Verne-Bunsen

By coincidence I was listening to 10,000 Days when I read this. Great album, great song! Honestly I think you’d be better served with the stereo Tremolo/Autopan (I think thats what it’s called, not at my Helix presently) with the rate assigned to an expression pedal. You can assign the depth to the same expression pedal and set it so that it is very subtle at low rates and quite pronounced at higher rates. I use it like this and it makes for really great “trem swells”. And the stereo separation is enough to send you into a seizure, I dial the spread way back to 2.2 or so.

Also, given that you have a modulation effect after the join, the modulation effect must be stereo to preserve your stereo path.

It’s exactly this. When they keep their development agenda close to the vest, it’s a constant stream of threads whining about how we don’t know what they’re up to, don’t know if they are even planning any more updates, how we are entitled to endless and frequent updates for free and how Line 6 should be submitting routine status reports to every Helix owner on how the development of the next batch of free stuff is coming along and when it will be available. So now they have told us well in advance exactly what is coming down the pipe and a time frame within which we can expect to see it, and now it’s complaints that they would dare to tease us with upcoming material and outrage that it isn’t all here and ready to go right now even though there are still 6 weeks or so in their announced window. I wouldn’t know how to satisfy this lot either.

I hadn't seen that one, it does look like a great program. And it exports!

As JPDennis says, you can select which block you want to be the dominant block by touching the switch and cycling through the things assigned to it. It's color and On/Off status will reflect that block. You can also assign the color yourself in the controller settings.

Hi Zolko, I'll try to provide what help I can. Regarding series and parallel, in this application it refers to how the audio is being routed through the blocks. A series routing means that the processed audio (output) from one block is then being fed into the input of the next block. So for instance, generally speaking, your Helix cab or IR block would be in series with your amp block (the output of the amp block feeding the input of the cab/IR). Parallel means that both blocks receive the same input and process them independently. So if you split your signal and have a different IR on each path, then those blocks are in parallel. I can't really speak to how intuitive the program is as an actual IR loader as I haven't used it in that context. Helix hosts my IRs and I don't use an IR loader in my DAW for that purpose. I've only used MixIR for its ability to export a compound IR. I'll walk through the process I use. When you load an instance of MixIR in your DAW, it looks like this: This screen shows the IRs that are in its folder on the right, and you can drag them in what ever combination you like into the slots that read "--empty--" in the middle. I dragged mine into the first two slots under "IR Block 1". Once you have the desired combination dragged into place, clicking the "Options" button in the lower right switches to this display: Clicking the "Export" button brings up the save dialog where you can name the file and indicate where you want it saved, and that is all there is to it. As far as the predictability of the results, I haven't performed a phase cancellation comparison or anything but I have A/B'd the compound IR against the two IRs loaded in parallel and they are indistinguishable to my ears. Regarding the description that it is like having somebody moving mics around for you, I think it is referring as much to the Redwirez IR offerings as to the program. They have IR captures of all of their mics in every conceivable position, so using their catalog you can get mics figuratively where ever you want them. If you want one moved back an inch, there is an IR of that mic moved back an inch. I agree with you as far as diminishing returns when adding mics. When I was initially playing with this I found that some combinations created unpleasant phase/filtering issues. I found that by limiting it to one IR of each cab per side and sticking to the Ownhammer OH1/OH2 mixes and the 3 Sigma 3b/5b mixes kept things clean. I hope some of this helps!

Ok, thank you for clarifying all that. The trouble with being unfamiliar with a technology is that you can’t necessarily tell the difference between “basic functionality” and “completely impossible”, haha!

Thanks for taking the time! It’s here: https://www.strymon.net/using-midi-control-pedals-2/

I believe that the announcement was for the sake of NAMM.

