zooey

Interesting, goes against the conventional wisdom, even info from Line 6. Which length of IRs did you use? Would be interesting to see how much if any difference that makes.

Clearly it can't. It's software, so unlike Helix, it has no analog inputs to control. I suppose it's possible they've emulated a similar effect, but they didn't do that in Helix, so I doubt it. It's really not possible, since the net effect depends on the electronics in the guitar, which the software has no knowledge of.

I've th I've thought this exact thing, though not as well articulated. My main guitar has three humbuckers, and custom switching that gives you 76 electrically distinct coil combinations, all more or less humbucking. (Yes you read that right, 76, with just a 5-position switch and 3 3-position mini-toggles.) Running clean, or even clean-ish, there's a ton of interesting variety there, including lots of sounds that are generally kind of similar but clearly not the same, lots of fun. But once you're fairly dirty, as you say, the simplicity and focus of a straight-up neck or bridge pickup wins out to my ear. At minimum, the semi-subtle variations that are pretty entertaining cleaner just get lost, not a great tradeoff for less punch and clarity. Metaphysically, or something, it seems like the world is noisier and more overstimulated than in days of yore. It takes more focus and punch, aka obviousness maybe, to cut through. Maybe today's more single coil/neck-bridge tendencies are related.

Why should anyone help you out on your quest? Because you're so friendly and cooperative, and have contributed so much here? Around my house, when someone acts like a snot, we either ignore them or send them to their room.

Controller mixer blocks? Doubt it, simplicity and ease of use are super important.

Yeah, but whose preset is bigger ;)

I've had that form of freeze happen several times, where it still passes audio, but all controls are unresponsive. First time was months before I heard about volume pedal issues, don't remember which firmware. It's not at all common for me, but it would be a huge drag live.

Just out of curiosity, in that simplified patch, if you run a cable directly from the send to the return, is there less noise? If the return's not a shorting jack, and it's just sitting open feeding a high gain amp, it wouldn't surprise me if that was noisy. In real life you have your outboard pedal there, so the same sorts of considerations apply to its inputs.

If you're thinking about the Surface Pro 4, check http://surfaceproaudio.com. I was thinking seriously about a Surface running Scuffham and Amplitube, but got sold on a Helix instead, thankfully, given how things went for him. That fellow has been through all kinds of grief trying to get real audio happy on that machine. Working with Microsoft, doing way more testing than I'd ever have time for, yadda, props to him. I just had a quick look now, looks like things have maybe settled down significantly, though I didn't check in detail. I think there have been firmware updates, and maybe better info from MS so music programs can be written to work better in that environment. I know full-on music production may not be what you're thinking about anyway, but keep your eyes open in any case.

How long do you think it'll take to build out and fully test each one of those features? You're looking at several years work, assuming there's nothing else they want or need to do. A huge list of high priority items is a lot like having no priorities at all.

1. Stability 2. Upgrade process 3. IR management 4. Anything else

Inline XLR pads are cheap too, if need be.

I paid $400 shipped for two of the 12" Alesis version of that Alto, new on eBay. Think they're gone now, but still.

S-Gear and Amplitube are both very good IMO. Haven't compared them to Helix much, or used them much since Helix, because I want a guitar setup I can use w/o a computer, but I like them both a lot.

Which specific model did you get?

Actual midi program change numbers go from 0 to 127. Some devices think it's more human-friendly to show them as 1 to 128, but it's a fiction, technically.

I posted a bit ago about doing something similar with a Blackstar ID:60. Been playing with that off and on since. Results are mixed,w that particular amp, but it's a nice and compact package, and the ID is nice in its own right.

If you bypass or remove all the blocks in a patch and set output gain to 0 DB, is it still too hot?

There are some Champ IRs in this, no idea if they're 1x8s or decent: https://musical-artifacts.com/artifacts/252

Ah, I was thinking you meant something entirely different. But silverhead is right that Helix's routing flexibility and its ability to use the same block type multiple times in a preset makes that tricky. What exactly gets locked? Locking by position on the screen doesn't make sense, it might not exist, or might be functionally completely different in other presets. Simplest thing, which I think has been talked about in the context of global reverb but could be extended to hold any blocks you want, would be for there to be a global path, or two, one pre- and one post- everything else, that you could put any effects you wanted into. Reverb and/or delay post everything would be the most obvious use case. Would mean those effects had the same settings for every patch though, not ideal, and not really the same thing as gapless preset switching. Also, every preset would have to have enough DSP headroom to run alongside those global effects, and Helix would have to check when you added anything to a preset or a global rack. Potentially interesting idea though...

What does locking a block mean? A given block is either running the settings from the last preset or the current one. If it continues to run the last one, when does it change, and why wouldn't there be a gap at that time? (That's assuming it takes time for a block to init to a new state, which is clearly true, or this whole issue wouldn't exist.)

The built in 1x8 Small Tweed is a 1x8" Fender® Champ I think.

Each snapshot remembers which blocks are enabled and disabled, plus the setting of every parameter you have set to be controlled by snapshots, up to 64 of them I think. They can do other stuff too, but that's the basics, seems like they'd meet your needs.

Really nice, great stuff

Ask them, maybe they or one of their customers tried it.