HonestOpinion

You might be able to change the output on your computer to the computer's soundcard but silverhead is correct. The best way to proceed is probably to connect your monitors to the Helix. That way you don't have latency issues as the sound does not have to be processed by your Helix and then passed out through the DAW to the computer's soundcard. There is however always the option of routing the output to your computer's sound card if you want or even "reamping". Take a look at pages 44-47 in the manual, there are some great tips for different recording scenarios.

Great to hear, cheers! More than one way to skin a cat, my apologies to cat lovers everywhere.

Great to know this is working well with a DI-Box from an actual user, thanks. I use the Aux input for my acoustic guitar 1/4 output acoustic-electric but this is certainly a viable alternative. I see it as being potentially useful for plugging in a keyboard, mandolin, another electric guitar, or really any third instrument, particularly an instrument that requires or benefits from an XLR input. Some "studio" guitars have XLR outputs to keep the noise floor down to the absolute minimum. Of course, you also have the four returns in addition to the "Guitar" and "Aux" input, so there are no shortage of inputs on the Helix but this is the only XLR input, good to know it can be used for more than a mike where needed.

Reviews are almost useless in magazines other than to describe features anyway. Magazines make their money off advertisers. Give a bad review and you lose an advertiser and their revenue. The last thing they can afford to do is alienate the advertisers who pay their bills by writing a critical, balanced, or heaven forbid, a negative review. You might even get sued. There is an inherent conflict of interest built into their "reviews". Kind of like the way politicians get their campaign money from the very people they need to be reigning in. This has always been true and is even more true now when keeping a magazine afloat in the online world has become incredibly difficult. Look back over the years and you will almost never see a negative review despite the fact that plenty of bad products have graced the pages of the magazines. I pretty much go by the rule, if the review is glowing and over the moon, there is a good chance the product is pretty decent or even excellent, if the review is faint praise or neutral, look out. caveat emptor, buyer beware.

I used to use a Digitech IPB-10 and it actually had a parameter that allowed you to dial in the sensitivity of the expression pedal footswitch. Not sure exactly how they did that but it worked great and it was really nice to be able to customize how hard you needed to stomp on the switch to get it to activate.

This guy is awesome, a great musician and designer of presets, and thoroughly entertaining! He should be hosting a show on MTV (which is a piece of crap now and would be the better for his presence) or at least a radio show or podcast!

Great idea for those who need an additional instrument input!

Although I agree the Helix has a fantastic interface for the most part here are just a few of the things the editor can offer off the top of my head, both current and in the future. Many of these have already been mentioned by others: Much faster and easier to use a keyboard to name patches and scribble strips. Potential ability to save and copy individual blocks, effects and your custom settings as templates, or even whole paths as templates, all without using a preset slot. These could all be saved offline. In effect, your computer offers almost unlimited storage for things you would not want to take up valuable Helix memory. Scenes, scenes, scenes!!! Even if scenes prove to be too much labor and too confusing for the Helix's physical interface they could possibly be simple to implement in the editor. This would be a huge win! No aching back as stated before for those who want to do major modifications to their presets, especially for those who use the Helix primarily in a home studio. Provides the ability to use a remote screen grabber like Snagit to use an android, iPad, or Windows tablet to control and make changes to the Helix from eye level while practicing or live. Making changes to many presets at once, although it can't be done globally is still much faster with the editor if for example you discover an EQ change, effect setting, or addition you want to add to all or many of your presets. Potential to back up all global settings as well as global EQ and have different scenarios available to load for different venues and hardware setups. Faster to see what is in each block in a preset although this could still be improved by having the effect for instance show up in the editor when you hover over it (Duncann's suggestion) or just display what each block is in the master section of the screen. Save wear and tear on the footswitches, knobs, and buttons or even provide access to one that has failed. This could potentially add years of life to your Helix and save L6 a boatload of money on warranty repairs. Ability to see all the parameters for a block on one page where you might have to page multiple times on the Helix interface. This also enables you to better visualize and quickly adjust multiple parameters that may be highly interactive such as the amp and cab parameters or effects with multiple pages. Much faster to jump to presets that are spread far apart from each other or are in a different setlist. Ability to quickly see all the presets in a user list and get a better sense of a setlist's layout for live operation. The potential to enhance the Helix looper with saving of your loops and more complex looper operation. There are probably dozens more I have not thought of, the editor is a beautiful thing with some magnificent potential!

I like this idea a lot and it makes me think about adding separate distortion for the power amp part of the sims. This would be equivalent to the difference in distortion you get from saturating the power tubes in an amp with the master turned up to 11 versus cranking the "Drive" parameter in the preamp.

