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Everything posted by bsd512
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Past the mid-way point, so ... shorter than it has been.
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I'm not exactly "meh". I'm always happy with some new amps and pedals. The IR thing should be nice for folks that use IRs. I used to be all-in on IRs but now I prefer the stock cabs. But I do agree that Helix is pretty near perfect the way it is. I'm so happy with the Helix and everything it does, unless they have something I haven't even considered planned for 3.0, I'm thinking Helix is more on a slow evolutionary path. If they changed it radically, I may not like it anymore! So I'm perfectly happy with incremental new amps/cabs/pedals, bug fix and polishing updates. I would really like something like a FreqOut pedal built-in.
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No problems with iPhone here ... until I tried to use one to control amps and gear settings. So maybe implementation of those particular apps? I'm not opposed to the concept, just that the ones I've personally used left me disappointed and I wished for good old regular tactile buttons and dials, and left me with a distrust of touch screens which seemed instead to serve the product price point (quality buttons and knobs are expensive and can't be easily changed) instead of making it more usable for me. If they work reliably, sure, let the company save some money by not having to put on physical controls like humans with fingers and opposable thumbs were meant to manipulate and turn our fingers into glorified computer mice instead. :-) My preference is physical touch and tactile feedback, though. It's just my preference, and I'm probably in the minority - people seem to be clamoring for bluetooth iPhone control of their gear, so I'll eventually have to deal with it.
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I have to admit, though, it does look really nice. $1600, though ... pretty steep, but looks pretty featureful, comparable to Helix so maybe that's not out of line. A lot can happen between now and September. But it does look like if you back out of the pre-order, you don't lose anything so you're not fully committed financially if you pre-order - you get a full refund of your deposit. But I wonder why they announced so early?
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Hmmm ... from that article: ... In the end, though, capacitive touchscreens are not foolproof. Living, breathing people with thick callouses on their fingers—think guitar players or carpenters—struggle with these touchscreens because the dead skin on their fingertips prevents the flow of electricity. ... Lol :-) So ... maybe not the best interface marketed to guitarists with our calloused fingers. :-)
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Too unreliable for control - like I mentioned before in using it for Amplifi (and other products, not by Line 6), touch your finger to a control point and slide, etc - it doesn't register. Your slide slides nothing. Try again - doesn't register again. Maybe it works the third time. Makes the whole device and interface feel cheap and cheesy. I remember watching and Anderton's review of a product like that and it was happening to them every other time they tried to use it, and even though they didn't comment on it, it was painful to watch them try and adjust simple things, like BMT on an amp. And I experienced the same thing on the Amplifi product that uses an iPhone as the touch screen. The advantages aren't worth the hassle - just my opinion, of course. A button or rotary is way more reliable when working on the device itself. And these issues don't present themselves when connected to a computer and using HX Edit. So I see it as fluff that cheapens the device and actually diminishes user experience. You did mention the graphic EQ - I think that would be great, but you don't need a touch screen for that. The Global EQ is like that when using HX Edit with the Helix. I wish the normal EQ blocks worked the same way in HX Edit. No need for a touch screen for that, though. EDIT: I forgot to mention, it would also be a real pain for folks with vision issues. We have a couple of blind folks on this forum using the Helix and can work the interface by remembering how many rotations, clicks, etc using the physical knobs to get the job done. So accessibility for folks that can't see the screen is an issue, too.
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I must be the only one that is glad the Helix does not have a touch screen. Or bluetooth. I used to have a Line 6 Amplifi that used a bluetooth app on an iPhone touch screen. Using it was an exercise in extreme frustration with constant bluetooth disconnects and the screen not registering slider actions - go to slide a slider ... nope. Try again ... nope. Third time - ok it worked. Then it disconnects arbitrarily. Try to reconnect ... nope. Exit the app, got to iPhone settings bluetooth. Reconnect. Re-open app - "app not connected to bluetooth". Arrrgh! Please please please do not do the stupid bluetooth and touch screen thing on Helix. :-) The capacitive touch switches are genius, though!
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You can't know that for sure! It *might*.
