zooey

So I was playing through Amplitube 4 again last night, as usual; it's my go-to rig these days. It forking *rocks*. I wish I had its flexibility in an amp or modeler, but even more, its *tones*. Sparkly, full cleans, very nice slightly fat/dirty stuff, *seriously* ballsy drive sounds, left-field specials, pretty much everything I want. Not "pretty good for a sim", just plain great, full stop, for me. It's not perfect ergonomically, and of course there are fx and amps it doesn't have, but fundamentally, sound-wise, I'm a happy guy in there. All of which is to say that I'm very much looking forward to Helix, but it's got its work cut out for it. Logistically, I'd much rather not play out with a PC rig, which is what got me looking at Helix, I just hope it can get me there as much as Amplitube does. And you're right, this post has no point :). I'm just excited, way beyond broke, and anxious to see how it actually works out for me, finally. Wheee (soon)!

Different people use their rigs in different ways, or want to, so different things are important to them. That makes Helix in its current state, or any other rig, different degrees of viable and/or problematic for them. Surely that's not a difficult concept to grasp. It's also not something that can be argued away, it's just a fact. Sheesh.

So the lows you had to get rid of were below what your phones can reproduce? Seems unlikely, doesn't it? Or maybe the PA has a big "sexiness" bump that your more hi-fi phones don't? Anyway, glad it's working out.

Makes sense, always tweaked my analog rig for the room and/or my mood. I still want to be able to play and make sounds in phones and not have them completely bite it live. Tweak, sure. Hate my life and completely rethink on the spot, hopefully not. [Edited, missing the kind-of-important word "not"]

Now that you pulled bottom out of your presets so they work in a PA/FRFR environment, do they sound bass-light in your phones? I ask because the way my life works out these days, I play a lot in phones, but I want things to sound ok live, ideally without having them suck in phones. The ideal solution seems to be to pick either phones or FRFR as your reference, EQ everything to that, and have an EQ preset that makes the other one sound right. Is that what you (and other folks) are doing? FWIW, in the small amount of checking I've done so far, my Alesis Alpha 112 FRFRs were brighter and midrangier than the AKG 240s I've had for years, not bassier like what you heard. That's slightly odd, but they are budget speakers, though pretty well reviewed, so I guess my mileage is varying :)

So is the theory that "adjusting" the built-in cabs is really a slick UI for switching between different built-in IRs, but you can only do that manually for external ones? Of are there actually adjustments that can be made to the built-in ones, that could theoretically be done to the imported ones too, but Helix just doesn't provide for that?

Detailed and well-considered review from someone who obviously cares a lot and has lots to compare it to. Nice job. My understanding (don't have one yet) is the you have less adjustability with IRs than the built in cabs. Is that true? If so, do I gather that's not a problem for you?

Hah, just discovered that Studio One Pro (my main DAW) includes an IR Maker utility. When I have some time (double hah), I'll have to investigate all this. IRs of a bunch of Amplitube cab/room/mic combinations maybe? It's not illegal to do that, or to distribute the resulting IRs, is it? I'm pretty sure the Bricasti IRs for instance have their explicit blessing, and I very much doubt IK would agree to any such thing.

Phil, maybe you could interact w them on that thread, both to help them get sorted, and to prevent the spread of misinformation? (I don't have my Helix yet, so I have no experience trying any of this, just saw the thread.)

Upvoted on IdeaScale. I've never done it, but... Voxengo Deconvolver, $49.95 Waves IR-1, sometimes very much on sale. I think it can create IR files, but maybe only in Waves' proprietary format. Altiverb, way too expensive for me.

Upvoted and commented on this idea: http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/EQ-dedicated-to-headphone-out/813724-23508

So the info in this thread is wrong? How? tdub77 didn't have the problem he reported? Rocco_Crocco's version of why that happened and how to work around it is wrong? Confused.

What's this about? Why not import bundles? Because it causes the problem reported here? Some other reason?

Is this a Mac only issue, far as people know? Seems like the people talking here are all on Macs, but from what you've seen (I'm new here), does this happen on Windows too?

But if recorded music sounds ok, or like he's used to, then his guitar should too, yes?

