have time set it up fully, but I have some tunes I listen to that I know how should sound and I dial it close. It's been years since I've even seen an EQ (besides my own) and a PA system, no matter how elaborate... and when I did... it was generally set the day they installed the system and "supposedly" never touched again... dispite the new carpeting, new furnature, the new board, and speakers re-located.... "don't dare touch that eq... we spent lots of money to have someone set it up 23 years ago"... LOL... that cracks me up. Anyway... As I said... it was an experiment initially to see what would happen if I compensated for my speakers NOT being flat as I thought they were...

Maybe ???? When I originally did this, it was because I wondered if the amp and cabinet I had that was supposed to be FLAT at least in the guitar range... wasn't. So I compensated for it with the Global EQ and everything sounds better. I probably should just put a dedicated EQ on the input of my stereo amp and compensate with that. But it started as a curiosity... Helix is designed to be used with an FRFR, was my setup really FRFR?... answer no... used global eq to fix it. So regarding playing out... assuming sending the output to FOH from Helix... in a perfect world, check to see if the venue system is really FRFR and if not, compensate for it. Not likely practical, in my case, probably want to either mute the Global EQ or... device some sort of quick test... That last bit... a quick test... might be possible and easier than I initially thought. Just set everything up ready to play... and have a patch setup to work with a laptop analyzer and the Helix... Just run the analyzer mic out into the center of the room and send the white noise out to the PA from the Helix, the mic picks it up and the Helix routes that to the analyzer to see if the PA is really flat. If not... compensate with the Global EQ. Granted a little crude, but better than nothing. Might not even be worth the effort, but then again, most of the PA's I have seen are ANYTHING but flat. They are usually top AND bottom heavy, like an old school home stereo setup for listening to Hip Hop. Not a guarantee, but a fairly reliable tell is to look at that vocal strips on the FOH board. If they are pushing the mids and upper mids.. on the vocals.. the system likely isn't flat.

I'm just going to add this because SNAPSHOTS make sense to me without any non-guitar analogy.. Simply put, no more having to dance on the pedal board to change several parameters or turn effects on and off. Set'm up the way you need'm for each part of your tune or each "sound" you use... then just one button takes you there. 1. Picture your old non-modeling guitar rig. effects, pre-amp, effects in loop, amp... whatever you got. THIS IS A PRESET. 2. Adjust everything to play a song. Maybe distortion on, reverb on, gain channel.. Save this as SNAPSHOT 1 3. Now change all of the adjustments for another song. Maybe distortion OF, reverb off, but delay on, clean channel. Save this as SNAPSHOT 2 You can continue this to create up to 8 snapshots within this one preset. There are some additional features, but that's the meat of it. Those who never used a pedal board probably aren't wrapping their head around them as easily as those who had to learn to dance.

Also, surprisingly even uploading to YouTube has an affect on the sound. So the only real test is record with USB, upload to YouTube and playback on same system with the above video.

Just out of curiosity, how did you accomplish this before the Helix? Not trying to be a putz with the question. I'm just constantly intrigued by what presets I can create that logistically would have been insane to try and pull off with individual pieces both monetarily and logistically.

Probably going to just find the package I like and if I need to swap a decent 10K pot into it for under $2.00 so be it. I really wish I could use my Rockman pedal, but it's optical.

Hi, It seems Mission Engineering is the preferred choice, but has anyone actually tried any of the other offerings and able to provide useful review. They are all in the $25-$50 range. There are probably others, but these all looked like pretty solid devices. Proline Standard Expression Pedal BEHRINGER FCV100 Quik Lok VP-2611 M-Audio EX-P Expression Pedal Bespeco Mono Volume Pedal (looks like the same unit as the Quik Lok) Moog ACCEP003 EP3 Expression Pedal Line 6 EX-1 Expression Pedal

I think this is the most plausible implementation as it covers a LOT of ground and options. The only other option I could see but no idea if possible is a few "global" blocks. In this scenario you could put a cab into "Global Block 1" with all the parameters you want to use. Then you would have the ability to place this global block anywhere in each preset. While similar to just adding a Cab Block to a preset, the difference is it's already set up with the mic, level, eq etc.. you want to use. This would have the advantage of being at a gig and maybe you need to make an overall adjustment, maybe even changing the cab... you would just have to do it once and all of the presets that point to it would be covered. Just spit-ball'n here.

I would love to have a tutorial. I have nice mics and preamps and some unique amps that while are "cool" not sure there is a high enough demand for others to want to capture.. Things like Roland Bolt60 or a Lee Jackson designed Crate or my Trace Elliott 12R and Twin 10's or even my Carvin 4 x 12.

I think the it also matters your goal too. That's really the beauty of the Helix. If you are looking for YOUR sound, than maybe you find an IR you like, make you find several, etc etc... it's YOUR sound. If you are trying to match someone else's tone.... then you might need a specific mic with specific cab at a specific position.

