bsd512

Thanks for the reply. That doesn't seem to be it - I can move the expression pedal without the edit icon showing so it must not be mapped per preset. I did reboot my Helix and now I can't reproduce the issue where it was happening every time before rebooting. I'm ignoring it, too. :)

When changing from one preset to another where I've incorporated snapshots, sometimes the preset I just switched to shows that it has been edited, with the "E" icon? That's without touching anything - just switching to the preset. Normal? Anyone else seeing this? I haven't seen any ill affects from it, otherwise, but perhaps it's a display bug? I don't know why it would say the preset has been edited after I had just switched to it.

-1) 50+ Professional software developer - very good at that. But not a very good guitar player. His playing makes neighborhood dogs howl. Married, 3 kids. Has been away from playing guitar for 35 years, and was only mediocre back then. Could never afford anything decent - remembers the Shulz Rockman, got to try one out, really wanted one, but alas ... couldn't afford it. 35 years later, started playing again - is totally blown away by the new modeling tech that never existed 35 years ago. Helix is way more than what he needs, but can now actually afford stuff. Feels guilty that he has better equipment than some struggling actual gigging musicians that are 1000 times better than him. Quickly dismisses those thoughts and plays for hours on end blowing off steam from his day job, smiling the whole time, and aspires to one day keep time with a rhythm. ;) Lol - like you said, if the shoe fits ... :)

Plate with stock settings is pretty lush, but not as lingering as cave.

Helix doesn't come with any IRs. If you had IRs before the 2.0 update, you must have loaded them. Use the Editor to reload them, just drag and drop into the slots in the "IMPULSES" tab of the editor, either as a group or one by one.

While I haven't tried the free OwnHammer IRs, I do have a handful of purchased cabs from OH. In all of those, they do include a Line 6 folder. They also include non-product specific folders as well. I haven't checked directly, but I suspect the Line 6 Helix folder is a duplicate of the Wav-48000 folder since that's what the Helix says it supports. Also, with the OH IRs, you'll get about 700 IRs for a 4x12 cabinet. Basically 13 or so microphones+mixed mics x 11 positions x 4 speaker combinations, plus a quick start folder for each speaker combination with about 35 representative IRs in it, and a few miscellaneous. The difference in mic's, mixed mics, and speakers are pretty large. The differences between the 10 IR positions 0-10 per mic are pretty small. So what I've done is focus on the quick-start folder for each speaker / speaker combo, and that just contains 1 IR per mic or mix for each speaker/speaker combo, i.e., one mic position. And you can go through those pretty quickly to find your favorites. I really like the sound of two IRs in a 50/50 split just after the amp with different mic's and speakers. Usually the speaker combinations include a dark'ish speaker and a brighter/mid'ier speaker. In a dual IR patch like that, I like the SM57 on the darker speaker and the M160 on the brighter speaker. Run in parallel sounds really good to my ears. If I'm using a single IR patch, I really like the OH1 or OH2 microphone mix, with a slight nod to the OH1 mix. It's all personal preference and likely highly dependent on the kind of tone you're starting out with. I play mostly high gain stuff and those combinations sound really good for me. You'll want to find what you like the best and what works for you. But hopefully the above may save you a little time in auditioning IRs. QuickStart folder is representative of the entire collection and contains only about 35 IRs per speaker type. Be sure and use the lo/hi cut on the IR blocks for best results. Good starting point is lo cut at 72 and hi cut at 6k. That will tame both the boomyness and the fizz. Season to taste. I have tried 3Sigma, Redwirez, and Rosen, but the OwnHammers are my personal favorite. 3Sigma are the easiest to audition with just 10 IRs per cabinet total. But now that I've figured out what I like with the OH's, they're just as easy for me to audition and make a selection.

Overwhelmed here, too. My ear may not be the hardest to please but I know what I like and I can achieve it easily with the Helix. Heck, when I first got it, I didn't even look at the factory presets - just built my own patch using my favorite amp from the Amplifi 150 that I previously owned so I had some experience with how that worked and it's similar with Helix, more like a major step up from the tinker toy version. Seriously, just tossed in the blocks I wanted, and even with the stock default settings of the various components it sounded damn good. You can hardly mess things up unless you really try at it. I love the high gain amps and tones and can't get me enough of the ENGL Fireball / ANGL Meteor. And good lord, that new Line 6 Modded JCM 2204 - I'm in heaven. I honestly rarely use other amps since I'm so happy with the tone I'm getting with a select few, but I experimented with the others. Many of them aren't the tone I'm looking for, but they still sound great. Just not my cup of tea, at least at the moment - tastes change over time. That doesn't mean they don't sound great, though. And I know when I'm ready or itching for something different, all I have to do is press a button. BTW - I originally purchased the Helix for the UI. It is superb, bar none. I very quickly tired of the Amplifi's iOS control interface. Ugh. Liked the concept. Until I used it. Give me dials and switches, not iPad sliders that sometimes work - I can't count how many times I've reached for one of those sliders, touched and slid, and the slider remained where it was. Whoops, try again. Didn't get it that time either, try a third time. And then all the switching back and forth between pedal/amp/pedal/amp each with their own dedicated screen - ugh, ugh, ugh. None of that nonsense with Helix. Thank you Helix. The only time I really use the Helix Edit application is to load impulse responses or backup presets. The hardware UI is so good, the editor just gets in the way is slows me down. Nice to have it though, and it's other folks' bread and butter UI, so best of both worlds. But again, as far as tones are concerned - it's really hard to mess it up, unless you set out to create a bad tone. I suspect, as others have stated, your setup is overly complicated. Simplify. Let the Helix do the work and get rid of all that in-between stuff.