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I didn't say you had a problem. I'm glad you don't. And dealing with it in your own way - sure, I don't think anyone expects otherwise. Shedding light on issues is certainly allowed and appreciated. Not sure where you got the impression it wasn't allowed. If it wasn't allowed, a moderator would have come along and deleted your thread. Seems like there's a failure to communicate clearly here. If I can attempt summarize what your want out of this ... and you can correct me. 1. You wanted to shed light on a problem. You did so effectively - thanks to the help of fellow forum members who took the time to follow your instructions which take many hours to execute. 2. You don't want any help or solutions to it. You didn't state that up front. 3. You want it to be known that you brought this up to Line 6 support, and they - I'm a bit confused on this part - they acknowledged the problem but then told you to go pound sand? Or they couldn't reproduce the problem? I'm not sure.
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I can see losing a little confidence in something that has a (minor) flaw. However, extrapolating that minor and easily rectified flaw to a larger or more frequent and higher probability failure leaving you silent at a gig doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Also, it tends to indicate that you are not prepared to deal with any issue, like a bad cable or similar. No product is perfect, stuff happens. And you can extrapolate that statement to all aspects of life. Move on to another product if you must. I don't see a fan club here, I see people confirming the flaw and offering work-arounds so you can navigate it. If you do move on, be prepared to deal with different flaws from the different products or rigs you go to next, or you'll be jumping from modeler to modeler and spending a lot of time and money unnecessarily.
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I think once 2.82 starts showing up on new units in the store, a lot of these complaints will go away, simply because Line 6 changed the defaults for all stock cabinets to set the lo-cut to 80 and hi-cut to 8KHz. With these settings, the defaults generally sound much better and largely addresses what I think most people refer to as fizz. Sure, there's more folks can do to polish things up if they want from there, but from a stock defaults standpoint, that's a much better starting point for people going through FRFR PA speakers than the previous defaults in earlier firmwares of no lo-cut and no hi-cut - resulting in the dreaded "fizz".
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Took the Leap to 2.81...what's all the fuss about???
bsd512 replied to DunedinDragon's topic in Helix
One thing I always do when upgraded is to first do my backups, then I reset my Helix back to factory default, clearing all setlists, IRs, reset global settings - the full factory reset. Then I do the upgrade. While I'm sure Line 6 goes to tremendous effort to translation prior settings and so forth, my reasoning is that there's probably a lot more testing going on starting from factory defaults -> upgrade. After the upgrade, then I just restore my setlists. And I don't make very may global setting changes, so I just take care of those manually. Not sure if resetting to factory defaults before upgrading actually makes a difference or not, but if something does go sideways, I know I took all reasonable measure to avoid problems. And coincidentally, I've never ever had a problem with a Line 6 Helix upgrade, and I've owned my Helixes for 3+ years and have never skipped an update. -
You're preset(s) would likely be a gold mine for the firmware developers for squashing these bugs. Please open a support ticket with Line 6 and include your setlist/preset(s) with instructions for how to reproduce the errors. I'm sure they could then run this whole thing under a debugger and figure out exactly what is going sideways and fix it.
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My issue is solved. Totally my fault. I'd been using that beta driver since 2016 with no issues. And I missed that a new one was release along with the 2.8 firmware. In my defense, the 2.8 release notes are 423 pages long and the audio driver is down below it, so ... I missed it. Installing the new driver (1.0.7) fixed everything for me.
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But the driver doesn't appear to have been updated by the 2.8 installation: [bsd@yyz]:/bsd- ls -ld /Library/Extensions/L6Helix.kext drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 96 Apr 13 2016 /Library/Extensions/L6Helix.kext/ [bsd@yyz]:/bsd- The driver I'm referring to is the one you get when select the "beta" checkbox on the Line 6 Downloads page, with hardware=Helix, software=All Software, and os=Mac OS X. That driver is needed to get output controls, i.e., volume control when using the Helix as the Mac system output device. That stopped working after the firmware update. Without it, instead of controlling the volume using the system volume level, you have to control the volume using each individual application's volume control. For example, bring up QuickTime to play an MP3, it plays full blast and ignores the system volume level setting without that driver.
