HonestOpinion

Thanks for the contribution, awesome! Is the problem with the IRs on the openair site due to the size/duration, number of seconds of the IR? There are a lot of IRs there. Hopefully there are some that are short enough, if not, we will use them when the Helix III comes out :huh:. They might also be great to use in various software recording applications(DAWs).

Please post links for free Impulse Responses (IR) here. Looking for links to freeware, promotional, basically any IR that is legal to share and download including Helix user created IRs that you are willing to share. THANKS!!! Here is one to get things started: http://www.openairlib.net This is kind of an interesting site with a huge repository and has some extraordinarily different IRs available for download. There are definitely many in the mono 48khz format preferred by the Helix. The stereo ones can be used as well but you will only get the left channel per the documentation in the Helix. I suppose if you know how you could possibly also transform the IRs that are not in the proper format for the Helix. If you find an IR you like just click on the link and then select the "Impulse Response" tab. I have successfully downloaded the IRs from there. Note: Some browsers will automatically try to play .wav files; you will need to make sure you use a browser that doesn't, or change the settings so that it gives you the option to download or play. I have to admit I have yet to use them but it looks like there is some amazing potential here. These are not mic/cab IRs, they are IRs from all kinds of spaces and structures, natural and man-made, taken from locations around the globe, I imagine they could be used in lieu of a reverb or echo for instance, or perhaps even instead of a cab. Thinking some of these might also work well for acoustic guitar as well as electric. They have one from a space that is described as having the longest natural echo of an any man-made structure in the world. http://www.openairlib.net

Here is a topic started for expression pedal squeak: http://line6.com/support/topic/16996-expression-pedal-squeak/?hl=squeak Just curious if you followed the procedure to back up all your presets first, upgrade to the Helix app 1.02 , do the firmware 1.04.1 update, do the 9&10 reset, and finally restore your saved presets with the latest version of the Helix app? If you did a full reset including globals using the 9&10 footswitch reset procedure as you know you will need to go back and set your global settings again. I wonder if any of the global settings could be impacting the preset sounds?

Hoping more folks will vote this one up at http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Swap-footswitch-assignments-from-top-row-to-bottom-vice-versa/790520-23508 Global setting to allow swap of footswitch assignments from top row to bottom & vice versa If there was a global setting to swap assignments from the top to the bottom rows the player would be at their leisure to decide for themselves whether they prefer pedals on the bottom or top row. You would be able to change your preference for presets on top or bottom row and have all your factory and user pedal assignments follow your preference. Create a setting in global settings to swap all of the footswitch assignments from the top row to the bottom row and vice versa. As of now, pedal assignments do not follow your preference choice of whether you want pedals on your bottom row or the top. If you change this preference you would have to reassign every pedal manually. The Line6 factory presets are set for the pedals to show up on the bottom row and the only way to change that is reassign every pedal, one by one. That creates a big problem if you are a player who likes to use the bottom row for presets and have your pedals on the top row. The Helix has the great feature of allowing the user to decide whether they want to split pedal/presets on either the top or bottom row. It is a shame to see this functionality crippled by not allowing the factory presets to conform to the users choice without days (months) spent on manually reassigning every footswitch assignment in the factory and potentially user presets. http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Swap-footswitch-assignments-from-top-row-to-bottom-vice-versa/790520-23508

Sounds unfortunately like it may be time to open a repair ticket with L6.

All good points and probably accurate. I don't know what the actual cost would be to get this done and that is the data point I am missing to truly understand the decisions to limit the hardware. Your points may be self evident given the direction various manufacturers have taken. Again, perhaps we just have to wait until the hardware components run so cool, cost so little, and are so abundant that the hardware is no longer bottle-necking the software. The perplexing thing is that in the rest of the software world (non audio software), the hardware usually runs ahead of the software. It takes programmers a while to write software that takes advantage of the new processors and hardware innovations. With MFX units the reverse seems to be true; the hardware is constantly struggling to keep up.