Could almost by a pair of L3t's for that. Just sayin ... B)

Helix Edit 2.0 includes the latest Line 6 Updater. You don't use Helix Edit to update, but you do use Line 6 Updater. By installing Helix Edit 2.0, you are guaranteed to get the latest and required version of Line 6 Updater. If you follow the Line 6 instructions which can be summarized as: 1) Backup presets using old Helix Edit (version 1.12 or earlier) 2) Install Helix Edit 2.0 (replacing the old Helix Edit) 3) Use Line 6 Updater that was installed with Helix Edit 2.0 to update firmware (the old Updater should be gone and replaced with the new one by now) 4) Let your Helix boot and go through it's process of rebuilding patches. Don't touch it! 5) When that's done, before doing anything else, Power-off Helix and boot with FS9-10 held down to wipe it back to factory defaults 6) Use Helix Edit 2.0 to reload the presets you saved in step 1 If you do that, Glenn's and all your other presets will work without any issues.

When posting, you'll see a "More Reply Options" button next to "Post". Click that, and at the bottom, you find an "Attach Files" sections. You can use that to upload other content that will be included in your post.

That was great! I love that new amp. It has already replaced the stock 2204 in my own patches.

Double check you are using the latest Helix Edit application. Needs to be the 2.00.1 version, not 1.12 or earlier. If on a Mac, in the top menu bar, click "Helix" -> "About Helix". Not sure how to check on Windows, but it's probably similar.

A few cases like that have been reported here. Not sure about all of them, but at least some of them were due to using the wrong Helix Editor version for the update, i.e., not updating Helix Edit to 2.0 but instead were using an older version. And some have been able to revert to an older version of the firmware, get their Helix to boot, and then using the 2.0 Editor, update successfully. I think when the new release first came out it was a little confusing on the web site. I think the Helix firmware was listed separately from the Editor, and the Editor was down below. You really only need to download the "Helix Edit" application, and the included Updater will download the right firmware for you. I just looked on the web site and it appears that it's a little more clear now. Hopefully that helps keep folks from making that mistake.

I was thinking the same thing as I was trying it out. That amp is a very pleasant and welcome surprise.

Line 6 product development and support certainly appears to be both precisely AND accurately in tune with their customer wants and needs. B) Extending a warm and hearty thank you from this customer for this extensive update worthy of the 2.0 designation!

The only obvious thing that comes to mind is to make sure your Helix output levels match those of whatever your plugging into. In your case, I think that's the XLR outs. They can be either "line" or "instrument". Make sure they match what your output device is expecting. Global Settings -> Ins/Outs -> (page 2) -> XLR Outputs. These should default to "line" level, but I'd double check to make sure. Next, maybe try some of the factory presets for the various amp models just to rule out anything that might have gotten fiddled when constructing your patch(es). While the factory presets likely aren't going to be the tone you're looking for, they should at least sound decent.

I see your other questions are answered, but didn't see this one addressed. I can only speak from my own experience, but this is not normal. I've dragged the full 128 capacity of IRs into the "IMPULSES" section of the editor and it loads them all no problem. I've done this multiple times and never experienced a disconnect or any problems. I'm using an old 2009 era "cheese grater" Mac Pro, OS X El Capitan, if that matters.

Great write-up, Joe, and diagrams! I recently got a Trio+ and have been having a blast with it. It does leave a tiny bit to be desired, IMO, in terms of connectivity. When I first hooked it up, I just did the usual - guitar -> Trio+ guitar-in / Trio+ amp-out -> Helix guitar-in; and then Trio+ mixer-out to my mixer. I was feeding my mixer with the Helix 1/4 L/R outs and monitoring through headphones from the mixer. Sounded decent and was a ton of fun, and didn't require anything special from the Helix - no send/return blocks or anything. But then I wanted to record something I made with it, and my cheap mixer has a flaw in that the USB out levels seem really low. Meanwhile, the Helix levels are nice and hot. So I wanted everything running through the Helix and use it's USB out for recording. So the only thing I changed was to add a path 2b to the Helix who's input is Return 1. I then fed the Trio+ mixer-out to Helix-Return1. And since I had that path available, I added a touch of reverb and, <shudder> chorus to the Trio+ output to fatten it up a bit and thought it sounded really great. I recorded from that, and, by my standards at least, got a great result. Here's a photo of my signal chain. Like before, the Trio+ is in front of the Helix. That works fine for me because I don't have a Variax that wanted to preserve. And then the Trio+ mixer-out feeds path 2B. I'm happy with this for a simple and quick setup. I'll definitely give your method a try, though. Thanks for posting that up!