Not a Helix owner yet, but this was reported in this forum: That seems like a bug, doesn't it? You should be able to change the scribble strip name for a footswitch at any time, regardless of what it's assigned to do.

That seems like a bug, doesn't it? Line 6, are you treating this as a bug?

At the risk of being completely unhelpfully obvious, maybe open a support ticket w Line 6? If your Helix is defective, that's where you'll end up anyway. If it's not, they may be able to help find some config issue, or help investigate some generic problem they should know about.

Ability to mix and match preamps and power amps, real or virtual, would be great. Amplitube has this.

Voted and commented here, didn't see one of yours that was about an SDK: http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Allow-third-party-plugin-developers-to-sell-Helix-effects/805327-23508

Yeah, that's what I figured, thanks for confirming. In Amplitube, these days I have a bunch of presets with multiple drive levels. Some are just an OD, some just an EQ, and some with an EQ-OD-EQ chain. You could chain them, and the very first level I do sometimes use with others, but they were mostly built to be used one at a time, would be too distorted for my typcial taste otherwise. But like lots of other things, when my Helix arrives I'll just have to work out how I that stuff to work given its strengths and weaknesses.

I'm aware that one footswitch can switch many blocks, but as I understand it, a given block can only be controlled by one footswitch. If that's true, you can't have multiple footswitches that each turn one overdrive on and two others off, which is ideally what I'd want to do. Different overdrives in many cases are alternatives, not independent options.

Yeah, I will have 30 days to return it, just going to have to see how it feels. I think some of the IR companies have some freebies you could try. My completely ignorant never-done-it feeling is that the most important part of what different IRs will get you is EQ, which can be handled more directly with an EQ. The rest is ambiance, which can also be handled more directly w verb(s) and/or delay(s). Then again, I could be totally wrong. Re a dev kit, as I've posted in another thread... I'm much less interested in tone matching than either or both parts of this third-party development fork. One truly awesome thing about Amplitube is having so much gear available that I don't physically have, and would never be able to afford, find, or store. Yes, maybe matching would let us capture tones built using other software, but that's more the Kemper model, I'd rather build sounds using whatever controls are available within Helix itself. If you look at the vast majority of popular hardware platforms, a huge part of what makes them popular is the third-party software that's available. Say for instance Windows, Linux, Android, iThings, or in music, Kontact, and tons of softsynths. Really, the whole VST ecosystem is this -- its power and usefulness is because it's embraced by the countless devs who make VSTs, and/or programs that run them, much to their and everyone else's benefit. This is such a no-brainer, I'm kind of amazed it's not How It's Done. Helix's capabilities make it plenty attractive enough for major third-party devs to put the investment into spinning up on it. (It looked from you linked post like your earlier dev-kit Ideascale idea morphed into tone-matching. I'd vote third-party dev up in a flash, if you point me to it.)

Awesome info roscoe5, thanks a ton. In fact, if you wouldn't mind, I'd suggest you start a new topic, "Helix and Amplitube Integration", and copy your post there. I doubt we're the only two people with both those types of tech on the brain. FWIW, latency hasn't bothered me with AT on my i7 laptop, using a Focusrite 2i2 or 18i20. I'm not at my rig, don't remember how it's set. Am I right that Helix doesn't function as a MIDI interface to the computer? If so, that's a shame. Interesting feedback on AT sounds vs Helix. Thing is, no matter how many times I ask people, and how much I worry, fact is I'm just going to have to see how I *actually* feel about Helix when it gets here. Your hybrid approach is interesting, making it possibly a third option. What I *really* wish is that you could run AT, Scuffham, and other VSTs in Helix, and/or that IK made something just like Helix but running Windows (and still able to address all those little scribble strip displays...). Orange OPC maybe, except you can't actually buy one, and I couldn't afford a good one anyway. Plus AT doesn't have scribble strips, even on screen, much less showing on a MIDI foot controller that has them, that I also can't afford.

[OT, apologies] @amsdenj, this is what I want too, roughly. Are you doing those different gain levels with stomps, or by changing amp parameters? I'd like to use stomps for at least some of mine, but so far everyone has said you can't set up footswitches so that turning one block on turns some others off, because a given block can only be controlled by one footswitch. Do you know of a way to do that? I probably want more than one setup like this, but the idea's the same.