zooey

Some real world examples of abuse, not enforced as far as I know: - People sell Kemper rigs and include commercial profiles they bought, sometimes a boatload of them. That's fine in itself, but nothing prevents them from also keeping a copy in case they buy one again, and I bet many people do. If they then do buy another Kemper, those profiles are in use on both machines, but purchased only once. - I'd bet the same thing happens with commercial IRs on Fractal products. - Unlike Helix patches, I think Amplifire patches include the actual IR, so if you sell or trade your unit with patches that include commercial IRs, the same thing is happening. On the plus side, you can only use that IR on Amplifire. Not an Amplifire guy, so I don't know if you can use it in another patch without having a copy of the standalone IR file. Given the current tech, there's nothing preventing those particulars. I'm sure people are right that there's not enough money in those market segments to warrant the development of copy protection, which 99.999% of the time ends up annoying legal users without stopping pirates anyway.

I got this: Gator G-MULTIFX-2411 Padded Utility Bag It's decent, not too expensive, pretty well made, but not super padded. NOT suitable for getting stacked w everything else in the back of a truck, or as checked baggage.

@MojoAxe, not to disbelieve you, I don't understand. There's a firmware bug that affects only some units? How is that possible? If reinstalling the firmware doesn't fix it, then logically that says the firmware you had when the defect was happening is the same as what you have now. What's different is the physical device. Or is this a level of firmware that's hard coded, and not included in the firmware update process?

Agreed on both counts. I have no idea what their service network is like in the UK, but I bet there is one, it's not like that's the outback... You can also talk to your dealer, they may well help you out too.

You're welcome, glad to help :) Couple of other points: - The way most people put their IRs back in the same order is give them a 3-digit prefix, 001, 002, etc. In general that lets you drag a whole directory of them on the Helix app, and have their order stay the same. There are tools to do that in the file system before importing them into Helix, like this one for Windows. - That doesn't always work perfectly. I'm not certain of the specifics, but maybe if the IR file on disk has a Title attribute, Helix will use that as the IR name instead of the filename. I haven't had that happen a lot, but it has happened to me for certain. The Bulk Rename Utility mentioned above says it can work with mp3 ID tags, which may be a way around that, but I haven't tried those features.

If it's derived from multiple sources, probably not. Arguably it's yours then anyway, but that is a grey area. For instance, you are supposed to pay to use a drum beat sampled from someone else's record, even if that's all there is of their song in yours. I'm not aware of any precedent one way or another about this in IR-land. You might want to ask Michael Britt, he has a ton of similar product out there, enough market visibility to get ripped off and/or sued, and (I'd think) the resources to find out the practical real-world application of the laws.

Nothing would stop you, except maybe the possibility that if "your" IR was found to be binary identical to a commercial product, you could be liable for copyright or other applicable infringement. I hope Helix will some day implement IR management that recognizes files by their content, not just their names. That's particularly important since Helix modifies the files, even ones in its optional format, so you can't roll your own comparison without importing every IR you own into Helix and exporting them.

Did you save the preset after renaming your snapshots? Are the rest of the snapshot settings saved, besides the names? I haven't had any problems with this, FWIW.

Leaving DSP aside, there are some other key differences between IRs and native cabs. You're probably aware of all this, but just to say it for folks new to all this... - Helix cabs have microphone type and distance settings, while those are baked into an IR. You have to choose a different IR to change them. - Each Helix cab is a different block type, so in order to change cabs with a footswitch or snapshot, you have to add all the cabs you want to the preset, DSP permitting, then enable and disable them. On the other hand, which IR is selected is just a parameter for the IR block, so it can be changed by snapshots, footswitches, or another controller, and selecting a different IR for every snapshot doesn't use any more DSP than using the same IR for all of them. - Backing up, restoring, and managing IRs in general is a pain currently... Major IR management issues: - Selected IRs are remembered by position only, not by name, so you have to make sure to back up your IRs and restore them to the same positions when doing a firmware upgrade or backing up in general. - There's no way to see which IRs are in use and which aren't, so it's hard to know which ones you can replace if you want to make room for new ones. - If you want to reorganize your IRs, for instance to make room for a new package of them, you have to manually figure out which patches use ones you want to move, and manually edit those patches to point to the new locations. Not fun. - IR names are too short to preserve the names vendors give them, much less to add a short prefix indicating their source (AL=Allure, CEL=Celestion, OH=Ownhammer, etc). - IRs aren't included in a full bundle backup, so you have to back up and restore them individually. (Note that bundles aren't the best way to back up before firmware updates, because they include the factory presets too, which you probably don't want to overwrite, since they're often updated by new firmware. Except for the new-firmware case, they are the simplest and quickest way to back up "everything", but as noted above, they don't include IRs. They also don't include your global settings; there's no way to export or import those currently, you have to write them down.) We all hope for better IR management tools in the future, possibly as part of Helix Native, coming "soon". That said, Helix gives you the choice of either one, which is great.

They knocked it out of the park when I had a hardware problem. Great service.

@jrrjr68, what case is that? Looks fairly sturdy.