I am also using Windows 10 (64bit) and I have not experienced this. It sounds almost like two conflicting drivers, a piece of hardware (Helix or other) conflicting with the driver, or a driver that did not install properly. If this continues it might be worth backing up your presets and downloading and reinstalling the latest beta Helix App (1.11.1) and letting it reinstall all the software again in case the first download got corrupted somehow or a driver did not install properly. You can then retry the Updater and see if you are still crashing.

I do have one suggestion if you are going to add effects to factory presets. Copy the factory preset to a User list first. Edit it there. That way you can back up your User lists with the "Export Setlist" editor option. You can then restore your User setlists without disturbing the Factory setlists. This means that next time there is a firmware upgrade. You will not have to overwrite what could potentially be new or enhanced Factory presets with the presets from a former version of the firmware.

Perfect! Although threads like this should stick around until the issue is either addressed to whatever extent possible or it is established that nothing further can or will be done (at which point they sometimes stick around anyway so people can vent).

There is always the possibility in a large public forum that there are trolls, potentially on either side of the debate. Given how many people have chimed in on this one however I think it is safe to say that this is a legitimate discussion and issue. I am not sure how constructive it is to assert to this many people that their issue does not exist and is simply the result of what would have to be two troll armies given how many people feel the same way, either pro or con, on this issue.

I think some specific instructions on how to connect to different hardware would be a great section to add to the helixhelp.com WIKI. As far as the order of effects, there are several websites that make suggestions on "standard" setups but as others have pointed out they are only general guidelines and breaking the "rules" can result in some great sounds. Googling "guitar pedal order" brings back lots of great suggestions. I do however experience some of the same confusion as people post differing instructions on how to get the best sound out of the Helix. I say keep them coming though and eventually a consensus should emerge as we see a preponderance of people doing things the same one or two ways. Once we have that we can thing of new ingenious ways to break the "rules". :D

A mono block might be your best option if you don't want to use an adapter and also if you want to get sound to both earpieces in the headphone. If you don't want to use a mono block in your presets perhaps you could use an adapter like the one below although I think it would only provide sound to one side of the headphones. Also the adapter's description indicates that it is for splitting a mono signal to left and right so I am just assuming it would sum to mono in the opposite direction, something I know does not always work. http://www.zzounds.c...419?siid=121896

I would suggest the following: Back up any presets you want to save. Go to the Helix download page, select your OS version, check the "Beta" checkbox on the right side of the screen and hit "Go". Download the 1.11.1 version of the beta Helix App. Install it, this will automatically install the latest version of the driver, Helix Editor, and Line6 Updater. Now run the Line 6 Updater(version 1.8), choose the latest version of the firmware(1.10.0) and do the update. This should get you to the latest version of the firmware and hopefully you won't see the message you were getting previously any more about "1.10 or later required".

Not everyone "gets the repeated idea" or we would not be seeing such a lively discussion on this topic. I know people are just trying to be helpful but I do understand gunpointmetal's frustration with the repeated suggestions on how to make the Helix work within one preset. It is not like those of us advocating for decreased latency have not tried this avenue. We are requesting an enhancement to the Helix and people keep chiming in with "but let me show how you to do the same thing with complex routing, tap dancing, and less DSP for your multiple signal paths". That sort of answer has led me to truly appreciate those who advocate patience as Line6 hopefully addresses the issue. This demonstrates that they understand that this is an issue for some, even if they do not agree or do not have an issue with it themselves. I understand you are tired of seeing the repetition in this topic, I am tired of it myself and I am participating. If it gets old enough I will simply stop reading the posts which is the point you have probably reached as this is not an issue you appear to be particularly invested in. How is suggesting a thread about an issue that people feel strongly about, "needing closing", the solution to a post you don't approve of? Let's please not start censoring people by shutting down entire topics. Keep injecting humor in various topics as you have been doing so well to lighten things up when they start getting too serious, that is a far better tactic than stopping the conversation. One of the virtues of this forum is that everyone can express their opinion, and I have found that pointing out any shortcoming, no matter how constructively approached does often cause people to instantly leap to the Helix's defense and try to minimize the issue or suggest a workaround rather than support a fix. This behavior does force the person suggesting the change to be incredibly patient, take some heat, and unfortunately lends itself to the issue's advocate repeating it so it does not get lost in the noise. Ironically, that repetition often starts the whole cycle again. I also sometimes wish people would refrain from commenting if they are not directly acknowledging the issue before they suggest a workaround that has been suggested many times before. That acknowledgement goes a long way towards preventing knee jerk reactions to what otherwise often sounds like someone ignoring, minimizing, misunderstanding, or undermining the issue and ongoing efforts to get it addressed. I do realize once the topic gets long enough people may not have read everything that has already transpired. I know I have been guilty of repetition myself, more than once, um, more than once :D

Glad you mentioned the 2 x 10", these might also work well like the Line6 L3's. Best approach if possible is probably to take your Helix to the guitar store and play both bass and guitar through some different options.

