HonestOpinion

LOL, there have been a few drool filled nights that made mornings feel like that pillow scenario you describe. :huh: Like the larger marketplace, there will be some, perhaps most, that adhere to the bulk of that list and a few of the usual bad actors.

What the heck, since this topic is still chugging along, once more into the breach, a few (too many :)) thoughts: ​Once you start charging for access or presets in my opinion you should be subject to all the mechanisms that help ensure a reliable product in a consumer marketplace. Some of the things that jump to mind as 'best practices'. Reviews by the users to ensure quality Commercial preset designers should be more talented and expend as much or more time designing commercial presets than the average Joe who is offering them up for free. This helps prevents predatory behavior by hacks who seek to capitalize on naïve new users. So far we seem to have been lucky with this as the reviews for the primary sellers here seem to be overwhelmingly positive. You stand behind your product in the event that you have a release with technical issues. You charge a reasonable fee (whatever that is, not just whatever the market will bear although that is often a good indicator) You offer a modicum of support for your product in regards to implementation through videos, email, FAQs, perhaps phone, etc.. You design your presets with an eye towards them being adaptable to a multitude of configurations such that someone doesn't see a wonderful video, purchase your product, and then discover that a satisfactory sound can only be attained with precisely the same equipment used in your video. If your presets are specific to certain hardware configurations then your advertising material should say so. If your presets can be adapted to a variety of hardware (e.g. amp, powered speaker, FRFR, MIDI devices, etc.) you may need to include specific instructions or guidance on how to achieve this. Ongoing support may/should include updating of previous preset packs that are reasonably current when the Helix is updated. A good example of this might be the addition of Snapshots or changes to effects such as a change in the Pitch block. This ongoing support may include an 'upgrade' or 'maintenance' fee similar to the way many software companies support their products through various versions of an OS or when a new version of their software is released. In other words, existing customers should be valued and not be necessarily charged full price (or sometimes any price) for a 'maintenance' level release. Significant preset package upgrades may or may not warrant an entirely new purchase. Granted, it is legitimate to age out support and upgrades for older preset packages just as other companies sunset older software versions. A couple of pitfalls I see with commercial preset selling. I am not implying these should or could in any way stop the selling of presets. They are just issues to be aware of: Innovation should not be stifled in order to preserve old preset packs unchanged although it should be a consideration and the impact to pre-existing presets should be minimized wherever possible. Line6 seems to have an informal relationship, maybe even formal in a couple of instances, with commercial preset designers. I believe the perception, probably justifiable in many cases is that these preset sellers have a symbiotic relationship with Line6 in that their videos, posts, and custom presets not only educate their user base but also assist in selling the Helix. They also aid in retention of customers who might be encouraged to return or review the Helix negatively if not for the assistance they received in getting up to speed with commercial presets. My point is that this relationship with preset designers should be leveraged with Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) such that when there are changes in upcoming firmware that might impact preset design, they can give these designers a heads-up. Again, this is a common practice where for instance Apple or Microsoft alert software companies to upcoming changes to the OS that may impact them. Often a pre-release version of the new OS is provided to the software manufacturer to design their new applications on. The reason this can be such a critical relationship is that for example if you have a significant improvement being made to for instance a Pitch block or other functionality, all of a sudden you may start getting pushback from the preset designers as well as the people who have purchased them as they are faced with the possibility of having to modify their presets, or worse yet, the presets can become obsolete. We see that same sort or pushback in some cases from the wider user base as well who have not purchased presets but they also do not want to go through a redesign of their self-constructed presets. This is part of a delicate balance that is a challenge for all the modeler companies in providing innovation while not requiring constant reworking and redesign of presets. This tension extends to the entire user base and is not exclusive to those selling commercial presets. My point is that none of us should want to see innovation stifled solely for the sake of preserving older presets although minimizing impact to them is an important concern. This is particularly true of presets that are sold early in the Helix's lifecycle while there is still a high level of change and improvement to the firmware. We should not be stuck forever with the state of the Helix at initial release simply to save the effort of digging in and perhaps making minimal changes to older presets. I do think it is important to maintain a sense of community to encourage the free exchange of ideas and innovation. There is room as well for the best of the community to be rewarded financially for efforts that go above and beyond. We should just be careful to maintain that balance. I am for some reason reminded of one of my pet peeves, a bit off topic, and perhaps at best loosely related to this topic - the addition of lanes to crowded public highways that can only be accessed with a paid 'Fastpass'. This in my opinion stratifies drivers into the 'haves' and 'have-nots', those who can afford not to sit in traffic and those who cannot. This IMHO violates the spirit of 'public transportation'. What I am getting at is that I hope their will always be adequate free resources for those who cannot afford the extra expenditures that prevent them from being perpetually in the 'slow lane'. Right now I believe we have that balance and I think we always will. Note: One thing that strikes me as a difference between commercial preset sales and many other kinds of software/template sales is the following. Most people who buy a piece of software are not capable of dissecting that software and using it to write better software of their own. This is not the case with presets. There is an educational aspect to presets that can give them extra value to be used as a foundation for training users to design their own, even if the preset is finally rendered obsolete by firmware advances. Teach a man to fish... Lastly, in the interests of disclosure, I have never purchased a preset package and do not currently feel so inclined but I would never rule it out if I found a compelling need or interest in one. I just prefer designing my own although I recognize that they may not be as good as some of the ones available for purchase.