:)

One more thing. I just noticed this phrase: That's not a likely scenario, which may be at the heart of this confusion. Most snapshots would be latching, NOT momentary. When you step on them and let go, that snapshot stays in effect, like it does now. But in some presets, you might configure one or two snapshots intended for short sections of the song as momentary. For example, in the current world, if you're on your Crunch sound, and step on Lead for your solo, you'd then have to locate and press Crunch again at the end of the solo to go back there. By making Solo momentary, you'd just step on it and hold it down for the whole solo, then let go, and you'd automatically be back in Crunch. Clearly having to hold it down presents limitations -- no wah or stomp changes, unless you're sitting down and/or tricky enough to hold the snap switch down with one foot while doing stuff with your other one. Still seems like this feature would solve a very common case in a simple way, and is 100% optional if you don't want to use it.

There isn't one momentary snapshot. Individual snapshots within a preset are configured to be momentary or not, like stomp switches. If you step on a momentary and let. go, you get the snapshot you were on before you stepped on the momentary. You're right that there's no indication of what snapshot you'll go back to, but since the momentary is only active as long as you're stepping on it, I doubt you'd lose track. The momentary is just a temporary thing, for a quick hit of a different tone, then back where you were. As to the scenario where there is no previous snapshot, there's always a current snapshot; patches remember which one is the default. If the default snapshot is momentary and you hadn't recalled another one, stepping on it wouldn't do anything, since you're already on that snap. Your examples: See above, there's always a current snapshot. No indication, but the momentary's only active while you're stepping on it, not an issue I think. See above. The momentary doesn't change, it always calls up its corresponding snapshot, same as if it wasn't momentary. The only difference is that if it's momentary, when you let go of the switch, Helix reverts to whatever snapshot was active before you stepped on it.

Not to be disrespectful duncann, but please read my suggestion again. As soon as you take your foot off a snapshot footswitch configured as momentary, Helix reverts to the previously active snapshot. There's no second snapshot involved, just whatever snap you were on before pressing the momentary one. For instance, say you're on your Verse snapshot, and step on Solo. As soon as you let go of the Solo footswitch, it goes back to Verse. And if you're on your Bridge snapshot, but there's one Solo line in the middle of the bridge, you do the same thing -- step on Solo, hold it down for just that one line, then let go. You end up back where you were, Bridge in that case. Make sense?

The main edit screen on Helix has what's been referred to as the "Pacman shortcut", where if you're on the furthest left block of a row, pushing the joystick left "wraps around", putting you on the rightmost block. This suggestion is for similar behavior when naming patches and snapshots. In other words, if you're on the first character and push the joystick left, it wraps around to the right-hand end. Specifically I think it should end up on the last non-blank character of the name. The main benefit is that for me at least, it's super common to save a new variation of a preset with a suffix on the end, often just a number. For example, "Some Patch Name 2". Going quickly to the last character means you only have to move right one or two characters to add the first suffix, and you don't have to move at all to change the 2 to a 3. Secondary advantage is just that it makes any character effectively closer, since you can either move right normally, or wrap around if it's closer to the end. It's here on IdeaScale: https://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Pacman-shortcut-when-re-naming-presets-and-snapshots/896207-23508

I was just suggesting that when you let go, Helix would load whatever snapshot was current before you pressed the momentary one. Simple and flexible, and it fits my mental model of what "momentary" means. You're not in some new universe of available or current snapshots, you just load the momentary one temporarily, then unload it, going back to whatever was there before. But this apparent confusion in our exchange may indicate that the idea isn't as straightforward and understandable as I thought. What do other folks think?

Sorry duncann, I'm not following you. My idea was just this: Snapshot B is configured as momentary You're on snapshot A You step on B B becomes active As soon as you take your foot off B, Helix reverts to snapshot A The behavior is the same if you started on snapshot D -- when you let go of momentary snapshot B, Helix reverts to the previously active snapshot, D in this case. There are no "pairs of snapshots" involved, or additional snapshots beyond what exist today. It's a navigation convenience only - do this snapshot as long as I have my foot on the momentary switch, then go back to whatever snapshot was active before that.

Sorry for the delay, here's the IdeaScale item: https://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Momentary-Snapshots/896192-23508 Vote away! There are also some questions about exactly how it should work, feel free to discuss, there or here. (Not that you need my permission... anyway...)

Any device will have some percentage of defects. Contact your dealer, or Line 6 support. It's so new, either one should take care of you no problem, and Line 6 support is stellar.

All those suggestion are good. Some amps also feel more compressed than others, for instance Litigator. And FWIW, and haven't been back to it since trying it yesterday, but oddly enough I think the most transparent compressor may be the multiband. Check it out. I added it as the first thing in the chain, for my clean snapshot only. The other snapshots have a comfortable but still pretty natural amount of sustain from a combination of the other techniques mentioned above. I'm not a big fan of compressors for driven sounds, distortion inherently compresses, an actual compressor loses punch and responds less to how you play. IMO, YMMV, of course.

Some phasing etc is inherent in those kinds of effects. The Sound On Sound review of the Mimiq talks about subtle flanging: http://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/tc-electronic-mimiq-doubler Doubt there's any magic sauce, just well done optimization. I think the key is making the delay long enough to minimize flanging, but short enough that it doesn't​ audibly separate from the original.

It'd be cool if you could make snapshot switches momentary, like you can stomps. Idea would be that that snapshot would be live as long as you held the switch down, then the previously active one would kick back in. Use is the same as momentary stomps, but for full snapshots. Worth putting on IdeaScale?

Wish the vocal preamp had some basic tone controls, just for simplicity and to save a slot.

I'm probably misreading you Peter, but if you meant both are 1/4 notes but at different tempos, you can use the same setting, even the same snapshot of the same preset, and tap in the tempo before the song starts.