HonestOpinion

:D

I respectfully beg to differ, there are many instruments including the human voice that can overlap frequency ranges with the guitar. Particularly when there are multiple instruments that are too loud or EQ'd incrorrectly they can cover up every square inch of the guitar's portion of the frequency spectrum. Granted timbre plays into differentiating instruments as well but timbre alone will not guarantee cutting through in a poorly setup PA. As I said earlier, the keyboards in particular can potentially cover up the entire range of a guitar depending on the patch being used and the range being played in. Even vocals can interfere with or be interfered with by the guitar. Ever try to hear yourself singing with badly EQ'd guitar in your vocal monitor, or conversely, hear your guitar over the vocals when you don't have enough high end in a dull guitar sound? It can also be a function of band size and as amsdenj mentioned earlier how much 'space', dynamics, and good listening/responding is being employed in the music. A large band with multiple vocalists can start to provide a wall of sound that can be hard to cut through. Correct EQ along with the right volume is better than just cranking up alone. The link below shows charts with the frequency range of various instruments. You can see how much overlap there is between various instruments and between instruments and vocals. Utilizing varying EQ and different parts of the frequency range to empahsize specific instruments can really help them cut through when necessary and reduce the amount of volume required for a specific instrument to be heard clearly.. http://www.guitarbuilding.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Instrument-Sound-EQ-Chart.pdf http://www.stormythursdaywebcasttheater.com/info/audio_frequency_equalization_charts.php Multiple guitarists in the same band can also be a challenge. Natively different EQ curves among other things are part of why it is easier to pick out guitar parts when each guitarist is playing a different guitar with different pickups (e.g. one guitarist has a Strat, the other a Les Paul) . The guitarists can be further differentiated by slightly varying their board EQ from one another. I think as alluded to earlier, if you are still having problems cutting through once you have the volumes leveled, and are playing with appropriate space and technique, start adjusting EQ rather than just adding volume to allow individual instruments to be clearer in the mix. Otherwise, you may find yourself to be in a constant war of volume between band members. A good article on different instruments and where to focus their EQ. http://blog.sonicbids.com/the-ultimate-eq-cheat-sheet-for-every-common-instrument

If you haven't tried it yet it might be worth uninstalling Chrome and reinstalling.

One more thing occurred to me here. No doubt it is important to make sure you are playing with space and dynamics and playing softer/quieter and harder/louder to allow solos and other instruments to come to the fore. Doing your best to level your volume on stage is important and instruments like the electric guitar, bass and keyboards can and should do as good a job as possible with their own EQ to send the best prepared signal they can muster to the board. You are right not to solely rely on the soundman, if you send a crap guitar sound to the soundman don't expect him to turn swine into pearls. This is not the case for vocalists, many acoustic instruments (no knobs on a flute), and the drums. Outside of their playing or singing/mic technique they are often totally dependent on the soundman to get a good sound in the mix for them and allow them to cut through. They usually don't have their own EQ or volume/trim knobs to twist on stage. Furthermore, even if you send a perfect guitar sound to the board, if the soundman does not handle the overall mix or your feed properly you can get buried anyway. So while the soundman may not be the 'focal point' he is certainly a critical link in the chain. Now that I take a better look at your comment, I guess that is pretty much what you are saying. A good soundman is in some ways like a member of the band but one that can heavily impact everyone else's sound. Sometimes I think they get treated as sort of an afterthought. They can ruin a band's night or make a decent band sound much better.

So to sum up, dynamics and listening to your fellow band members by leaving space and backing off or cranking up at the right times, proper volume leveling, and proper EQ are all critical in getting a great live sound and cutting through the mix. It takes a village. :)

In the meantime you can just hit save once, then change the Setlist and/or Destination for your save with the parameter knob(s) to a blank location and hit save again. Granted the new save will have the same name but it only takes a second to do the save and if you use sequential blank locations for your saves you will know which iteration is more recent.

You can set up multiple inputs and/or outputs easily on the Helix for up to four instruments/voices. You can either use each route for a different instrument or actually use the same route for two instruments by dragging both the split and the merge blocks down and then setting the input/output blocks accordingly. Use the send/return loops for additional inputs and outputs if you require them. Take a look at the template in the Templates setlist 04B 'Gtr+Vox+Bas+Keys' for an example of how to set this up. Note: You could probably set up even more than four instruments on the Helix by using the send/return loops but that just seems excessive.

Btw, there was a major cyber-attack on Dyn (a large DNS provider and web hosting company) a few days ago that heavily impacted many of their customers. I wonder if Line6 got caught up in this. Everything seems back to normal now. I am not having issues with any browser flavor since yesterday or the day before.

