bsd512

Thanks! You can actually do what you are requesting now. Using the Helix App, you can drag and drop individual IRs or groups of IRs from your computer file system at once into the "IMPULSES" list within the App. Then you can sample them using the slot selector knob on the Helix or the slider within the App that references the slots you dropped the IRs into. The beauty of the IdeaScale entry is that the gist of that is to reference IRs not by slot numbers but by their names or some derivative of the IR content itself (like digital signature). The name/signature is stored in the preset instead of the slot number. If you reload your IRs and they happen to go into different slot numbers, now all the presets that referenced the slot location will be wrong since they likely reference the wrong IR now. Thus you can re-order IRs, load presets and IRs from 3rd parties, etc, without concern that the presets reference slot numbers and the Helix will do the management to find the loaded IR wherever it happens to be loaded, greatly simplifying the user experience. One example of this is that the very nice Fremen big pack came with 25 essential IRs to achieve the tones he created. Those must be loaded at locations 74-98 or similar. What if you already have IRs for your own presets in those locations? You either have to move your own IRs to some other location and recode all the presets that reference them to point to the new location - what a huge pain! Or you have to load Fremen's IRs into another location and recode all 175 of his presets to reference those new locations - again - huge pain. Also solves the issue of backing up IRs to your filesystem and reloading them. Unless you use some very cumbersome and error-prone work-arounds, when you reload them, they will not go back into the Helix in the same order they were when they were exported. But all your presets reference them by slot number - so you'll have to recode your all your presets again to reference the correct slot numbers. Or resort to manual, cumbersome efforts to ensure you reload them in the correct slot numbers. This solves that one, too. So there are multiple user-experience wins with this proposed firmware feature update.

Vote it up! :) http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Improve-Impulse-Response-IR-Management/836099-23508

I've seen a few claims on here about this behavior from hi/lo cuts, and I'm assuming you're talking about speaker cabs and IRs. Are you basing this on something confirmed by Line 6? I can swear if if I use high cuts on some IRs I like and use, I'm still getting higher frequencies than that what I set the cut to, they are just rolled-off and more muted. So I did a little experiment to test the extreme - I set the low cut to 500 hz and the hi cut to 500 hz on a random IR, and I'm still getting a range of frequencies - quiet, but still there. So I'm thinking the hi/lo cuts are already "rolled off" and not hard cuts. Is your (and others) experience different than that? I'd be real surprised if the hi/lo cuts were implemented as unnaturally sounding hard-cuts.

I have a pair of L3t's and they sound great. I also have a pair of mid-quality studio monitors - Yamaha HS8's. They sound great with the Helix too. I have both controlled by separate volume controls - the l3t's using L6 link and my main volume control dedicated to that output. Meanwhile the 1/4" outs go to a little mixer that the mixer controls the volume on the HS8s. It's interesting to turn down the L3t's and turn up the HS8's, and vice versa and compare. They are definitely comparable. Both sound accurate to my ears and really really good when both are run at the same time with the volumes matched appropriately - talk about a lush full sound! As a studio reference monitor - I don't really use them that way, and the stuff I do is just for my own enjoyment. If you're heavy into studio production work, I suppose there's no substitute for proper tools for that job. But if you're looking for good quality sound reproduction with some pretty high output capability that work great with Helix, I don't think you can go wrong with the l2/l3/t/m's. For my purposes they'd be fine as "studio" monitors, but just understand my point of reference - I'm nowhere near actual pro studio work. If that's your goal, I'd say try before you buy or at least buy with the ability to return if they don't suit your purpose. I am immensely happy with them for my purposes, though.

My recommendation is to try to be a bit understanding that everyone's human and the posts here from Line 6 folks are not exactly polished press releases or anything. And I'm glad they're not. If you got what you are asking, you'd likely have zero involvement from Line 6 folks, and you'd have to go to the official Line 6 website and read PR glossies that told you nothing instead of getting the real deal.

You could set the Path input to Return 1/2 for stereo in, and plug your Moog L/R into Return 1/2. Add effects blocks and signal routing as normal. Or you could separate the paths if you wanted to do that - Path A fed by Return 1 and Path B fed by Return 2, for example. I'm not sure that would gain anything over stereo in on a single path as above. In both cases you wouldn't be using the actual guitar-in or aux-in.

