zooey

This morning this forum is fine on my phone, but on my desktop I only see the top menu bar. Looking at the HTML source, is obviously truncated. Cleared all cookies for the site just in case, no difference. Anyone else seeing this?

Really nice, thanks, wasn't aware of him. Really well controlled EBow stuff, and a big variety of credible sounds, combined really well. Check out the samples on the EBow site too. Don't get how the violin stuff was done, but then again I haven't checked out their lessons.

So far I do it by ear. I haven't been 100% at doing it consistently, but I mean to, and "I'll get to it soon" . Metering is going to be very frequency dependent, and there is no such thing as an absolutely correct weighting. Frequency response is especially relevant if you're measuring Helix's actual output, not your speakers, since it might already be fully tailored for FRFR playback, or might be going to a power amp and guitar speaker. Helix's output in those two scenarios will have radically different amounts of high end, and there's no such thing as a weighting that compensates for guitar cabs. Which one, anyway? Even if you're using a sound level meter in the room, you also have to compromise between the levels you get with different pickup selections, guitar tone control settings, enabled stomps, etc.. My guess is all of that is why Helix doesn't have built-in metering. Though I don't think actual metering would work that well for normalizing volumes, for all those reasons, it would be great if Helix had clipping indicators on the input and/or output of any block that was clipping digitally. I don't remember for sure if we know what sort of math it uses internally; if it's floating point then actual clipping is less likely, but ideally we'd know for certain when that happens. We could still decide to keep the sound, but at least we'd know. Overall, it's best to ear-ball it IMO. It's important to always match to the same reference patch, ideally one you've marked as that, so you never change it. I don't buy the idea that you should adjust every block to unity gain, at least not before the amp. It's totally legit to push the amp input, or another stomp, as hard as you want, if it sounds good to you. Stuff like the Rangemaster exists for that purpose. At least one well-respected modern clone uses something North of 30db of high-end gain! Post amp, unity gain makes sense, unless you intend to overdrive something there, but clipping your reverb input clipping isn't a thing in most situations, I think :) It's possible I'm deaf and ignorant or lucky, but I seem to have settled for now on a reference volume that's louder than most factory patches, and I'm not hearing the sorts of clipping that scream digital garbage to me. I definitely wail on amp inputs sometimes too.

They now have video lessons on the site, and included in the package, both new I think since the forever ago I got mine. I know where it is, not positive it still works, have a vague memory that I tried it some time ago and got nothing. Do those things die of old age?

Like the amp though, one of my faves. (Helix version I mean, never played a real one.)

Cool, like it! Kind of U2-Cure vibe in there kinda. I've had an EBow for years, but never got even slightly comfortable, seems like it always drove the string so hard it buzzed really unattractively, or didn't drive it at all. I should probably check it out again, it's a cool device.

Agree that this is way not normal. Gut level, I'd say it's more likely there's something funky about your signal chain than that you Helix is bent, but alsmo anything's possible. What's kind of not is that Helix is just like this, it's not. What exactly do you mean by this (emphasis mine): Have you tried listening to headphones plugged straight into your Helix? Or is that part of what you meant you did? What's the "power amp" in that chain? Are you going into a guitar amp before routing to Helix? After? I guess the real question is, what's your full signal chain?

This.

I'm the opposite. I say try everything, because everything is different from everything else, and I like trying stuff. Crude example: For the same approximate net frequency response, a really trebly amp and/or settings through a dark cab sounds different from a darker amp through a brighter cab. Every amp and cab and mic responds differently, and there are no rules for what works for you, the only question is if you like it. You don't have to explore beyond the standard matchups, but you certainly can, and personally I find it fun. Back in high school, before Mesa started the multi-gain-stage overdrive amp thing, I strapped a load resistor across the speaker outputs of my Danelectro head so it wouldn't blow up, and plugged the output into my Baseman. It was awesome. My mom said my guitar had a sore throat :) Helix (software amp sims too) are just a really big collection of stuff you can hook up any way you like, for way way way less money than the actual things, taking up no physical space, with no danger of breaking anything. I'm in! If you'd rather play guitar than fiddle with patch design, go for it, totally fun and honorable path. Personally, I'm somewhere in the middle, dig both. Whatever you want to do right now, Helix gives you quite a bag of possibilities if some day you find yourself missing something specific, or just feel like poking around for the heck of it.