Wonder if this could have anything to do with phase inversion, two signals out of phase with each other. Two out of phase signals can cancel each other out and cause a deadening effect or even total silence if they are perfectly out of phase, don't know why it would only happen at one pitch though.

There are currently no mono reverbs on the Helix. Maybe this has been answered before but I am not sure I understand why this is the case. I would think reverbs might be one of the more DSP hungry effects on the Helix and the stereo versions of effects tend to use more DSP than the mono versions. I run a mono signal path and I could probably gain back a bit of valuable DSP with a mono reverb. Is this due to the fact that the reverbs were ported over from the HD500X? Are we going to be seeing any mono reverbs in the future?

I do not believe safe boot mode deletes the presets and IRs but I am not sure this is going to help you at this point. Have you tried unplugging all other USB ports on the PC to make sure you don't have any conflicts. Also, when you have the Helix connected and on, if you go into Control panel under System/Device Manager, are you seeing the 'Line 6 Helix' entry under 'Sound, video and game controllers'? If you are, try disabling and then enabling this and then restarting the Editor. If the Helix driver is showing you could also try uninstalling the driver directly from the Control Panel and then using the Helix app to reinstall it. This is sounding more and more like you either need an alternative computer to try this on for long enough to back up your presets/IRs and then it is probably time to try reflashing the firmware, doing a global 9&10 reset, and then restoring your presets & IRs. What is mystifying here is that you had the editor up successfully before which makes it seem like a registry problem or a driver conflict unless the USB port on the Helix has crapped out which is probably the least likely scenario. Note: Also, as a sanity check make sure that the firmware version that is showing when you boot up the Helix is the same as the Helix app version you downloaded from L6.

LOL, we better get this update soon, things are degenerating remarkably quickly on the forum. I'd hate to see it get shut down on a public indecency charge before the new firmware gets here. :D

I'm also a PC guy so I don't know if there is an equivalent setting on Mac but on a PC depending on your OS and hardware you can set your preferences under Power to just stop the USB ports from going into power saving mode without having to completely disable your power down or sleep modes for the entire computer.

LOL :D

If we have to redesign our presets hourly, so be it, that is just the price one has to pay for progress. :)

We all know it is the 'girth' of the amp's tone that is most important... ;)

You say you 'reinstalled the Helix USB driver'. You should actually uninstall all the Helix software first and then reinstall the Helix app (driver, Editor, and Updater) if you have not tried that already. Make sure you install the same version of the Helix app as your firmware. Have you tried an alternate USB cable? You could try a 6&12 (safe boot mode) reset. Of course, everything is a bit risky if you don't have any backups. If the Helix app reinstall on your Win 7 machine does not work it might also be worth getting a good Helix presets and IRs backup on a PC with a more recent OS before you try more drastic measures like a firmware reinstall or a 9&10 global reset.

For a nominal fee I will soon be offering therapy (and IRs) on my new website for those suffering from "obsessive-Impulse'ive" disorder; now an officially recognized psychiatric malady in the DSM ;)

Just wait until they have a real 'Double Helix' self evolving 'learning' amp, a hybrid constructed of unstable DNA and technology stolen from a secret Soviet lab and chess camp left over from the Cold War, and it just mutates spontaneously overnight with no firmware update required as your Mesa, Marshall, and Bogner cower in the corner horrified and suffering from low self-esteem issues. :o

So true, I think there are several threads that fit this description. ;)

Zen master to hot dog vendor, "Make me one with everything" :P ....Sounds a lot like the feature requests for Helix. :)

True, gas is expensive but if you live in Luxembourg you can circumnavigate your whole country on 1/2 a liter in your tiny car that gets 5,000 kilometers per liter (tough to fit the PA in though), most Europeans aren't driving Ford F-Series pickups. ;) Plus, the train systems are extensive and a great way to get around.