You can export your IRs now, but the rub is that when you reload them, they will fill the slots in whatever order they are in your computer's file system, which very likely won't be the same order they were before you exported. There are some cumbersome work-arounds. There's an IdealScale entry that addresses this, and several other really nice features that has the potential to make IR management much more intuitive and transparent without the need to worry about slot numbers at all, or you having to shuffle your existing IR's around to accommodate preset packages like Fremen's, and so on. Check it out - and if you like it, consider voting it up: http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Improve-Impulse-Response-IR-Management/836099-23508

I believe IR management would be #1 on my list. I think it would help a lot of folks, and greatly help folks share Presets that include IR's. As-is, anyone that shares a preset that relies on one or worse - a collection of IR's (like the great Fremen big pack), one has to either recode all their existing patches that reference IR's in that range, or recode the Fremen pack to install his IR's into other slots. And more IR space ... This would also solve the problem of backing and restoring your IR's without without all the cumbersome work-arounds people use to make the IR slot numbers match up with their computer's file-system order. It will kill 3 or 4 birds with one stone. IdealScale for it: http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Improve-Impulse-Response-IR-Management/836099-23508 Several other IdeaScale's for increased IR space: http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/More-space-for-IRs/809273-23508 http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Expansion-IR-cabs-User/830991-23508 http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/256-IR-slot-memory/824324-23508

When I had my Amplifi 150, as an experiment (because someone on here asked), I used the 1/4" inch Helix outs with an adapter for stereo in to the Amplifi 150's aux in. It sounded plenty loud and clear to me. Maybe experiment with the Helix line level/instrument levels on your 1/4" outs. I was using a pair of Yamaha HS8's as my regular setup which sound considerably better of course, but the Amplifi was certainly acceptable, and plenty loud - easily capable of more than I'm comfortable being near for very long for practice. I've since given my Amplifi 150 to my son along with my Epiphone Les Paul, so I don't have it anymore. I think others have said that using the Helix headphone out also works well into the Amplifi aux in, so maybe try that if you're not having success otherwise.

There's also the "clear all blocks" available on the unit itself. On the preset - press the Action button. Clear all Blocks should be one of the rotary/push button knob selections. That clears out all the blocks leaving only the preset name.

Because the modeler already models the cabinets, and sending the modeled signal through real cabinets would be like sending your signal through a filter (guitar cabinet) twice? Unless you turn off cabinet modeling in your modeler and let your real cabinet shape (filter) the raw amp output into something pleasing. All you need to do on your modeler is use the hi/lo cuts for FRFR if you use guitar-only. Give or take. And if you don't use the modeled cabinets and feed to real cabinets for your tone, you are limited by the cabinets you happen to have. With modeled cabinets and FRFR, you have many more options from the built-in cabinets and all the combinations of mics/positions/etc, to the many superb 3rd party IRs out there too. Also, consider many folks are multi-instrument players. Synth/keys, bass, etc that produce frequencies outside the normal guitar range. FRFR handles all that without having to have additional output hardware. Just feed those through your L3t's for example, and you've got the frequency range you need uncolored by a guitar-specific cabinet. Want a backing track to play along to - just feed it into your L3t and it still sounds like it should vs through a real guitar cabinet. Those are just a couple of reasons I can think of.

As a professional software developer with 35+ years of experience including firmware and control systems that parallel this kind of product, I don't see the proposed IR management proposal being incompatible with this feature at all. I could go into details, but it'd be a lot of geek-speak. :)

Yeah, I put 2 and 2 together on this a while back when I had 4 identical presets with the only difference being the pair of IRs I used on a split path after the amp resulting in 4 very different tone characters that were all great but mostly identical but separate presets. I've now consolidated into one preset and switch between them using snapshots. Regarding the slot numbers - that is really what enables this - it's just another parameter that can be changed by a controller. I never tried to change the hi/lo cuts on them though, so I'm kind of surprised that doesn't work - I would think that would be just another parameter that could be changed, too, but I didn't have the need to try it. Note that as this relates to the recent discussion on IR management and possibly mapping slot number to an IR name instead, this IR switching functionality/feature of with snapshots does not need to be removed if referenced by name instead. So that discussion of a possible future IR specification change does not have to impact the ability to do this. Just wanted to call that out and clarify since I think referencing by name in the patch and have the Helix internals go find the slot number that IR is in, it still all resolves to a slot number and should be switchable by a controller just the same. And still enable all the benefits of referencing IR's by name instead of slot number. Still a very cool feature / capability involving snapshots. And like someone else said, it was doable before as a binary option of using a single controller footswitch where you could using the pre-2.0 release to switch between two IRs in the same way. But snapshots expand on that capability quite a bit.