YouTube version also not available in my country (US).

Not sure if it's my playing, my guitar, my taste, or what, but I mostly end up using Custom Tone more as a source of ideas, either for sounds or interesting patch design approaches, than as tones I'll actually use. Frankly, that's been the case so far for the few presets I've purchased too, even though they were from reputable folks. I'm probably not done w free or commercial patch exploration though, just too curious.

Video!

Hah! The whole idea of rig lighting color changes that coordinate with your tone changes is just a hoot, well played!

Hah, cool (even though I don't think it's exactly me...)! Pics please?

YES! An important companion function is that if the correct IR isn't loaded into Helix, you could ask the editor to look through your library to find it. For that to work, presets need to store an SHA512 hash or some other absolutely unique machine-independent identifier for each IR they use. Additional thoughts: Need a new editor setting to designate one or more directories as your IR library, and it would look there, rather than having to choose it every time. Maybe there should be an option to look in some specific directory instead, this one time, not sure that's important. Ideally, the editor would optimize the search process by caching the hashes and timestamps of all IRs it knows about, and only recomputing ones it doesn't have or that have been modified since they were cached. Essentially that cache is an index of your IRs, keyed by that hash. Since you may well have duplicates in your library, the cache has to be able to store multiple disk locations for each hash value. A nice-to-have would be the ability to identify those duplicates, and maybe offer some options to clean them up. However, there's a problem: Helix modifies at least some IRs the first time they're imported, presumably to optimize them in some way. That means the original file from Ownhammer or wherever wouldn't have the same checksum as the same IR loaded into Helix and exported. The best solution I've thought of would be to integrate a conversion step into the caching process, by doing the conversion in memory and computing the hash of that, without storing the actual converted file on disk.

Haven't tried DAW yet integration yet, and I'm not on a Mac, but try a different USB port if you have one. I had all kinds of trouble updating my Helix using the first one I tried, which works fine for everything else AFAIK, no problems so far on another one.

I think the word you're looking for is "unique" :) There are lots of more normal sounding single 12" cabs.

I started out with Helix in the fairly decent studio phones I already had, AKG D240s. When I picked up a pair of Alesis Alpha 112 FRFRs so I could play with people, I basically had to start over. All my headphone patches sounded awful. After much angst, I decided that ultimate-sonic-reality concepts aside, I should make myself happy with what I was actually hearing. I used the global EQ to compensate a little for excess mid-highs and a 100hz or so peak I heard, especially playing recorded music through them. I did that not so much because I think that's the only or right way to do this, but because practically speaking, I wanted to play along with tracks sometimes, and didn't want to need an EQ for that. Once I had that EQ set, I wrote it down (it's not saved in any current Helix file format), and built all my patches listening through it. When I next played in a band context, using those speakers with that EQ and the patches I'd set up for them, I only needed to make a few minor adjustments, and I really was quite happy. Moral of the story I think is that everything is different from everything, so live your life like you're actually going to live it, and build patches listening to the speakers you're going to use IRL. If the whole band is using in-ears or other monitoring the players can control themselves, then it's simple -- make yourselves happy, and let the FOH person take care of the room. No matter what you do, you're not going to hear what they hear out there anyway, you need to trust them. Maybe talk w them about what you're going for, if you think that'll help. If you're the only one with in-ears, then you need to figure out how the other players are going to hear you, who's going to control it, etc., and do what you can to have your tone in there match what you're hearing as best you can, again letting FOH do their thing. And just to say it, I keep hearing people mention 80db stage levels. I don't know any drummers doing anything besides lounge stuff who play at a volume where that makes sense. No doubt it preserves your hearing, but you gotta get the music out in the first place.

That's what got me looking at Helix in the first place. Before that I was a very happy Amplitube and Scuffham guy, just didn't want to deal with or rely on a computer live. It wasn't until I played with Helix for a while that I came to really dig it for its own sake.