I don't have Chrome on my phone but on the PC the cache clearing has an option for how far back you want to go (e.g. one day, one week, beginning of time). If the phone version of the app offers this option, make sure you clear the cache back far enough (I think it defaults to one day). I found Chrome wasn't working for me as recently as yesterday until I cleared the cache going all the way back in time.

Proper EQ is certainly important in both live and recording scenarios. On a recording not only do you hopefully have an avid listener paying close attention but the amount of compression applied to recordings, particularly during the mastering phase, can make things sound very dull when they are not EQ'd properly. The EQ also has to account for the fact that a recording can end up being played on a wide variety of devices from a car radio, to a boombox, to a $5,000 home stereo system. Add to that the fact that a recording lasts forever and you definitely want to get the EQ right. The reason good EQ is so important live is for some of the very reasons you alluded to. The room acoustics and the sheer volume of a live performance can send sound bouncing around everywhere. If the EQ is not correct it can result in a wash of sound that can quickly become muddy and inarticulate. When various instruments aren't EQ'd correctly, particularly in the monitor mix, very often a volume war starts onstage. The keyboards aren't cutting through and can't hear themselves over the drums so they crank up. Now the guitarist can't hear himself, particularly when soloing and he cranks up. The vocalist can't hear him/herself now and they ask for more volume from the board. That becomes an iterative process with musicians taking turns cranking their volume and the next thing you know the band is way too loud and the soundman is tearing out his hair and spinning trim knobs down to try and keep up and the people near the front are dialing their lawyers with a class action suit for aural abuse and permanent hearing loss. The resulting increase in volume from this process of escalation actually causes everybody including the audience to have an even harder time picking out the separate instruments and voices and makes the situation worse. My point is that soundmen and musicians instinctively reach for the volume when they can't hear themselves or a specific instrument well enough or feel they are not cutting through when often the real problem lies with the EQ. With that said, getting the relative volumes correct is of utmost importance as well but most soundmen have a much easier time with this than properly adjusting EQ.

Also an important point and it comes down to one simple word, 'dynamics'. Bands need to play with 'em!

Really good point although I often find it is proper EQ and not volume that is the real issue! So often the problem with getting the guitar to cut through is drums, keyboards, and vocals, and other instruments potentially as well, not being EQ'd and/or compressed properly to dominate only in their own separate sections of the mix. Getting different instruments to sit in their own spot in the mix takes finesse, knowledge, and a bit of art as well as science. I think proper EQ is unfortunately one of the most difficult and usually last things a good soundman learns and many never master it. I also have found keyboards to be frequent offenders in masking the guitar as they occupy such a wide area in the frequency spectrum. There is also such a thin line between cutting through and sounding too loud or harsh. This is definitely the part of a good mix that I have always found the most challenging in a live situation.

This topic is for Ideascale submissions so your best chance to get some traction with Line6 is usually to create an Idea there and then post the link with a description here. That way people can vote for it.

Good video. chuckle, I had already posted this, thanks for acquainting us with his first video as well. Mr. Castallano is definitely getting his due on the forum. ;)

I am not going to weigh in on what constitutes or gets you to a great tone but I have to agree with Spikey. Older or not John Petrucci and his blend of metal and fusion (prog-metal?) makes him one of my favorite guitarists. I respect what he has to say about tone even if he is busy doing an endorsement for Mesa Boogie.

Richie Castellano, guitarist from Blue Oyster Cult, with a video on how to set up MIDI, External Amp, and CV control. This guy has a knack for making things look easy. I love how he uses the Control (CV) input on a Boss pedal to enable the Helix to control it. This video made me realize that I have a few old pedals with control inputs that I had not considered that I could actually leverage with the Helix. There are a couple of shortcuts he is not aware of yet but for someone who has only owned his Helix for three weeks it is remarkable what he has accomplished and his videos are incredibly helpful. I am learning from him and I have owned the Helix for a year. Won't be the first time or the last that a new user schools me. What a pro! Thanks to mileskb for initially bringing this fellow and his videos to light on the forum and TonyHay over on The Gear Page for bringing this latest video to our attention. Ordinarily I would have just posted this video in the topic mileskb started but the subject matter of this particular video deserves its own heading.

I am curious, how did you think the KRK monitors compared? They are fairly standard fare.