Ultimately I guess I don't understand why both the latency between presets issue and the delay trails/spillover issue can't be solved relatively inexpensively by throwing some additional hardware at it. As has been discussed elsewhere the DSP chips on the Helix are about $15 apiece in bulk. I could be way off here but it seems as if you added a couple of DSP chips and some memory you could knock out both problems. The additional DSP would handle the delay trails. The additional memory would allow you to cache at least an entire bank or two of presets such that at least all of the presets available for any two banks (8 footswitches) would be instantly available. That way at least the presets you have visible at any one time could be switched to instantly. That would primarily leave the physics of the footswitch as the main culprit for delays between preset switches; the software would not be an issue as it would be cached (preloaded). Caching is a strategy that is used all over the software world to dramatically increase response times and it is probably in use to some extent on the Helix but maybe it could be increased. Anyway, I know there are some really smart programmers over at L6 and they have marketing telling them what price point they have to hit. However, IMHO people would be willing to pay a bit more to get a device that is not hampered by inadequate hardware, even if that hardware is considered an industry standard or even cutting edge. It is very frustrating to see the software out ahead of the hardware, like a tantalizing mirage of water and a beautiful girl that are just ahead but still not quite attainable. When are these units going to have enough hardware on board to truly get the job done? Seems like we are still one or two generations away. In the meantime, I still love the Helix, there is nothing else out there like it, and I prefer it to anything else out on the market right now. However it still has a ways to go before it resolves the issues of switching latency and spillover. The same two issues challenging most other manufacturers. No matter how they resolve it, it still requires compromises. I am sure even with the current hardware both issues can at least be improved with clever workarounds and code optimization. One would think if it was just an inexpensive hardware issue all the high end manufacturers would have solved it by now. I sure hope the reason isn't to save a few dollars and increase the profit margin because marketing knows people will buy these MFX units despite the issues. I don't understand why these issues have not been resolved by additional hardware, I am sure there are good reasons but nobody from the industry has stepped forward to explain the challenges or perhaps give us a slightly more expensive option that addresses them. Maybe the math just does not make good business sense and there would not be enough people willing to pay the extra to resolve these issues. Perhaps we just have to wait until the hardware gets so cheap and powerful that the manufacturers don't have to worry about it impacting the price point of the "Helix III". Until that day, the Helix rocks and I think it is the best "all in one" MFX unit on the market (but please don't stop improving it)!

Assuming you have not damaged your amp you may be able to restore proper operation by getting and connecting a more garden variety footswitch(don't use the Helix) and attempting to reset the amp. I think I had this happen one time when I was hooking up an Amp Gizmo to my Boogie and I was able to restore normal operation with the correct cable and switching things on and off.

Sounds like one possible source of the problem could be how you have your send/return jacks plugged in. A lot of people are used to seeing send/return jacks in vertical pairs with the send jack on the top and the return on the bottom. The Helix send/return jacks are in horizontal pairs with the send next to the return on the same row. Some possible troubleshooting steps. Starting with as simple a setup as possible so you can troubleshoot from the ground up. This scenario uses "FX Loop 1" for the loop block, and the "Guitar" input and "1/4" output on the back of the Helix, adjust the instructions as needed: Connect guitar to "Guitar" input and set the "Input" block to "Guitar". Connect a guitar cable from the Helix "1/4" output to your amp input and set the "Output" block to "1/4". Connect from the input of your pedal to the "Send 1" jack on the back of the Helix. Connect the output from your pedal to the "Return 1" jack on the back of the Helix. Note: If you are looking from the back of the Helix this will be the two jacks on the top row all the way to the left in the "Sends/Returns" section. Select "FX Loop 1" as your loop block. Bypass all the effects blocks in your preset except for the "FX Loop 1" block. Make sure you do NOT have "FX Loop 1" bypassed. The "Mix" parameter on the FX Loop should be 100% Make sure your effect is powered up and has its level/volume turned up and turn it on. You should hear just the sound of your effect. The volume may be a bit low as all of the blocks are off, you can always crank the level on your output block. If this test succeeds you should now be able to turn the bypass off on the other Helix effect blocks and hopefully all will be well. For what it's worth, the loop functionality seems to be working as advertised, at least on my Helix, so it may well be a setup issue or a bad cable or the like. Good luck!

You have probably tried this already but two frequent culprits of tone/volume loss are not selecting "Mic" as the output level (instead of "Line") where appropriate and not cranking the physical "Volume" knob high enough.

My sympathies go out to all who are waiting. May their wait be a short one. It is worth it! One consolation may be that the Helix appears to be in high demand and selling a lot of units will probably translate into the resources for L6 to provide many enhancements and additional amp/cabs/effects and IRs over the life of the unit. Go Helix!

Chuckle, you are so right from a marketing perspective cruisinon2. I too love DI's frankness and honesty, don't ever change man!

