zooey

EQ is before the amp or after? EDIT: What's the order of blocks? EQ before everything, after everything, etc?

Cool Stones-ey vibe and tone Paolo :) Is that amp distortion, or do you have some overdrive stomps in there too?

Here's the GS thread I saw before I bought mine; post #3 has some info (supposedly) from the distributor InMusic: https://www.gearslutz.com/board/live-sound/934066-alesis-alpha-active-speakers-improved-version-alto-truesonic.html According to that, the 112s are an upgraded version of the Altos, with slightly better specs, and I think that info matches their respective spec sheets. None of that means jack in the real world though.

you kow what they say about assumptions... Measure it maybe?

Normal footswitches can send the MIDI cmds, but there's no automatic way for one switch to turn several others off. I resisted snapshots for a while myself, but my bet is you'll like them when you check them out. It is true that you do need to switch to a footswitch mode where they're displayed, which is something of a commitment, but you don't have to go all the way there at once. I recently played with some friend using several snap presets and some that were just stomps.

FWIW, specs on the 112s are Max SPL @ 1 m 123 dB Continuous; 126 dB Peak. That sounds way sufficient to me.

Snapshots will give you the footswitch behavior you describe -- one on at a time -- and can send MIDI cmds too, though I haven't explored that myself.

Adobe Reader doesn't respond to MIDI at all, as far as I know. You'd need to find some other software that does, and which can be set up to output a Page Down key, or something else Reader understands.

Several amps have some kind of low-level distortion or unnatural overtones even with very little drive. Sounds almost like quantization noise or something, not clipping. It's a shame.

Got it!

Stepping on the active snapshot switch again to return to the zero snap I like better than if reselecting the current preset didn't discard all snapshot changes like it does today, which I thought was the original proposal. I think snapshot zero should be modifiable and recallableon the fly like the others are with Snapshot Edits set to Recall, so there needs to be an action that activates it without discarding its on-the-fly edits (reselecting the current snap), and one that DOES discard all on the fly changes (reselecting the current preset). Make sense? I really would love 5 (or 9) snapshots, and this is a fairly simple way to get there with the existing set of physical switches, much simpler than my mode-switch-cycling proposal. (Which for the record I still think would be cool.)

The 3 ribbons, 57, and 7 are my most common mic choices I think. I do try different mics when I'm prospecting for sounds, mic choice matters a lot.

Nope, but I don't usually have amps on until after Helix has booted up.

Speakers were on stands, the short Yorkville ones that were posted about a here a while ago. Top of the cabs was a little below the top of my head I'd say, just about where I'd want them. They were behind me, like typical back line, not so much to fill the room, we just thought we'd be more comfortable that way. As I said, people initially thought I was too quiet when it sounded good to me, so I moved them back some, ended up standing roughly 10' away, maybe a bit more. Thing is, the drummer really wasn't wailing at all, quite the opposite, so I'm surprised at all this. One guy's son sat in for a while before the real drummer got there the second day (was actually his kit we were using, he hasn't used it in years), and he was louder, but still nowhere near as loud as some I played with back in the day. The 112s kept up with that too, but they must have been limiting quite a bit if the lights were already on with the quieter guy. You really would think 2000 Watts worth of FRFR would be enough for anyone, but maybe not. I'm sure it's 2000 Specsheet Watts, not real ones, but still. I'm not into crazy volume, honest, so this is just weird. Wonder how CLRs or some such higher-class unit would have done.

Finally had a chance to set my rig back up, and quick testing says that the Signal Limit light on the 112s is POST the input level control, so I apparently was genuinely out of headroom. I wish the light just meant that the input level was too hot, meaning I could turn down Helix's output and turn up the level control on the 112s, but it appears that's not the case, it's measuring the total post-input-control signal level. Either we really were incredibly loud (no), or that huge barn required a lot of juice, or the 112s don't really put out the sorts of levels they're spec'd to, or some combination of those. OTOH, if there hadn't been a limit light, I would have just been happy with the sounds. Some day, I'd like to try a CLR or some other higher-end FRFR, see how that compares.