Well ... that was a let down. You made it sound like Godzilla vs King Kong. Bait and switch! I was hoping to hear about spitting high tension wires being pulled down. Or at least a bus being picked up and thrown back down. :)

Well, I just wrote a little shell script to do it and was about to share it. But it appears that the exported file from the Helix does not actually match the the one you loaded in. So this method of file comparison won't work. The Helix must convert the IR internally such that when exported, it no longer matches what you loaded. For example, checksums for both the original file and that exported from the Helix: Original: MD5 (OH 412 MAR-CB M75+H75 421-02.wav) = a1b26c564ee713b1904d9e22601accbb Exported: MD5 (OH 412 MAR-CB M75+H75 421-.wav) = 324d373cf77dc8871ecfb84fa2fdf74b And the file sizes are much different, too. The exported file is only about 8.1KB, while the original is around 28KB. Bummer.

Nice diagram, Joe! What software did you use to make it, if you don't mind my asking?

Does this count? :)

No, I'm not terribly serious about it ... it was more of me thinking, I wonder if that would work, and I can't see why it wouldn't. And the lego concept appeals to me. Need more? Plug in another, and edit away. But I personally don't have the need for it. One Helix is more than I need. Just saying, though, for those that do, a solution exists today. As far as focusing on beefing up the next version, no need for anyone to divert any cycles away from that. Someone choosing to connect a couple of Helix's together takes zero work from L6. :)

What I'm saying is there doesn't need to be a quad-core right now. Just buy a second Helix. The products appears to be so modular that they can be plug together like Legos to expand DSP, pathing, routing, MIDI, foot switches, etc. For those that want more right now, of course. No need to build a new product for that. The Helix can do it. Or rather, the Helixi (plural for Helix? :)) Someone even suggested the name "Double Helix" for the quad-core. Pairing two up would literally be that. Heck, no need to stop there. Get a third, or fourth. Endless expansion, for those with the budget. :) This approach could solve the patch switching latency by allowing one to build a do-everything patch so that the folks that need that don't actually have to switch. That, and a whole lot more.

I happen to be really happy with the product, the rate of updates, etc, so no complaints here. But regarding the length of time to do the modeling at such a high quality as the Helix, I think it would be worse to have stuff come out more quickly just to get it out there, with perhaps the intention (from Line 6 development) to improve it later with an update. I.e., appease the impatient with something usable but not quite up to L6 standards, and then when more development cycles are available, do an update and make the quality what they would have wanted to release if given more time in the first place. But even that is a slippery slope. Imagine the outrage from some if the tone or some feature was actually improved. Instead of a "thank you" for improving the tone, one can easily see an uproar because the improvement caused them to have to go back and rework patches because they now sound different, even if (subjectively) better. So that is actually something I worry a little about. Some really good updates may not be possible without impacting existing customers/patches and therefore may never see the light of day. So I'm happy to wait until L6 thinks things through carefully, not only for the current feature de-jour, but how said feature may constrain the ability to update the product in the future and retain compatibility with the existing patches, tones, etc. Better to think stuff through for the long term benefit even if it takes a bit longer to release updates, than releasing rapid, patch-work updates that devolves the code into an unsupportable morass and cuts the Helix life-cycle short simply because the code becomes so complex that it can't be efficiently maintained and improved over time. This happens to every software based system eventually, but it can staved off much longer through carefully thought out updates that don't paint the developers into corners. Ok, I was thinking about DSP capability the other day. Not so much along the lines needed for complex effects, but for complex patches using existing effects/amps/IRs/etc. Some have suggested maybe in the future a quad-core helix. How cool would it be to own two Helix's, and with the incredible routing, you could patch them together using their send/returns/etc in countless signal path combinations and other control center capabilities. So the possibility of double the power exists today. And you'd get a dozen more foot switches to boot. :) This may be a good solution for folks that require super-fast patch switching - with a dual Helix setup, connected together using send/return and all the various inputs and outputs, one could build very complex patches such that most everything you'd ever want could be right there, without ever actually switching patches. Just costs $3K instead of $1.5K. :) Anyway, this is just an idea, should work and be pretty capable, but I don't have the money to experiment. But if DI wants to send me a second Helix to add to my first, I will gladly spearhead this experiment and report back. :) That's funny! :)