Hello all, I am quite uninitiated when it comes to MIDI, this is pretty much the first time I've tried to actually employ it. I know what commands I need to generate, but I'm not sure how to tell Helix how to do it. Or for that matter if it is smoething that can be done within Helix. What I am trying to do is assign one Helix footswitch to issue a "Bank-UP" command and a second footswitch to issue a "Bank-DOWN" command to my Strymon Big Sky. I don't want it to change presets or make any changes other than to scroll the Banks. According to the Strymon guide, the commands required are as such: Changing Banks with an external MIDI Controller To Bank Up or Down via MIDI, you would need to mimic the MIDI behavior of the onboard footswitches with your MIDI controller. Bank Up = Send MIDI CC #’s 81+82 with values 0 when pressed and 127 when released at the same time. Bank Down = Send MIDI CC #’s 80+82 with values 0 when pressed and 127 when released at the same time. In Command Center I can see how to send one CC# with one value, but sending two CC#s, much less assigning different values for "press" and "release", is eluding me. Is this something that I can do? Any help is much appreciated. Thanks, -VB-

Hi all, I'm not affiliated in any way with Redwirez, and while I have bought some of their IRs over the years I tend to prefer Ownhammer and 3 Sigma stuff for my purposes. Which is just to say that I don't have any ulterior motives for singing the praises of MixIR, the Redwirez IR loader and editor. I'll cut to the chase, then I'll tell my story: it acts as an IR loader allowing you to stack multiple IRs in parallel in your DAW of choice, like many other programs out there do, but the kicker is that it allows you to then export the resulting compound IR as a single .wav file that you can then load into Helix. Maybe others do this, but it was the only option I found without actually going through the process of generating the IR myself. Very slick. Here's how I came to seek out such a thing. To get the sounds I'm looking for, I tend to like running two cab IRs, generally a 1x12 and a 2x12, in parallel. Summed to mono, that has worked great for me for some time. Recently I've been running in stereo and I found that hard panning a 1x12 and a 2x12 hard left and hard right created sounds that were so dissimilar as to be almost disorienting. In a bad way. It sounded better if I panned them more gently, but then the image created by stereo delays and reverbs and modulations was diminished. So in order to maintain hard panning for the stereo image without the unpleasant effect of two dissimilar cabinets, I took to just using a single cabinet with different mic mixes for left and right. This sounded good, but I missed the sounds that I was used to from mixing the cabs. So, enter MixIR. Using MixIR in Logic Pro X, I combined my 1x12 and 2x12 cabinets into a single IR, allowing me to have both cabinets together in one channel. To get some separation, I did some experimenting and landed on a couple of "recipes" to make left subtly distinct from right. For Ownhammer IRs I used the OH1 mix of the 1x12 and the OH2 mix of the 2x12 for "Left" and the OH2 mix of the 1x12 and the OH1 mix of the 2x12 for "Right". For 3 Sigma IRs, I used the 3b mix of the 1x12 and the 5b mix of the 2x12 for "Left" and the 5b mix of the 1x12 and the 3b mix of the 2x12 for "Right". This gave enough difference to provide some separation between the channels even without other stereo effects, but it is no so drastic as to be disorienting. Win! Anyhow, that's my thoughts on MixIR. Hope it provides some food for thought for somebody!

With your permission, I would like to submit this to Merriam-Webster as the official definition of “The Internet”.

Interesting, thanks for the insight. Expression pedal might be an option for what I want to do.

That makes sense. I spend pretty much all of my time in 10-Stomps mode, and the math with 10 switches didn’t yield any “Ah-ha!” revelations. I had forgotten that 8 was standard. If it is just managing potential demand, seems like an unnecessarily restrictive way to go about it. Even if you hit the limit at 64 on a single switch (not that you would, but hypothetically...), it could still tell you “No” when you tried to assign something elsewhere. Might be a good IdeaScale entry. Thanks!

If you are using a footswitch to toggle multiple blocks/parameters, you run into a wall at 8 assignments. Do any of you know what is imposing that limitation? I’m fairly confident that it isn’t arbitrary, but knowing that Snapshots can do (I think) 64 assignments makes me wonder why there is such a significant discrepancy.

Well, that is a darn good question.... The only component unaccounted for in the descriptions is the crossover, but you wouldn’t think it would have much to do since only the woofer is active in those modes.

Wow. I can’t imagine what it must be like in the fantasy land you’ve created for yourself. He sold you a product for a price you agreed to, and the product (I assume, because you haven’t indicated otherwise) performs as advertised. He is under no further obligation to you, despite your feelings of entitlement.