Seriously... I'm with ya.. I understand the concept of scenes... Helix uses Snapshots... it's completely different, at least in my experience. I like the idea of Snapshots more. To me scenes, be they for effects units or lighting rigs are more like selecting between certain presets, not only with spillover as an important detail but with control of how fast the transition happens, and maybe even the automation (levels rise or fall rather than switch). Snapshot is just as it is. These parameters of this preset, or those parameters of this preset.... but it's still one preset.. and thanks to two pretty powerful DSP's with a reasonable amount of memory... there is a TON of flexibility here. I think Snapshots makes more sense for guitar players.. I guess my brain is wired what when I hear scene... I think lighting... and think fades and apertures changing.. but I couldn't think of a better word than Scene for what people were describing for AxFx and Helix... so I went with it... but as soon as I heard "Snapshot" I kinda had an idea of what they were before I looked it up.

I am a fan of Behringer gear. Was mixing a band recently with their Air X18 mixer and those Midas pre-amps are awesome!! So yeah... I will give them a try. Thanks And to add to my own thread... Alto revamped their previous offering and now have the TS212. I saw them at NAMM and frankly thought they were more high-end in price just in quality, tone, presentation... it turns out they are just under $300 each...

I ran the pink noise into the Helix return 1 on an empty path. True true.. Boosting upper-mids is generally what I do when running FOH to put the guitars out front for a lead rather than touch a fader. This was more an exercise in not assuming the final stages (amp and speaker) are full range and flat. In my case I have custom cabinet with EV12L speakers.. While the specs on the speakers are fairly flat, they are in a closed cab with 4 ports. This cab always sounded great, but as I stated at the top... I just wanted to see how flat it really was.... and it wasn't far off... but making it flatter had quite the dramatic affect on tone from the Helix in a good way. It's actually convinced me that I really need to get some FRFR's ASAP. In the mean time, I'm actually considering putting my EQ in line just before my power amp and really flattening out the cabinet and that's how it really should be. Even the current FRFR options generally have a DSP that you must place in "Flat" mode if that's what you want.

Thanks Chris... while using them at home for TV isn't really applicable, I do like practicing to backing tracks and hadn't thought about that part of the equation. If I want to play along with something now, I can run it through the helix to my custom cab, but it really sounds kinda crappy that way as it doesn't have the range. Would be nice to play along with tracks, pretty much as they would be live. Also, when the studio is complete, having a decent playback system is nice. It might be time to retire my Bose 800 system which was a killer playback system for its day. However, this is leaning me back toward the QSC K12 :( It has the similar voicing options with the onboard DSP, a built in 2 channel mixer if I want to go light-weight, and speaking of light-weight, it's smaller and 16 lbs each lighter.

I hope this is at least a new take on an old question, and well... time has passed too. Background... I was dead set on getting a pair of QSC-12 speakers to use with the Helix. I love my Custom Genz Benz cabinet and since adjusting the global EQ it's been stellar. It's fine for what I'm doing at the moment, but if I'm gonna start playing out again, I want to something I can use for a monitor, even have my vocals sent to it. Just recently I started looking at the L2M offering from Line6. They are in the same price range as the QSC K-12... A little voice in my head is saying "get the L2M because it's designed as an FRFR". The other little voice says... "yeah... but QSC is known for sound quality" The then first voice says, true, "but still QSC is known for PA sound and Line6 is building modelers and they know what they should sound like." Then the other voice kicks in and says... "well, the QSC's can double as PA speakers, side fills or floor monitors if you need them for your PA rig" And you guessed it... voice one kicks in and says "yeah, but seriously.. you've been mixing live sound on and off since the 70's, if someone had L2M's on the stage or QSC K12's... you'd make'em sound good no matter what wouldn't you?" So it appears.. the voice that's a fan of the L2M (he calls himself the voice of reason), has won. But I wanted to get some input from others on this before I commit. I realize I probably can't go wrong either way... but neither voice is happy with that response. Thanks in advance.

You might try re-locating the USB cable.. Just a different route... I have had this issue and moving the cables around ensuring USB wasn't crossing power or audio usually got rid of it.

I think that's considered child abuse these days....... oh wait... you meant he should do that to the Helix. :)

Not that anyone has admitted to yet.

Reminds me of when I was in the Navy and people would come to visit the ship or post. They'd ask how they'll spot me and the response is always... "I'll be the one in the white hat" Still makes me smile. But seriously, I have been wanting to say this for a loooong time and I'm just gonna sneak it in on this post so I feel better having said it. We musicians REALLY get hung up on brand names for some reason, even more than bikers. I think a LOT of people are listening with their eyes.

Yep.. coming soon.

Rockman Sustainer and an EQ because I had somewhat given up on that tone from the Helix, but Glenn Delaune has managed it, so while I'm going to keep them for sentimental reasons and reference, they won't be in line. Rockman and a DOD Wah, but I don't use them anymore. I may use the Rockman Wah for an external controller pedal. Option 5 Destination Overdrive, keeping for sentimental reasons... no inline. Pedals that I have used that the Helix Replaced besides my Rockman XPR or any of the rack modules. Boss CE-1 Chorus (Helix has one) Boss SD-1 Overdrive Boss Noise Reduction HUSH II C Vox Wah Elextro Harmonix LPB-1 Boost Ibanez AD-80 Delay TS-808