zooey

Interesting. Are you saying you processed the IRs themselves directly through Mic Room? Didn't know you could do that. Or that you ran audio through the original IRs, processed that with Mic Room, and made new IRs from that? (Fun aside about IK: I bought ARC System 2 almost two years ago, but never used it. Thinking about my FRFR rig, I finally registered a few days ago, and as it turned out, they're having a BOGO sale, which in the universe's infinite generosity, treated registering it now as buying it during that sale! Best option for what to get as my freebie was 200 gear credits -- nice deal -- so I might consider picking up Mic Room.)

Diffed them, didn't see any major changes, but there are enough minor ones and reflow diffs that I didn't have the patience to look at them all, so I wouldn't take that as gospel. One change that's in a lot of places is that instead of referring doing something on Helix, they now say on "the Helix device". Not losing sleep over that one ;)

Don't know how Helix's headphone amp specifically would handle it, but I think fido's right, it's a real concern, I wouldn't do it. Just get an appropriate Y cable or adapter.

Very impressive playing Mike! Cool stuff!

You may well be right, but there definitely are things I do with stomps that would be better done with snapshots. For example, I often have 2-4 different overdrives in a patch, on separate switches, meaning that in most cases, switching from one to another means turning the active one off and a new one on. Snapshots could do that with one switch press. I do actually use all 10 switches pretty frequently, and the limitation of only 8 snaps makes it hard to map those 10 stomps onto snaps. I could see myself using 4 OD-level snaps + Boost in the bottom row, and 5 FX stomps in the top row. Blockers to that are max 8 snaps instead of 10, and the inability to make one into Boost because it has to come with block enable/disables. Fix those two things I think I could be a happy Snaplander. Another thing I think I'd like is if the Mode switch could be set to cycle through Presets, Stomps, and Snapshots, instead of having to press Bank Up and Down at the same time, on the opposite side from the Mode switch. I know, where do I get off wishing for more stuff barely on the eve of v2, which delivered some definitely cool stuff. But there you have it. Not clear whether I'll try snapshots without those wishes or not.

How about this, tongue firmly in cheek: Get a second Helix, and connect the MIDI outs of each one to the MIDI ins of the other one. Actual patches live in the primary one. Recalling a patch on the primary one loads the corresponding patch on the secondary one. The corresponding secondary unit patches are functionally all the same -- they have only footswitches that recall the 8 snaps in the primary unit. The only reason to have separate patches on the secondary unit is so you can label the snapshot switches for each patch. That said, I've considered using an external MIDI foot controller with Helix, for snapshot recall, just as you said. Thing is, the only ones I have are either as big as Helix (FCB1010 UNO mod, ART X-15), or limited to program changes only (ADA MC-1). And no scribble strips.

Understood Gawwuf, I don't mean to be argumentative either, or to disrespect your or anyone else's ways ways of working. In an earlier post, not sure if it was this thread or not, I said I'd been paralyzed by inability to decide how to approach all this, and had finally decided to just make myself happy by building presets that sound good with the speakers sitting in front of me, and let the FOH person do their thing. I still think that's a valid approach, and certainly preferable to not building patches out of fear you're Doing It Wrong, or getting involved in a level of research that's neither fun nor productive. I've been having lots of fun just playing and making patches I like. But over time, all my different versions of EQ to tame that mid-high peak I hear started to bug me, and so did the sound of my iPod through my speakers. Those feelings made me think I was staring right at an actual problem with an actual solution, and choosing to look away. Anyway, like you, I'm just trying to make some good sounds, and talking out loud about my thoughts, for better or worse. So carry on!

That's not really the question. If you don't EQ your speakers, based on what you've said about them, you're naturally going to build presets with less high end than if you EQ'd them to be flat. If you did that, you could get the same result on stage that you do now by adding top end to each preset. Assuming you applied the "speaker-corrective" EQ only to your stage rig (1/4" outs), and not the PA feed (XLR outs), what would be different then is how much top end you send to the PA. How close the net result in the PA is to your stage rig depends on how well the response of your stage rig matches the response of the PA. That's what I've been going on about, one theory of how to manage that. Idea is, if the PA is EQ-ed so well-mixed music (i.e. commercial recordings) sounds good, then your rig should be EQ-ed like that too. If your presets don't sound good through a rig like that, then they won't through the PA either. It's not clear how that actually plays out in real life, so caveat EQ-er, or something...