Sorry, not at my Helix, no pics, but you've got the general idea, except I didn't mean to add an extra preamp. (Though of course you could, anything goes, really.) Not-a-picture of your current rig, I think: Helix in > Helix send 1 > Marshall input > Marshall FX loop send > Helix return 1 > Helix out > Marshall FX loop return That lets you use part of the Helix as a pre-processor for the Marshall preamp, and part of it as a post-processor. Everything you put before the Helix send is before the distortion in the Marshall preamp, and everything you put after the Helix return is after it. What I was suggesting was cutting low end before the distortion to minimize flub, then boosting it back up after the distortion, if it turns out you want that. In your signal flow, you'd put a low-cut EQ before the Helix send, to lessen flub. You can also try just lowering the bass control on the Marshall itself. Then, if there isn't enough low end by the time your pre-distortion low end cut has tightened things up to your liking, put a bass boost EQ after the Helix return. That's post all distortion, so it's just EQ, shouldn't add any mush (assuming the Marshall power amp isn't being overdriven). Like this: Helix in > Low cut EQ (or just lower the bass control in the Marshall) > Helix send 1 > Marshall input > Marshall FX loop send > Helix return 1 > Low boost EQ (optional) > Helix out > Marshall FX loop return I usually go for parametric EQs for their flexibility, but use whatever you're comfortable with that gives you control over the frequencies you want to change. You may want an actual low cut (meaning a high-pass filter, cuts everything below some frequency), or a low frequency control of some sort set to cut, or both. You also want to think about where other effects go in that chain. Distortion almost always goes before "the amp", like a real pedal would, so put those before the Helix send. In general I prefer delay and chorus effects after the distortion, otherwise they get really messy, but sometimes that mess is cool too. Compression sounds different pre- and post-distortion, but both are useful. My point isn't really "do this not that", but just to think about how those choices will affect your sound. With 4CM wiring, you also have the option of using any of the Helix preamps instead of the Marshall, with or without the same low-cut-before-distortion-boost-after strategy. You can choose to do that in a preset-by-preset basis, or in each snapshot. Make sense? I don't do 4CM myself, but lots of folks here do, so if you have questions, ask away :) Lastly, personally and OT, I'd at least try an FRFR setup at some point if you can. Helix is fully capable of emulating power amps, cabs, speakers, and mics, so it's right at home with a speaker setup that just reproduces the tones it generates without coloration.

If you're looking for an actually transparent boost, louder but with no coloration or added drive, just change the level of the final output block. No added DSP cost (though the gain block captainnemo recommends uses very little I'm sure), but also less clutter, and it's always there without having to add it. For a little more push, I like Minotaur, Teemah, and maybe KWB (the maybe is for how colored you think it is, definitely use and like it), but none of the distortions are flat frequency response, regardless of drive level. Compression as a solo boost adds sustain and evens out your level, for better or worse, plus you can dial in however much amp input drive you want with its output level. Lots of people like the LA Studio Comp, but I'm more a fan of the Deluxe Comp.

+2. I'd add that differences in venues, playback rig or volume, and other environmental factors, are exactly what the global EQ is for. If you have a small number of environments, and the time and inclination to build separate presets fur each of them, you can be more specific about it. But it's not clear that's a better approach than compensating for the different frequency response of each playback system with different global EQ. If you have make last-minute adjustments, it's certainly easier to change your global low-end EQ than to edit all the presets you built for that situation.

Monitoring with the same speaker you're using out front seems ideal to me. Whatever frequency response oddities they have, you'll build your patches to sound good to you through them, and that's also what gets projected at the audience, win-win. Obviously, the sound on stage is a different world from what's out there in audience-land, which itself is different in each part of the room, but you've removed one really big variable.

Doubt that the difference w the Mustang on clean sounds is in pseudo-ambience, more likely it's in frequency response, probably top end. You may want less roll-off up there for sparkly cleans.

Re low end flub, try lowering bass in the preamp, and/or with an EQ before it, then boosting it after if need be. I do that a lot, on many different models, keeps the low end much tighter but still full. Since I'm FRFR, I can do the make-up low end boost after the amp and cab too, even more effective, but you can't do that if you're 4CM. Yet another reason to prefer FRFR :)