Yes. You need to do that on every preset where you want that input, and it drops out when you change presets. The dropping out of your guitar you can maybe manage by switching in short spots where you don't play, but it's pretty annoying to have your backing track drop out too. You probably also don't want that change in real presets you use live or in the studio, though I guess it's ok, assuming your levels are still where you want them after adding the 50% (or whatever) split. Short version: There are things you can do, they're not ideal, and the Helix design spec says that's ok. In reality, it's ok w me too, though not ideal.

I too wanted to play backing tracks and recordings of songs I was learning through Helix without processing them. AFAIK, the only way to do that is to set up a parallel path, which consumes DSP and complicates your patch(es) in ways you probably don't want for normal use. There's no built in way to simply route an input to an output and mix it with processed signal. My understanding is that market research told them that Helix was a pro product, and pros don't need or want "MP3 playback" through their guitar rigs, even if they're probably plugged into pretty much full-fidelity speakers. Personally, I would have though they might like to listen to a demo of the keyboard player's new song, etc, but I guess the idea is that they'll use their awesome studio console and monitors, or the PA, or something. I ended up plugging a player (my phone actually, short-term quick and dirty solution) directly into the second inputs of my Alesis Alpha 112s. Kind of clunky, but it worked ok.

Most important thing to the audience is YOUR energy, which is definitely affected by what you hear and how you relate to that, and a million other things.

The global setting 'Stomp Mode Switches' controls whether you get 8 or 10 switches.

Glenn's a totally standup guy, and also knows what he's doing w Helix. I'm sure it's something simple, and I'm also sure he'll help you out if you email him.

Don't remember, and I'm not with my Helix, but does that block have a Headroom parameter?

Wow, never even heard of a lot of that stuff, cool!

Besides rvroberts' comments on how to judge how loud a given patch is, couple things about how to actually adjust the level of a patch: - The level of the final output block is a universal place to adjust volume that applies pretty much any time. - If you want a pedal or other manual controller to adjust volume too, you'll need to do that somewhere else, since a given parameter can only be controlled by one thing. An easy way to do that is to add a Simple EQ block right before the final output block, and adjust its level. - I'll typically adjust the volume of a block whose parameters I'm changing for other reasons to make sense for what those changes are doing. For instance, if one snapshot turns up amp drive, I'd usually adjust the channel volume to either compensate for that, or if I mean for the gain change to also increase volume, like for solos, so it does that by an intentional amount. - Some people try to have each block be roughly unity gain, i.e., same level bypassed and not, on the theory that you're less likely to clip something in the chain that way. I don't do that personally, among other reasons because you sometimes want extra gain before the amp, which makes the whole thing a bit meaningless.

While I agree that it'd be great to be able to mix and match stomp and snapshot switches, that's still only 10 switches total. I'd rather be able to have, for example, 10 presets, hit Mode and get 10 snapshots, hit Mode again and get 10 stomps, or the mixed mode you set up with the Preset Mode Switches setting. I'd also like to be able to set what to show after recalling a preset, and after recalling a snapshot, like an enhanced version of Snapshot Mode Footswitches > Auto Return. That's what that post talks about and demos.

I agree that we need more than 4 of each, but I don't really care for this implementation. For one thing, I think it's important that recalling a preset DOES reset it to the way it's saved, so people with Snapshot Edits set to Recall have a quick and reliable way back to zero. Did you by any chance see my navigation idea post from a while back? I think the reason we don't have 10 snapshots is to allow Bank buttons. My idea is that the Mode switch shouldn't be just be a two-state toggle. Instead it could cycle through a configurable set of choices, out of all Presets, Snapshots, or Stomps, plus whatever mixed configuration you've selected with the Preset mode switches setting. Take a look, there's a web page demo of it you can play with.