Voted!

This seems like a great IdeaScale suggestion. I wonder if this was what Digital_Igloo was referring to a while ago when he hinted that L6 had some ideas on how to implement some form of delay trails without requiring additional DSP.

Great news! Glad to hear there was not a QC issue. The last thing you want to hear as an early adopter is that there are Quality Control problems or impacting hardware changes from one production run to the next.

I think this is a great idea and the easiest way to implement it might be that if a preset is saved in "stompbox" mode (8/10 assigned footswitches available) it would come up in "stompbox" mode when that preset is selected. Please put the idea in IdeaScale, you have my vote.

I love the Helix it is awesome! But... as has been pointed out many times(I suspect L6 is quite sick of hearing about it), the Helix does not have the ability to maintain delay trails from preset to preset. Line6 would be well served by providing scene functionality to compensate for this shortcoming. Although the Helix's ability to assign up to eight blocks per footswitch is great it is missing the functionality to assign a single block to more than one footswitch. It is the ability to assign the same effect or parameter to multiple footswitches that is essentially the "scene" functionality. Scene functionality would allow much more flexibility within one preset which is what you need if you want to have delay trails and have to remain within one preset to get them. Scene functionality would allow you to for instance easily change between multiple(more than two) cabs/IRs within a preset with only one footswitch and never have more than one cab or IR in operation at the same time. It would allow you to change the same amp or effect parameters with multiple footswitches; for example, stomping on footswitch1 would turn off the distortion and increase the mids parameter on the amp, stomping on footswitch2 would turn on the distortion and decrease the mids and also turn on the phaser. In summation, if you don't have delay trails between presets and can only have them within a preset, the most obvious alternative is to have scene functionality within presets. Scene functionality is a must have for more complex switching scenarios anyway, even if you are not concerned about delay trails!

I don't think this is nitpicking at all! I think this is the way many of us would like to be able to use the tap tempo. I would love to see Line6 change the behavior so that you could preset the millisecond(ms) value and still use tap tempo to override the ms value by clicking the Tap footswitch. That would be ideal and would definitely be the way I used the Helix! You should put this idea in IdeaScale. I remember being mystified when I first started using the Helix by the fact that the Tap did not work unless I had the effect block set to a subdivision. You were actually the one who clued me into that fact (thanks!). You are right you can use the capacitive touch feature but that may not be much help when you are out playing a gig unless you are playing barefoot. I think allowing the option for tap tempo to adjust the tempo on a preset with either beat subdivisions (e.g. 1/4, 1/16) or set with milliseconds is the way to go. Of course you would have to either default to a 1/4 subdivision for the tap footswitch or offer an additional beat parameter for subdivision, either global, or better yet, per preset.

Are you also having to reset the Helix after the volume drops as some other users have reported or can you get the volume back? Sounds weird to me too. I thought the paths on the Helix were only available in stereo by default. Even if you select mono effects/blocks you are still always on a stereo path as I understand it. Is this correct? Running out of only the left XLR or 1/4 automatically sums to mono. Are you running out of the Helix in mono or stereo? I output from the Helix in mono from my XLR (Left) output to the mixing board. Does this volume drop also occur when using only one, summed to mono, output; or, is this problem limited to stereo operation of the Helix? This might be a bug and not a user related routing/stereo vs. mono effect issue. Selecting a specific routing and mono effect selection may cause the bug. The fact that it only happens sometimes, and can actually cause the Helix to "lock up" and not allow volume pedal operation without a hard reset sounds much more like a bug.

Thanks, very helpful! Any more free acoustic IRs out there?

Now that has me really concerned, a "QC problem"! Should I be worried that I already have a Helix? Are they changing hardware in between batches? Did they have any specifics on what the QC problem was?

How is the SPDIF volume compared to the "Line" level output on the XLR (as opposed to the "Mic" level)? I would expect the "Mic" level to be louder than the SPDIF. Sounds like there is an issue with the overall SPDIF volume though.

I will give the Jazz Rivet a try, thanks. I am using an acoustic guitar with piezo pickups rather than the modeled acoustic of the JTV69. I need to be able to retain that real analog wood acoustic tone that so often ends up sounding digital when put through processors. Would love to get something that sounds close to a mic'ed Taylor or Martin.

Have you created a login on the Line6 website? You will want to login and then download.

100% agree, the DSP chips they are using are relatively inexpensive!