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Thanks for letting me know. I did a reinstall of the Line 6 driver and rebooted, but it doesn't seem to either be loading or recognizing the Helix w/2.8 firmware on my Mac. After rebooting, I still only see the "Helix Audio" output device which under system preferences indicates "The selected device has no output controls". I think that means that's the default apple audio driver, and not Line 6's. Same problem on a desktop Mac and my MacBook Pro laptop. I'll try manually removing the Line 6 driver, reboot, install the driver again, reboot, and see if it clears up. If yours works, at least I know there's hope. Thanks!
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After updating to 2.8 on my Mac (Mojave 10.14.5) it looks like the 2.8 update might have removed the Helix USB audio driver? Anyone else see that? I went to do a quick recording in Logic and Logic complained that the last audio device used (Helix) was no longer present. I went into Logic preference and "Helix Audio" was there, so I selected that. But I think that's the standard system audio driver because it doesn't have volume controls. I.e., when you go to raise or lower the volume using Mac keyboard shortcuts, it pops the little window saying those controls aren't available. Was there an incompatibility with the Line 6 Driver with this new firmware such that Line 6 removed their driver and now defaults to using the Mac system driver? I could try and reinstall the Line 6 one, but I thought I'd check here first.
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I updated my two Helixes today after work. Both updates went perfectly. I love the new amps but didn't get much time to spend with them, what I did try I like a LOT. Everything working great so far.
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I call BS. Otherwise you would explain why in no less than 6 paragraphs that no one would read. :-)
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I think it's been pretty darn clear. They said in January that they were shooting for spring thereabouts. Development is going great. Right now just tying up loose ends. Release is imminent. I seriously doubt you're going to get more than that. And honestly, that's plenty and includes everything I need to know. Heck, if I'm honest, when DI said they were shooting for spring, I was actually hoping for March. :-) Regardless, L6 communication has been clear. And appreciated.
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This just reinforces that for every opinion there's another opposite one. L6 can't make everyone happy. I personally prefer the non-polished-PR style of conversation from the L6 folks. If they did the latter, the only communication would be press releases on their web site. I'd rather them communicate with us like they would f2f, like they're doing now.
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How many people would like to see a medium size Helix?
bsd512 replied to Retro-Rick's topic in Helix
Or this, lol -
How many people would like to see a medium size Helix?
bsd512 replied to Retro-Rick's topic in Helix
Along a similar line of thought, I've often wondered ... if you took every suggestion from IdeaScale, and built that, what would it look like? I imagine a huge Rube Goldberg / steam punk contraption and approximately sofa-sized. -
How many people would like to see a medium size Helix?
bsd512 replied to Retro-Rick's topic in Helix
Somewhere in between the Stomp and Helix or LT is definitely what I wanted for quite a while. When the Stomp came out, it didn't quite have everything I wanted, but I thought, what the heck - close enough - and I bought one. I loved it, of course. And I thought I could deal with its limitations vs its bigger brothers. And I could and did for a good while. But in the end, I returned it and got a second Helix. LT wasn't really what I was after because it's virtually the same size as the Helix. I was originally looking for near-Helix functionality in the areas that mattered to me, but smaller. The thing I couldn't deal with on the Stomp and the reason I ultimately returned it and got a second Helix was not being able to share presets with my other Helix - not even the ones that were limited to 6 blocks. So now I have two Helixes, and one is much bigger than it needs to be. :-) I'd consider the perfect middle ground would be two DSPs, no expression pedal, lose a few buttons to reduce the width, lose some I/O. KEEP: two DSPs, full preset compatibility, USB for recording. And keep as much other stuff as you can and still reduce the size to about what robertgoddard posted - or thereabouts. I'd reckon it'd probably still be about LT priced. That'd be fine with me. Owning a Stomp for a while was definitely a benefit to me, though - forced me to rethink some preset craziness and go minimal, and also force my re-introduction to stock cabs since when it came out the Editor didn't work for it so I couldn't load IRs if I wanted to. That forced me to use stock cabs - which I NOW LOVE!! Even better than IRs. Who'da thunk. The only IR I still use is a Taylor acoustic simulation IR. Stock cabs for everything else. -
If we could only harness Internet forum fervor as an energy source ... we could power the entire planet - FOREVER!