It's completely possible that I misunderstand some things about snapshots. I've only experimented with them a little, because I don't see how using them won't cost me a bunch of functionality I have now in 10 switches mode. I appreciate folks working this through with me. First, I'm used to having 10 stomps, one of which is often a generic volume Boost. If I only get 4 stomps and 4 snapshots at hand at a time, I'd rather devote a snap switch to Boost than a stomp. Second, I have a More switch in some presets, which jacks up the params of a a bunch of different blocks, giving me an alternate version of all of them, effectively almost twice as many stomps. However, stomps can't store enough params to actually do everything I'd want, and snapshots can. Third, doesn't turning all blocks off in a snapshot actually store them as off, so recalling that snapshot turns them all off? Every snapshot inherently enables or disables every block, according to its state when the snap was saved, or that's my impression. That's what I'd like an option to not do. In a sense, all of this is trying to get around the somewhat awkward navigation between snapshots and 10 switches mode, or looking for a way to use snapshots + stomps that works as well as 10 switches does for me. Are any of you using 10 switches with snapshots? What do you think of the navigation possibilities with that arrangement? Can you think of ways to improve it? Even if there are good answers to that, I still think that one simple feature would give snapshots even more flexibility, and would be great to have.

Snapshots are great, but the fact that they always recall the on-off state of all blocks means you can't use one as a simple volume boost, for example. If would add a lot of flexibility if there was an option in each snapshot to NOT recall any block on-off states, but only make whatever parameter changes are recorded in the snapshot. By default, it would recall block states too, but that could be disabled. The fact that snapshots can store way more parameter settings than a stomp switch makes them very powerful. Since you can't freely mix snapshot and stomp footswitches, this capability would be super useful to me. If you agree, please vote it up on Ideascale.

At the risk of being boringly obvious, seems to me that genuine Save As... functionality in the editor would be useful. Simple, clear, familiar.

Of course, it's what I do ;) OTOH, there's been lots of talk about how misleading headphones are for programming Helix, and it's well known that crappy studio monitoring begets crappy mixes, so the idea that your listening environment affects your patches isn't entirely unreasonable. I also have another motivation for looking into making both commercial recordings and my guitar sound reasonable through my FRFRs: I want to play along with other music playing back through them sometimes. Out of the box, commercial recordings have too much high end, and it's annoying to keep EQ-ing the same peaks out of every preset. Stands to reason it's the speakers, and that my life would be better if their natural tendencies were counteracted a bit.

You'd do it so when you build presets, you're hearing roughly the same EQ as the PA. For instance, I think my FRFRs have a peak around 3k or so, like others have also mentioned, probably built into many speakers for vocal clarity. Since I haven't EQ'd that out of my speakers, many of my presets have individual EQ in them to deal with that. If I send that signal to a PA that's been adjusted so it doesn't have that peak, there's a good chance they'll be dull in that range. OTOH, if I EQ that out of my speakers globally, I wouldn't be pulling it out of each preset, so sending that to a "properly" EQ'd PA should work better. That's the theory anyway, who knows how it'll play out. But I can't think of any more reasonable way to approach it, other than just making yourself happy on stage without trying to normalize your FRFRs, and letting the FOH person have at it.

Sorry I wasn't clearer. IMO the global EQ should be for adjusting YOUR STAGE RIG to the room, not the PA feed, which you can't hear, and which will be managed in a full band context by the FOH engineer anyway. That says you want to apply it to the 1/4" outs, and send those to your FRFR rig, while sending the un-EQ'd signal to the PA. In an ideal world, you'd EQ your FRFR rig so its response is roughly like what the PA will have, and build your presets while listening to that, but as we've said, the PA response isn't really knowable. My plan personally is use the global EQ and an RTA to iron out any local peaks and valleys in my speakers, then adjust the EQ more broadly so commercial recordings sound good to me, taking that as a proxy for a decent-sounding PA. The most real RTA I have, IK's ARC System2 (bought almost 2 years ago but never used), has some suggested curves if you find flat to be too bright, which is likely, so I'll probably try those as a starting point. Once I have that baseline, I'd then adjust my presets so they sound good to me through that. Haven't had a chance to do any of that yet, hopefully soon.