You are so right about the pedal being easier to find than a footswitch and that is a compelling reason to use the Helix in this manner. I am also a singer and guitarist but I usually ride the expression pedal for volume adjustments and swells or wah and other effect parameters, so I don't really have it generally available for preset switches. This could certainly work for some scenarios though. Thanks for the tip!

A darn good question! I know to some extent it is a preference thing, some bass players prefer using several 10" speakers to a 15" and some although relatively few guitarists prefer a 15" speaker in their guitar amp or cab. If I were trying to find a good compromise for using the monitor for both guitar and bass I would definitely go with one or two 12" speakers. Two speakers would push more air for larger crowds or a really loud band but one might do the trick and you could always mike it. To me a 15" is a little woofy and doesn't tighten up enough for good guitar monitoring where as I find a 12" speaker to be sufficient if not ideal for bass. If your PA has subwoofers it could certainly make up the difference. I know a lot of manufacturers have been going to dual 12" speakers for subwoofers rather than a single 15" or 18". They sound great but to my ears nothing reproduces low end sound better than a larger speaker with plenty of headroom. So if you were asking about a PA subwoofer, I would opt for the larger speaker with plenty of amp power. For your purposes though, a compromise that will accommodate bass or guitar, I would go for either one or two 12"s.

LOL, I try to avoid using absolutes like "always" and "all" where they don't apply. There so often turns out to be some exception I did not think of. The reason I modified this to "almost always" is that there are some examples of, perhaps not digital but its older uncle, solid state equipment, like the old Tom Scholz SR&D Rockman stuff actually gaining value over the years. One of the few exceptions to analog equipment I can think of that has gained value. There may be one or two pieces of digital equipment that have gained in value (although I can't think of one) . Although you are correct when you say digital is not an investment in the conventional sense, destined to sell for more than the purchase price, I do believe it can be an "investment" if it saves your back, makes you money at gigs, and brings you joy. But overall, your statement is correct. Who said anything about knowing their future plans, I never requested that? The only thing I can safely say is that they have them and development resources will shift to them at some point.

After many years of buying digital equipment I have come to realize that it almost always decreases in value. The new digital stuff just tends to be better. Only some good tube amps, analog effects, and guitars increase in value. Line6 is extremely innovative when it comes to digital products. As such, I always see the challenge for them being to support current and past products while continuing to bring new products to market. I admit to getting a bit concerned when I see new products immediately hitting the market after the Helix. I don't want to see development efforts on the Helix getting too diluted. The more money I spend on a product the more years I want to get out of it before support and development are end of life'd. I definitely don't want to see a better version of the Helix within two years of initial release, not at this price. At the same time I realize I can't and don't want to stop progress. Recognizing the fact that Line6 will have new and improved products in the pipeline that will inevitably divert resources I definitely encourage as rapid a pace as possible on Helix firmware updates, improvements, and additions, not because I am impatient but because I realize that their commitment, resources, and focus are bound to shift to new products. Even if they want to keep working on it, most or all of the developers and product managers who are completely dedicated to the Helix right now will eventually be instructed by the corporate higher ups to shift their efforts to new profit centers/products. That is just the way things work.

I absolutely agree, improvements are probably coming down the road and perhaps not up to everyone's expectations but I believe they will satisfy most. I don't know about changing my way of playing although I will adapt to some extent to whatever equipment I play through. This applies to MFX, amp and pedal, or whatever. As I have said before, you could not pry this thing away from me right now, I love the Helix! Just want this issue addressed as much as possible given the current resources and architecture. I can wait, I am extremely patient when I believe everyone is working towards the same goal, improvement. I just believe real growth and maturation of a product only happens with a combination of optimism, faith in the company and the community using it, and acknowledgement of both its strengths and weaknesses. You need people running around yelling "we're #1", but you also need to find the areas to make things better (this probably applies to people and countries as well).

Glad to hear it! The Helix has some amazing sounds.

Quote Unless you have scenes and enough DSP aboard to accommodate several presets worth of switching within one preset, I don't think the "battle-ready aircraft carrier" analogy is particularly accurate. Right now we have more of speedboat that can't change directions quickly. ;)