I would take a look at the 'Help" guide included in the Editor regarding import/export of bundles, setlists, and individual presets. There are import/export links for all of these in the Helix Editor. Impulse responses are imported/exported separately from the 'Impulses' tab. A good general practice is to export/backup all of these (bundle, setlists, individual presets, IRs) regularly and certainly before doing a firmware upgrade. You can export all of the presets in a single setlist individually at one time by highlighting them all and hitting the 'Export' link. You would not take a 'pre seen from a bundle to move to another'. A bundle represents all of the setlists on the Helix. However it is simple to copy presets between or within setlists by right-clicking on them in the Editor and selecting copy/paste. Deletion is done by copying a blank preset over the preset you wish to delete. I know of no way to see all of the setlists' contents at one time in the Helix Editor. Loading a for example CustomTone preset to the editor is done by either dragging and dropping it to the slot you wish, or you can highlight the slot and hit the 'Import' link. Be aware overall that there are different import/export links for bundles, setlists, and individual presets. Used incorrectly you may overwrite something.

Thanks good point. I think the comment in the guide was simply referring to a compressor that had no threshold knob but might still have a ratio knob. At least that is the way I read it. However you are correct that on some simple, for instance two knob compressors, both ratio and threshold and even attack and release may be collapsed into one knob. I have added a comment to clarify things.

This is interesting and all done from the 'Command Center'. If you select a snapshot, program an 'instant' CC# and assign a number to 'Value' and then save. Now move to another snapshot, go to the 'Command Center' and select the same 'instant' icon and the same CC# and select a different 'Value' and save. Now when you move back and forth between the two snapshots they do send the different 'Value' numbers you assigned. It appears as if different CC#s are not retained between different snapshots but different Values are. I just don't understand the behavior here at all. Might be as designed but if so I am missing the underlying principle. I'm gonna leave this one for the big brains who have played with MIDI for a while to figure out. Good luck getting this resolved!

I think I know what is causing an issue for you. It has to do with blurb from the manual in bold below. All 'instant' MIDI messages (up to 6) are sent whenever you first switch to a preset. They are also all called when you switch to a snapshot. I am not sure how you can use the instant MIDI messages and not have them send exactly the same messages again when you want to switch snapshots. Maybe you have to use the footswitch icon assignments in the 'Command Center' to send different CC#s rather than the 'instant' icons. I can't quite get my brain wrapped around this either. It seems like you might want to have for instance the clean channel CC# sent when you initially select the preset and then have the crunch channel CC# load when you select a 'Crunch' snapshot. Perhaps assigning the CC# with a footswitch icon allows this to happen by firing off the CC assignment for the footswitch of whatever snapshot is selected when the preset is first switched to. I also seem to be missing something here. Please report back when you get it figured out or perhaps someone will post the correct procedure. I am definitely curious now. The thing that is particularly confusing to me is the table on page 36 of the manual seems to indicate the capability to send up to 6 different 'instant' commands upon a snapshot switch. I just don't see how this is setup? It would work if the values you programmed in the 'Command Center' in one snapshot were retained when you move to another snapshot and programmed different values in the 'Command Center' but they are not. I wonder if this is a bug or a feature that is in the manual but has not been implemented yet. Page 45 of the manual: NOTE: The Value parameters of any instant MIDI CC, Bank/Prog, MMC, and CV Out messages, plus the state (dim or lit) of any CC Toggle, CV Toggle, and Ext Amp messages are automatically recalled when selecting a snapshot.

You say in your initial post that you used the 'Command Center' to assign your CC command to 'Snapshot 1'. Did you use the icon of the actual switch for the CC assignment or did you use the lightning bolt (instant) assignment. If you did properly use the footswitch icon for the footswitch that corresponds to the snapshot the only other thing I can think of is that perhaps you still have the CC assigned from the 'Controller Assign' page as well. Make sure you dial that back to none or you may be sending out the wrong CC# no matter what you assigned in the 'Command Center' page. Another problem people have run into is not realizing that the footswitch icons in the 'Command Center' start with the 'Bank' footswitch so you may want to double-check and make sure the footswitch you assigned your CC# to is indeed the one that corresponds to the snapshot footswitch you are pressing.

That was my first thought as well but I don't think it applies in this case. That 'Snapshot Edit' setting does not appear to have any effect on the CC# settings. He is right when he says that the MIDI CC does not allow the usual click and turn procedure that creates brackets around the CC# and allows it to be changed from snapshot to snapshot like other parameters. I think the trick may instead be to assign the CC# from the 'Command Center' page but I could well be incorrect. Using the Helix for MIDI assignment has not been a focus for me.

There are some people who have controlled DMX lighting quite successfully with the Helix. Kind of a cool use of the Helix, I think it required some intermediary DMX control device. There is another thread on it here, http://line6.com/sup...ighting/?hl=dmx

I am not using my Helix for MIDI switching but my first thought would be to assign the MIDI CC from the 'Command Center' page rather than from 'Controller Assign' page. You might want to give that a try or wait for someone else with more experience with MIDI programming on the Helix to chime in.