Don't know how those blocks are connected, but it's possible the gain block is after the amp and cab, so it only makes things louder, no other effect on the sound (in theory). The Teemah (and other ODs) typically go before the amp, where they both add their own overdrive, and if they provide a net volume increase, also push the amp harder. Upshot of that would be that if you wanted the Teemah tone to be louder without driving the amp harder, you'd need to do that after the amp and cab, like with a gain block there. Make sense?

I'd love the opportunity to listen to the mutlitracks of some favorite tracks to explore this. Not usually possible though. There's a smattering of that sort of material out there, no idea where it comes from, but I'd love to pick and choose.

Don't think so. You want your rig and FOH to have the same EQ, so what you hear is the same as what goes out front. Which is hard, since you have no idea how the FOH system is EQ'd. Chances are it's not flat though, since that's not generally what people like, and I say that from from decades of running live sound professionally. Typically PAs have that sexy exaggerated low end and hyped pseudo-detailed high end, like your car stereo probably has. A quality PA should have any narrow anomalies ironed out, so it's flat in that sense, but the overall curve is probably something like that, but unknowable to you. Which says a couple things to me... - EQ-ing out any narrow peaks and valleys IS worthwhile - EQ your rig and presets to they make you happy onstage, don't worry about the rest, and let the house sound person do what they do

Pre-Helix, I was a big Amplitube fan. AT's Duncan Power Grid makes this huge pop every time you turn it on. Can't imagine who thought that was OK, even if the real one does that too (no idea).

That'd be important to know if true.

Full Compass is sending me a replacement stand gratis, not worth anyone's time or money sending the broken one back. They say they're good stands, must have been a random defect, and if I'm still unhappy w the replacement, we'll work something out. Full Compass and Sweetwater, among (a few) others are solid outfits, deserve your business. When that comes, I'll try lowest height, see how that works. For now at least, I'm mostly targeting a rehearsal/jam environment, just want to hear myself, and have the other musicians hear me pretty much the same. Also thinking about a small show, un-mic'd instruments, so my rig needs to fill a small-ish space on its own. Tilt-back wedge position clearly isn't ideal, so I'm hoping these end up ok. If not, maybe I'll try the Carvin ones.

He used different amps in different periods, but I think the Music Man is probably right for back then. Don't hear even a faint whiff of chorus on it though, article or not. That odd distortion is the main thing, unique.

Has anybody made any tones along the lines of Johnny Winter's sound on Second Winter, like Memory Pain for example? I have an Amplitube patch kind of like that, using the Carvin V3M head, Carvin 2x12 cab mic'd with a 57. I know that has nothing to do with the rig he actually used, which I think might have been a Music Man. It's not at all my main sort of thing, but it is interesting and cool.

Just FYI, the linked pic in your "Cleaned up, buttoned up" msg I can see when I navigate there. The apparently in-line pic in you "I played for a couple of hours with the Crate rig today" msg is still the grey "private image" (or whatever) icon. Rig looks nice!

roscoe5, are those supposed to be pictures we can see? All I see is a grey circle with a "no" dash in it, in both your last two msgs. I am logged in, since I can reply.

I got a pair of these from Full Compass today (after FedEx delivered them to the same street number but around the corner from the office building where I work), and frankly, they chewed it, bad. One popped a rivet the second I put a speaker on it, and the other wasn't remotely stable with a load. A gentle tap would take it over. Not doubting your experience Joe, maybe the Canadian version is different, or the new ones are different, or something. (The bag you pointed out is nice, seems well made, a bit long like you said, not a problem.) The only other short stand I know of is the Carvin SS15, 2 stands and a bag for $85 + $10 for cheapest shipping, 60 lbs max weight; the Alpha 112s are 31 lbs each. No reviews on their site, or anywhere else I found. Not sure what I'm going to do now. Even the somewhat more expensive full-size stands from Ultimate etc have somewhat mixed reviews. Maybe see what GC has in stock, bring a speaker with me to check out how they actually work in person? Put each speaker on a couple of milk crates? See if tipped back in floor monitor position (like I do in my basement) is a huge problem at a jam or a show? Didn't expect this minor logistical detail to be a thing at all.