LOL :D

I believe it is important to keep an overall positive tenor on the forum (and humorous wherever possible). I love hearing people's positive impressions and experiences with Helix but I also want to hear about the bugs, hardware failures and suggested improvements. Topics and posts questioning what is sold by third parties as well as reviewing them are not only inevitable but a critical part of a sort of forum user's 'Consumer Reports' that helps make sure that the quality of what is being offered up to Helix users for purchase stays high. This topic and the user who started it have every right to bring this up on the forum, the OP did it in a respectful manner and topics like this although a little awkward at times actually improve quality control. Ironically, although the preset designers may dread them, these discussions give the commercial preset sellers a lot of free PR and may serve to change some people's minds and actually encourage them to buy those presets. This topic could well result in a net gain for those guys. Trying to censor reasonable approaches to this debate like the one Inerzia took to this topic is not the way to go and will never work . I believe this topic should and will come up periodically and I enjoy hearing different perspectives on the subject and hope people take an opportunity to offer up alternatives to paid presets as well as tips for how to best employ paid presets and reviews as to who is making the best ones.

I would love to see tone matching move to full preset matching one day including effects as in, here is the Robin Trower sound off 'Bridge Of Sighs' with not only the amp dialed in but the Univibe, distortion and everything else as well. Here is Jimi's Octavia sound off 'Purple Haze' with a Fender through a Marshall, or Brian May's modified Vox replete with delays off 'Bohemian Rhapsody', you get the idea. Now that would be some awesome tone matching. Even if you are not playing in a cover band they would make some great jumping off places for working up your own tone. I always thought that sampling technology would lead to that kind of tone matching eventually.

Not when it is a monopoly and essential to life like medical care, energy, food, or shelter, but I get your point, presets are none of those things. :)

No argument, I think yours is currently and absolutely the correct definition. I think many of us (particularly me) were just confusing a side buss with a sidechain. I have changed the topic name accordingly. I am 'on the buss now' as Tom Wolfe would have said.

Great answer phil_m and abundantly obvious now that you mention it. Thanks! Btw, sidechaining may have an official definition but I have heard it used for decades in reference to having any effect, particularly on old analog mixers that is being bussed a signal rather than directly in-line on the signal path. For example the difference in the way you might use a limiter in-line on the output from the board to prevent damaging your PA speakers but using a reverb in a sidechain set to 100% wet to affect only part of your signal chain. Perhaps the terminology is being used incorrectly but I think many of us have heard it in this context. I think overall you are right though, in recent years the meaning of sidechaining does seem to have become more a reference to things like triggering compression and other triggered effects on other targets depending on the source signal. Perhaps I will have to change my archaic terminology. Thanks for the clarification, I was confusing the issue

I feel like I am probably missing something really obvious here but can anyone shed some light on why 'side-chaining' reverb and delay blocks on their own route on a mono signal path by using the split/merge blocks seems to sound different than having the signal pass directly (serial) through the reverb and delay blocks and using their 'Mix' parameter to control the amount of reverb and delay in the signal? When I use the side-chain method I tend to set the 'Mix' parameter on the reverb/delay blocks to 100% (wet) and use the split block to control how much of my signal passes through the reverb/delay before returning to the main signal path and ultimately back via the merge block to my main signal path and the output block (reverb/delay are the last blocks in my signal chain on the 'B' route). It would seem to me that basically these two approaches should yield essentially the same result with the main difference being that with side-chaining I am using adjusting the mix on the split block instead of using the 'Mix' parameter on the reverb/delay blocks. If the reverb/delay mix is set to roughly the same amount of reverb and delay I would think these two approaches would yield roughly the same results but they sound very different to me.

Amazing stuff! I am simultaneously intrigued and somewhat intimidated by the capabilities of this technology. You need to be very facile with it to not find yourself crossing that blurry line between musician and technician (assuming you want to do both); at least in the conventional sense of a musician being an expert on an instrument. I guess it is legitimate to say that manipulating digital sound at this level is an instrument of sorts but part of me just wants to leave that stuff to an engineer and focus on my guitar. The learning curve and amount of time that manipulating plugins like this can require has the capacity to engulf you. So cool though and I can definitely see employing it to a limited extent. The technology also keeps moving forward and making these results faster and easier to achieve which means it frees up more time spent on a 'conventional' instrument. Who knows what music will sound like in another twenty years? Ever since the recording studio moved into the home and advanced tone design and synthesis stopped being the exclusive province of the keyboard player life has gotten a lot more interesting for guitarists who want to explore new sounds. You can play your old Tele direct to an old Fender Bassman with no pedals or you can 'Fripp' out and beyond. The possibilities are dizzying.

Thanks!