I use two PC+ cabs for monitoring at home. They do just fine at a reasonable “bedroom volume”, what I would call “don’t drive the wife nuts volume”. I run the PC+’s at about 30-50% or so and control the volume with the Helix Master Volume. Of course anything is going to sound uninspiring if you turn it down far enough. For “napping baby” volume, you’re better off with headphones. As far as the stereo image, I don’t have studio monitors to compare them to but they perform like any stereo speaker pair I’ve ever heard: they have a sweet spot, and anywhere else is not the sweet spot. They do sound glorious in stereo....

I don’t think you can use a footswitch to change the assigned value of a parameter assignment like that. Although I’ve often wished that you could.

I concur with Kilrahi, although I came to the conclusion by a different path. I never heard “fizz” until I purchased Helix. I was more critical and meticulous with my tones with Helix than I ever had been with my tube amp rigs, and when I heard the fizz I said, “What on earth is this noise?!” I fought to eliminate it for quite a while until eventually I plugged back in to my tube amp, and guess what I heard..... the same kind of fizz! And after that I heard it on Van Halen songs and AC/DC songs and Zakk Wylde songs and all over, it’s a guitar amp noise. The way we listen to modelers is different which I think contributes to the fizz being more prominent, and I think we are far more critical of them than we are of our tube amp rigs because we just expect that the tube amp is going to sound great, it doesn’t have to “prove it” in the same way. I’ve been through the whole curve on the fizz thing and have settled on it simply being a part of guitar amp sound. I use high cuts to attenuate it in the same way that a guitar cabinet naturally attenuates it, but I don’t obsess over it. Anymore...

That has not been my experience. I’ve run them tilted back since I got them and have not noted any harshness of lack of low end. For whatever it is worth I have mostly been using them with 3Sigma IRs loaded in Helix.

In addition to what has already been mentioned (amp channel volume and output block level), the IR block level is quite useful as well. I presume that the stock cab blocks also have a level parameter, but I’m not sure off the top of my head and I’m not at my Helix to look. Generally I set my amp channel volumes relatively low to preserve headroom in downstream stuff, then bring it back up with the IR block level. When I’m recording, I’ll use the output block level to make fine adjustments.

This is my understanding and experience: Channel Volume adjusts overall volume from the amp block but without affecting tone. Similar to an attenuator between the power amp and speaker on a tube amp.

I've had the opportunity the past couple of days to commit some hours to this, and I have things to report. For starters, I'll confirm what I suspected going in: comparing the CLR to the PC+ in its "Flat" mode, playing presets in Helix using impulse responses from Ownhammer and 3Sigma, the CLR has the edge. I'm not sure how to describe or quantify what quality it is that gives it that edge, but it is just more.... pristine? Present? Haunting mids? So, really, no surprises there. The CLR remains my mental benchmark for FRFR performance. It's just a really, really good speaker. That said, the PC+ is no slouch. It sounds great in "Flat" mode and if I weren't A/B'ing it with the CLR I wouldn't really have anything negative to say. Where the PC+ really shined though was when I turned off the impulse responses in the Helix and used the PC+ "Speaker Model Emulations". I didn't really expect to be "wow'ed", but I really was. The first chord was kind of a jaw-on-the-floor moment. Very impressive. The sound is obviously different from what I otherwise have dialed in, so it is not consistent with what I hear in headphones or what I feed the DAW, but it is different in a really appealing way as far as monitoring in-the-room goes. It made me not care that it was different, which I guess is as good a thing as I could possibly say about that. So, given that feature, and given the integration promised in the next Helix firmware update, I'm 100% in for the PowerCab Plus. Have I mentioned yet that two of them sound completely outrageous in stereo?

I have never experienced Wet-Dry-Wet. Heck, I’ve never run my guitar in stereo even in headphones until quite recently. This is all pretty new and exciting terrritory for me right now, haha! I can see how it would be difficult in a live setting, both in terms of extra gear/setup and in actually implementing it so that it translates effectively to the audience. But man, putting yourself right in the sweet spot of the stereo field is pretty intense.