Some type of feedbacker effect would be very welcome for recording from USB or when using headphones.

IRs have a lot of unique applications that might not be apparent on first look. For example, I read or saw somewhere some folks are looking at using an IR to essentially do guitar/pickup modeling - i.e., an IR that will make your Les Paul w/humbucker sound very similar to a single coil strat. Pretty cool. I think we're just scratching the surface using IRs for just cabinets. Lots of other applications and will continue to grow. So more IR space and something along the lines of the above ideascale would go along way to enabling easy experimenting and application of the creative uses.

I whole heartily agree with this and posted somewhere in some other thread with a similar sentiment. I'll take the improvements any day and rework any patches I have that may have changed slightly - though chances are I wouldn't because the improvements would likely make those patches better, even if they didn't sound exactly like I originally made them. :) But I can understand the dilemma L6 is in. On the one hand they improve the modeling quality, UI usability, etc, which benefits users. Also they could refactor their own internal code making it more maintainable over time. Sometimes such refactoring necessitates wiping and reloading/migrating old patches to new formats, UI workflow changes, etc, but makes future development and additions much easier and extends the life-cycle of the firmware before it eventually gets to the point where maintenance and additions get so hard that it's no longer viable and they have to retire it and start over with a new design. Essentially, we'd get longer life out of the Helix with continual improvements along the way. On the other hand, they'll have lots of customers that will complain loudly about every little thing that works differently after a major firmware update. And I can understand their point of view too. Folks may have dozens of patches they've spent 100's of hours on and now have to "fix" them. It's a dilemma. Transparent updates are not always possible. My own personal customer-vote is - upward and onward, keep the firmware improvements coming even if it means I need to go back and change patches or they way I work. I'll adapt. I'm good with translucent updates at the benefit of platform improvements for the greater good. :)

Voted! Thanks!

I thought your recording test sounded great. There are way more experienced and knowledgeable folks on here than I to give advice, but from what I've picked up - use the on-board block options (various eq's, compressors, hi/lo cut on cabinets and IR blocks, amp settings, etc to shape your tone the way you like to get your sound just right through FRFR speakers. And save the Global EQ so you can adjust that to retain/replicate your tone on a per venue environment. I.e., one great use of the Global EQ is to compensate for whatever you're playing through at a live performance. Since you only have one global eq, if you tweak it for any particular patch, it may have inadvertently affected other patches. So just use it to adapt to whatever environment you happen to be playing in, and use the per-patch options to shape each patch. Recently a member here posted some pretty cool Fletcher-Munson based EQ settings to go further and help EQ your patches for both low volume and high volume which compensate for the way our ears interpret sound and tone at drastically different volumes. Applying that technique can help you dial in a tone that will sound good live at high volume without having to create it at high volumes - maybe just some final tweaks when all's done. Really cool stuff. Here it is: http://line6.com/support/topic/22351-video-lessons-dialing-in-for-bedroomgig-volumes/

Looks good to me, it'll get my vote. I think another value is the case like Fremen's Big Pack where he included 25 IR's which greatly enhanced his presets, but for everything to work right you had to load them starting at slot 74 - 98 or something like that, since, obviously, his patches reference them by slot number like normal. I had to delete all of my own IRs in that range when I got his preset package, and now all my patches that referenced my own presets in that range don't work right, and I'll need to go back and reconnect them to some alternate slot number. This could get out of hand real quick. And the solution proposed would solve that, too. Not sure how to succinctly say that for idea scale - maybe under value add: * allows third party patch providers to include custom IRs and not interfere with their customer's IR slot locations

I think another change was reverting the pitch shift algorithm to the pre-2.0 method which affected a number of folks, so if that's an issue for you, and I think it related to tracking and chords, that might be a reason to update.

