HonestOpinion

Cool! I appreciate your subsequent post. Moving on, I don't think any offence was intended.

-1000 "Hitler in your tone rig", wtf? No thank you! Think you need to read up on your history. Very gnarly and negative reference there. I don't want Pol Pot or Stalin in my rig either. :angry:

Depends on the singer, some singers need reverb and delay thick as curdled molasses, pitch correction, and doubling, or, if it is a bad enough Milli Vanilli type situation, they actually need a Cyrano de Bergerac type figure offstage singing while they mouth the lyrics. :D In all seriousness though, the amount of reverb and delay does differ to some extent with the quality of the voice of the singer, less is usually more with a better singer. There also tend to be industry trends that change with the era. I think most recordings produced now use much less reverb on vocals than they have in the past (its all about auto-tuning now, feh). Overall though I think your advice on setting the level of reverb/delay on vocals is fairly sound. Many a band has been unpleasantly surprised after the fact at how washed out in reverb their vocals sound in the recording they made of the show, particularly when they are mixing their own sound from the stage. Keeping the reverb level down can also help reduce the mic's tendency to feedback, especially when you have multiple singers.

See page 29 of the manual. It is fairly straightforward. Select the "Impulses" tab in the Helix Editor and you can drag and drop your IRs into the Editor which automatically dumps them into the Helix.

Glad to hear your system is back. This is a great reminder to me of why it is such a good idea to keep your preset and IR backups current and take note of your global settings. You never know when something might get corrupted or if you just accidentally set something incorrectly. At some level this is a computer and i always want to be able to roll back to the last point where things were working properly.

Great to hear it is working and thanks for the info.

I have no idea of what the limitations of the system are regarding tone matching but the one advantage of the Helix architecture is, as phil_m alluded to, both DSP processors can be used to handle any block (effects, amps, IRs, etc.) as well as chained together serially. Perhaps this would allow both or one of the processors to handle a single large DSP intensive task better than the Fractal although that is pure speculation. For all I know the Fractal might be able to decouple the DSP currently dedicated to amp and IR processing temporarily for another task (maybe it would require a firmware update?). Ultimately the method Helix chose to employ their DSP processing is more flexible than Fractal's, I just don't know enough about the mechanics of tone-matching to determine if that would be a critical advantage.

Power to the people :)

Any decent isolated power supply should do the trick. There are cheap ones on Amazon and Ebay that claim to be isolated but many actually are not. If noise is the issue you probably want to make sure you get one that is actually isolated. Here are some of the ones available from Sweetwater. http://www.sweetwater.com/store/search.php?s=Isolated+Power+Supply Note: There is also a Ground Lift switch on the Helix that can sometimes help.

Do any of the amp parameters (sag, hum, ripple, bias, biasX) have any effect on diminishing this? I assume you have already tried swapping out cables and guitar to eliminate equipment issues as a possible cause.

Absolutely correct and a darn good point! Unless he snapped the screenshot with a phone camera which is unlikely. Yep, if that is a PrtScrn screenshot that probably eliminates a poor VGA/DVI connection as a possible cause.

LOL, assuming that is the onomatopoeia spelling of a rim shot perhaps followed by a cymbal crash. ;)

Added an Idea for the Brian May Deacy amp. This small home-made amp produced for Brian May by his bass player John Deacon has a uniquely warm and almost vocal quality that is quite distinct from other amps. It can make a solo sound almost as if it is being sung. Would love to see this model added to the Helix. Vote 'er up! http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Add-Brian-May-Deacy-Amp/841534-23508

This topic is painful, a bit like being in an intensive "care" ward! :D

Voted!

I am still hoping for that small but magnificently warm, musical, and almost vocal like quality of Brian May's Deacy amp. Vote here for the Deacy amp: http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Add-Brian-May-Deacy-Amp/841534-23508

I am one of those Helix users who prefers not to have to hook anything other than the Helix and maybe an extra expression pedal up live. The less points of failure and extra sources of noise the better as far as I am concerned. Due to my constant quest to keep things simple and contained in one device I am always happy to see top-notch amps and effects make their way into the Helix. I fully recognize that is just my preference though. More power to those who require additional flexibility even if that means that, for some, their rig looks and plays like the deck of the Starship Enterprise with Matrix level connectivity to all their devices. The Helix was certainly geared to enable them. I think I know what you were getting at but it seems there is a better way of describing the Helix than as the "basic model". It is L6's top-of-the-line MFX and is more like the 'premium model'. If you follow your point to its logical conclusion about not including for free, effects, or for that matter amps, that cost "20% to 25% of the cost of the Helix" why include more than 3 good amps and a couple of effects in the entire unit? That is already more "value" than the total cost for the Helix. I realize at some point L6 may or may not sell some amp or effect packs but as the guy who has to ultimately pay for them I am certainly not going to encourage or appreciate it yet at this still fairly early juncture. Call it entitlement or enlightened self-interest but I hope (not demand) they add more for free first, certainly HX level reverbs as they don't exist on the Helix. "Free" may not even be exactly accurate anyway as the price point of the Helix may have been calculated with a certain level of post-release development costs built into the pricing structure. I would be the first to admit though that they have already delivered an incredible device at this price point. To me part of the beauty of a modern digital MFX unit is that you can include rooms full of great amps and effects that use to require a job on Wall Street or as plastic surgeon to the celebrities; not to speak of the subsequent need to spend a small fortune on maintenance, tubes, cables, and such. The same goes for the modern DAW. It used to cost a pile of dough spent on studio recording equipment for what can be done on a laptop with an inexpensive application now. I agree with your point about not applying the "Peter Principle" to the Helix and "improving" it to the point of the DSP imploding but something tells me these guys still have features, amps, and effects to add that will not cause the palace walls to crumble.

