zooey

UPDATE: - Restarted my laptop, no change - Tried some more VSTIs, all of them could see and use the 2i2 - SEM V, FM8, and impOSCar2 could use it at the same time Really does seem to be a problem with Amplitube.

@willjrock: Could be. When did you see that? How did you resolve it?

Does ANYTHING ever show in that scribble strip, ever? Maybe it's dead. Hope not, but....

Thanks, but the most recent drivers for the original 2i2 I have are installed.

Yes, very nice :)

My plan exactly, best of all worlds, as you say. Far as "real time" goes, meaning out of the house at a jam or gig, one of the main reasons I got a Helix was because I didn't want to do that with a laptop, just too many moving parts. This fubar w Amplitube, even though I assume it'll get resolved eventually, just proves that case.

Not too beat a dead horse, or hijack this thread, but this is exactly the kind of "non-linearity" I'm afraid of in building an offline preset editor. Line 6 had inside knowledge about how things have changed over time, and that knowledge is built into the ecosystem. Specially, it's in the upgrade process, which is in Helix itself. I think.

Peace and happiness to all, wherever you are, whatever you're up to.

FM8 sees the 2i2 via ASIO, and works fine with it. Seems to be an Amplitube problem. Yay. Enough, think I'll have Christmas eve dinner with my wife (:-) Happy holidays everyone!

Hmmm, an unwelcome oddity. I haven't used AT for months, only a few times since I got my Helix. Today when I launched it after installing the newest version of AT 4 to get the new Fender stuff, basic audio isn't working. First off, all my settings in the Audio MIDI Setup dialog are gone. Second, when I choose ASIO from the Technology dropdown, I get an alert, "Could not initialize Audio Device. Change audio driver or check your advanced Audio Settings in Control Panel, make sure input/output same rate match same value for selected device." I'm using the same Focusrite 2i2 I've always used with AT in the living room, and which I still use for headphones there, and which is WORKING FINE for playing audio, videos, etc.. IOW, Windows can use it, but apparently AT csuddently can't. I do plan to use Helix for audio and MIDI at least sometimes in my basement studio, but I haven't tried that yet, always used a 2i2 in the living room and an 18i20 downstairs, and they've been doing fine. I know this isn't the actual place to ask about this distinctly non-Helix problem, but does anyone have any ideas?

@silverhead, that's no different from any other ASIO device, except for differences in the minimum latency you can achieve with the Helix driver. When I played through Amplitube before Helix, there was some latency with the Focusrite drivers, because zero latency isn't possible, but it wasn't enough to be a problem, for me.

I haven't used this capability at all, but Helix functions as a 8 in 8 out USB interface, and you can patch stuff around internally, so I don't think another interface should be needed. I most just play guitar when I go down to the "studio", so I haven't tried recording or patching through VSTs at all.

Anybody using Helix with computer amp sims? How are you hooked up? Before Helix, I was a big Amplitube fan, some Scuffham too, and Fender Collection 2 is out, would like to check it out, thought it'd be a good opportunity/motivator for figuring out how to get these two sorts of platforms to coexist nicely. I figured I'd plug my guitar into Helix like usual, set up a USB round trip to get into the computer and back, then try some ways to integrate the two in Helix. Not likely to take that hybrid rig out of the house, but I'd like to see how it feels. If anyone is doing this, specifics please!

Really great playing fremen!

Yes I've looked at the files, that's how I wrote that inventorying utility, and you're right that they're mostly self-documenting. The main dev environment I work in is ColdFusion/Lucee, and it parses JSON natively. Some things that seem possibly non-trivial to me... - Have you compared the firmware 201 version of a preset with the 211 version of the same thing? Clearly each object type has a schema that defines its fields, and those schemas change across firmware versions. Ideally utilities working with this data would read and write "all" firmware versions, whatever that means. Or more likely, only work with the most recent one, and recognize and refuse.to open others. Has to be kept up to date. - For some parameters, the displayed values don't correspond directly to how they're stored. Those enums would have to be sussed out wherever they're relevant, now and in the future. - To make this a sharable tool, it'd either be written in a language that could generate standalone apps for Windows and Mac, or it'd be a web app. ColdFusion (and me) are best suited for web apps. In that context, working with individual preset files is a drag, because they'd all have to be uploaded. Viewing an individual preset, sure, but the kinds of reorganization and inventorying tools we've talked about make much more sense for setlist files. The hang for me, so far, is that they're compressed using zlib, and my quick initial explorations didn't figure out how to handle that with the tools I have handy. ColdFusion can use Java easily, so there's probably something out there that would work, needs investigation.

You're right guys, it would act the same. Only plus is not having to add an extra block to do it, probably not that important. Given the extra complexity for end users and development required, I think it's a poor idea.

I agree that documenting the patch and setlist file formats would quite likely lead to a variety of useful tools. Thing is though, for that info to be actionable, it has to be well explained, and consistently supported as things change. IOW, either the code responsible for transforming a v1 patch to a v2 patch has to be publicity available in some common programming language, or the logical steps required need to be documented clearly enough that devs can write their own version and have it just work. Publishing this sort of thing would be great, but essentially that would make it a public API, putting Line 6 on the hook for education, developer support, etc.. I'd love it, but it's a real commitment on their part. The thing I built a while ago gives counts of both block types and IRs use in a directory of patch files. As I've said though, it only works on individual patch files, not setlists, which would be much easier to use. I'm sure the compression used in setlist files is some variation of standard stuff, I just haven't had a chance to try to suss it out in a language I'm familiar with.

Done: Relative settings for parameters controlled by a footswitch

Even though it kinda seems like a fun thing to build myself, I have to admit that an offline editor for individual patches does seem to have limited usefulness. There are a couple of larger-scale patch management abilities that would be very handy though... - Reorganizing/reordering patches - Figuring out which IRs aren't used by any patches

I did, a few days ago. I've been sitting on some gear credits I got cheap for a long time, waiting for cool AT stuff, so I just did it. Still have a (smaller) hunk left. I've got a really bad cold, and a bunch of other things I need to do, so I haven't even installed it yet, much less had a play. Haven't touched Amplitube hardly at all since Helix, and have lots more exploring of 2.11 to do, so maybe picking this up was dumb, but I bet it'll be fun at some point. Intro price, and zero out of pocket, so, cool. Are you interested yourself?

For anyone still paying attention to Amplitube, Fender Collection 2 is out today, and still on intro sale for a little bit. Their blurb:

They all have the same absolute-level problem I mentioned.

Not sure about that last bit, but this morning I saw multiple blocks not show their correct enabled/disabled state until I hit the Mode button. It's definitely a thing in firmware 2.11.

Not tricky, impossible without internal info we don't have. And many dropdowns have a text value you see, and another value you don't that's what actually gets stored in a preset. And presets saved in earlier releases need to get mapped to the current equivalent, not trivial, as we've seen with recent upgrade migration problems. The basic concept of reading a JSON file (the low-level format for preset files) and displaying its contents in one or more web forms isn't rocket surgery. But the devil's in the proprietary, or at least undocumented, details. If Line 6 would make the relevant info public, and commit to maintaining it going forward, I bet I'm not the only one who would jump on building out an offline preset file editor.

You have to admit that at least wah is VERY commonly controlled by a pedal. Not always, but really a lot. It's probably easier and more intuitive to have to unwire that when you want a fixed wah than to have to wire it up for typical operation.