:) All good. I just hope Line 6 takes some of these suggestions - the IR slot number reference thing is pretty limiting both for personal use since order is cumbersome to maintain, and especially also when patches are shared with the broader community. Referencing them by their creator-given-name or derived checksum/hash within patches would be much better and let the IR's sit wherever internally - the idea of an IR slot number wouldn't even need to be exposed to the end user. And I'd love to have more IR space while their at it. And a puppy. Preferably all free. :)

Yes, I know. At any rate, I was supporting the concept and idea proposed, but I hate getting into the weeds of advising Line 6 how to implement, other than some nice features that would be possible that would make IR management easier and more intuitive. I'm sure they can figure it out, and those of us without access to the code or internal architecture are just whistling in the wind beyond suggesting the idea. Implementation details are best left to the developers to come up with how it may be best integrated. As far as naming the IRs using the checksum/hash, I think that's a terrible idea - they'll all look like gibberish. The main idea behind the checksum/fingerprint is that it could identify the same IR regardless of its displayed filename since the likelihood of two IRs having the same MD5 checksum for example are extraordinarily small. So the IR could be identified and tracked internally by its checksum, but displayed on-screen by the actual name given to it by its creator. If filenames collide, so-be-it, might be a little confusing, but I'd think that's more of a "don't do that" edge case. If IRs are identified internally by their checksum, and you tried to load the same IR again under a different name, the Helix could either allow that (taking up IR space) or it could tell you you already have this IR installed under a different name. Again - this is going too far into the implementation details. I just like the concept. And I think it would make a whole lot of folks' lives easier.

I really like this idea and had been thinking of something along the same lines. For software, the linker is what does function name resolution to it's location in memory and builds the executable. Helix would just need a similar concept - store the IR name (or checksum + name) in the preset instead of the IR slot number - and display the name on the screen (not the checksum if they go that route), and behind the scenes, reference the appropriate slot number where that IR happens to to be loaded. There's always the possibility for things to get out of sync if you remove IR's that existing presets use, and that could be dealt with by going through the "rebuild preset" boot sequence which could "relink" the IR locations. I really like the idea of highlighting presets that have missing IR's in both the on-board display and the editor. That way you know immediately which ones are broken - Helix can't fix that, but it can tell you which ones you need to go fix. And finally, more IR space would be great. There's a few ideascale entries for that. Someone mentioned the Axe has 700'ish. Seems about right - 768 seems like a good round computer sciency number (512+256). And should be more than adequate for the bulk of users to store their full pre-auditioned library of IRs from a handful of sources. This would solve so many of the IR issues folks have: 1) allow loading IRs in any order and presets still work as designed 2) allow sharing presets that contain IRs that you already own but are stored in different slots in your Helix 3) allow folks like Fremen to include the 25 IRs in his pack along with his presets without you having to reshuffle your IR locations and edit all your other patches that reference your own IRs that happen to sit in the locations that he used for his IRs 4) etc, etc, etc And I think the additional IR management implementation code within the Helix would be fairly trivial - certainly trivial in comparison to all the other advanced things the Helix firmware is doing. Yet would be a huge win for user-friendliness.

They only come up to my waist, so a just little taller than a half-stack cabinet and a whole lot skinnier. :-) I will say - after a day or so with these, I can only say the sound quality is top shelf. All the patches that sound great through my headphones and HS8's sound equally great through these monsters, even at low volume. I've turned them up a bit, enough to be painful and they deliver as advertised! Great sound, very accurate. I'm just using PA reference mode for now. When I run the HS8's at the same volume level as the L3T's - feeding the L3T's from the Line 6 Link from Helix, and HS8's from 1/4" outs to a mixer -> HS8's and adjusting the levels of each pair to taste, the sound is to die for in my medium sized room. That's it. I'm done. I have achieved Nirvana. :) And I have yet to run drum and bass tracks through them - I'm thinking that might be the only (slight) advantage of the L3's over the L2's (low end) but I really only got the L3's because they were within a few percent of the price of the L2's and since I won't be moving them too much, the portability of the L2's wasn't a huge selling point - so I went for the extra hardware in the L3's. So if you're looking for some extremely capable FRFR that will blow you away in sound quality - high or low volume, look no further, stop beating around the bush, and take the plunge and get yourself a pair of L2's or L3's. Or just one, if mono is your thing. :) Just my opinion, of course, no affiliation with Line 6 or anyone else.

Thanks for the follow-up! I too have indulged myself and have a pair of L3T's on the way. Should be here tomorrow. I can't wait! :)