It can be done directly on the Helix or on the computer using the Editor. On the Editor just click on the camera icon and there will be a rename option. For editing it on the Helix just press the Presets knob to open the Setlist menu and then press Knob 6 (Rename Snapshots). Tthe instructions are on Page 37 of the current manual Rev. D http://line6.com/data/6/0a06439c975d5787c3e351aa0/application/pdf/Helix%202.0%20Owners%20Manual%20-%20Rev%20D%20-%20English%20.pdf

That looks like a great tip from Wallyg. I don't use Bose but I have used these column ("line array") speakers and they can sound great. I would agree that you need minimal processing and bypassing the Tonematch may be the way to go. It may be that the Bose is simply revealing some shortcomings of the preset that sounded ok in whatever else you were monitoring the Helix with before the Bose. This may be off base but perhaps the preset is the culprit here. What amp model are you using for your "metal" sound on a crunch channel? Maybe you need to dial something heavier up.

I think Helix is also going to need to accrue a track record of being hardy and "road-worthy". Will the switches, knobs, and joystick tolerate the abuse of constant touring? This is really Line6's first foray into an MFX of this caliber and musicians' and roadies' perceptions have to catch up with the fact that the construction on the Helix is far superior to L6's previous offerings. Besides, as someone else alluded to, what touring amp tech wants to be put out of work by a "robot", although, there are some bands who have made that move and there will probably be many more to come in the future.

Sorry, I just saw this! Exactly what I was referring to in the last paragraph of my post above and indicating the block responsible was precisely what I had in mind.

I do often use the Output block volume, and in fact I always at least have a clean boost on the Output block assigned to a footswitch. I can see where the Channel Volume and volume on the Output block may not be exactly "redundant" that was a poor choice of words. And now that I think about it, using Channel Volume may be easier than trying to synch up Master volumes when you are using two amps in a preset. Not making any proclamations here, just trying to understand why both Master and Channel Volume are required. Open to explanation here if anyone has put any thought into other reasons why it is good to have both. You may not be able to change the input level on the Helix but you could still monitor the level of the signal coming in from your guitar/instrument/mic as well as the impact of a change made by engaging the pad or changing the impedance setting. As far as output readings you are not always on a computer with meter readings available (often only have the Helix Editor up, meters in the Editor might be a nice feature) and you are unlikely to be reading the output levels on a mixer unless you are tweaking presets on your Helix right next to the mixer. Anyway, not trying to make a federal case for meters here, I have been getting along quite well without them, just think it would be nice to have. Even just having a warning light that indicated digital clipping somewhere in the signal path would be cool.

Assuming it is not as others have mentioned a problem with either one of the cables, phantom power, or a bad input channel or perhaps an incorrect input trim setting on the board the first thing that leaps to mind is your routing within the Helix's presets. I would try plugging into a DAW/computer if you have one available and seeing for yourself if you really are outputting different levels from the right and left channels. If so, you could track back from there to see what the routing issue is (probably within the preset). If there is no level difference than you have at least eliminated the preset as a probable cause and the problem is probably somewhere between the Helix's XLR outputs and the board's inputs. That would include faulty outputs on the Helix or inputs on the board as possible culprits. Note: Are you sending him "Mic" or line level output from the Helix?

You are correct in that you can use your ears on the Helix just like an analog board to kick blocks in one at a time and adjust them so they don't cause significant changes in volume. One point regarding this however is that digital clipping is way nastier and less musical than analog so clipping is not as big an issue or as noticeable on an analog pedal board. A bit of clipping on an analog pedal board can go unnoticed or even sound good, however on a digital MFX clipping can lead to a more substantial troubleshooting task to find out where the offending block is. Just a small amount of digital clipping can make your sound terrible and it can be a block that is just a bit too hot and not that obvious. Finding those marginally "too hot" blocks is where metering seems to be more useful in the digital realm.

An interesting point regarding clipping. And yet, I'll bet many users employ the "Channel Volume" much more frequently or even exclusively to get their preset to the desired volume and leave the Volume on the Output block at 0db. This would be a prime example of where metering might be very handy. You would be able to easily see if the "Channel Volume" level on the Amp block was driving anything downstream too hard.