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It's a shame this topic has devolved into this... a. No I'm not asking it to do miracles: I rarely use more the 6 instances at a time b. I'm running FL on Windows - it's native platform. ImageLine have incredible support and have definitely ruled themselves out as the issue c. The issue happens across all DAWs I have used - just different issues dependent on the system. d. I come from a background of using something called the CDP - composers desktop project. you had to wait 2 minutes for a SINGLE audio process to finish. Don't make personal assumptions about me and my workflow. e. FL is certainly not your classic DAW - but it is fully functional and featured AND officially supported by Line 6. If the only plugin that doesnt work in FL is Helix - it's not FL's fault - it's Line6's f. FL hasn't been called Fruity Loops for years because they wanted to distance themselves from loop based beat making. It's a fully featured and powerful DAW. Mick Gordon used it for the Doom Soundtrack for heaven's sake. I know the struggles of recording guitar based music in FL - and trust me - it really is a pain - but the payoff is that FL is a powerful software when you want to go beyond classic production techniques. g. I'm an audio programmer. I build things - tweak things. I know how things should work. h. Would you say that 2 active instances of Helix running is asking it to do miracles? Because I wouldnt. And I still have really big issues even with that setup. - Oh, and thats not in FL. Just like with support - you have ignored my problems and gone "well its not Helix, it must be you". And yes - I have even pondered that question myself. Am I really pushing Helix that hard...? And after 5 years of using it - no I am not. Have you thought that Helix could ACTUALLY be acting up on my system? With this thread I had hoped to rekindle some hope that Line 6 and/or its community could advise me, help me, figure out what is going wrong. But to have the blame pointed at ME? I'm disappointed. I wanted all your help and advice. Not this. I said don't take my bluntness for rudeness. Well - still please don't - I don't intend to offend anyone here - or to assume that anyone here has ill intentions. I don't know, maybe you think you're actually being helpful. But I find it rather rude. I'm very unimpressed with this now. Support won't help. The community won't help. My problems are mine and mine alone. :( With no official way to talk to the dev team. With a community unwilling to help. What am I meant to do? Just suck it up? Maybe I can get over the waiting. For sure. Thats the least of my worries. But I'm overwhelmed by the number of issues I've been having. Please don't respond unless you have something positive or reassuring to say. Even if its "noone else has these issues - but we believe you are". I'm still open for a thoughtful discussion with other users to see what their experiences are, and to find out how others use this software. But I won't be treated like this. It's simply rude.

The biggest problem is they weren't in realtime - all were bypassed... FL Studio doesnt have a freeze mechanic so what I do to get around that is to set up a single channel with all my Helix instances, then activate the tone I need and record from the output of the mixer channel. I am used to using lots of realtime instances running at once on my MacBook - the CPU usage was never too bad - however I never took into consideration the RAM usage. This could be slowing down everything far more if Helix is eating up RAM for breakfast, or worse, leaking it. I really am, and I'm not sure why either - I thought this post would have lots of others going "yeh me too" - but I can't find anyone else anywhere complaining - so this is utterly strange... Hence why I'm saddened by support not really being able to help because it must work fine for so many others. The CPU hit has never been a big issue - thats actually improved over time as new updates come in - but I worry there might be a memory leak that could be one of the big reasons it slows everything down so much. CPU is also measured vastly different between different DAWs Also regarding the error codes I was getting: I did a reinstall - time will tell whether its worked - but my support ticket regarding this problem to Line6 just disappeared? I didn't close it, it didn't get answered, just vanished... I assume it was just a bug on their system but it doesn't look good when my biggest complaint has been ineffective support... I still can't find any plugins that can do what Helix does which means I can't jump ship to another product - so I'm very committed to making sure it runs on my system as smoothly as possible. I hope none of my bluntness comes across as rude - I'm frustrated for sure but I'm just a very matter-of-fact guy, I don't want to start riling up a fight or something. Knowing that others are having a much better experience than I is reassuring because it means I might be able to get these things fixed. But its also frustrating because my problems might be a real minority and are often hard to reproduce - but they affect me nonetheless.

Does anyone else have Native take up like 6gb of RAM on a project? FL Studio tells me what my project RAM usage is - it was 7gb but it turns out all the helix instances had crashed (I had about 6 instances - all bypassed). When I reloaded - this shot up to 13gb... Is this normal? I assume its indexing all the models but does it need to do it for each instance..?

Hi it does thank you - I searched for the topic using the line 6 support ticket search option and found nothing. Probably in a similar way to not being able to find the Helix Native forum in the first place.

Oh thats certainly a quicker load than I get - but also a much much slower close than I get! Mine is approx 1-2 seconds both ways. A four second close is extremely drastic I would say. I was comparing it to AlphaForever - a completely vector drawn modular software - and that takes less than half a second to open or close. uHe Zebra2 is the same. I made a video too to demonstrate https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MT-iyyIuzPmSijnS16I5ReGEcdgPyqCC/view?usp=sharing The four second closing time would've driven me mad long ago... I just get the feeling that something is going wrong in the GPU rendering of Helix Native - 1 second either way is pretty nasty - but a four second close time is absurd imo. I've never had a plugin do that ever. Hence why I think its a bug and one I'm very committed to making sure is known and addressed. Maybe I am still being petty, but when you're using over 12 instances of helix in a project - it REALLY adds up... Again, maybe I'm just being obsessive - but I do believe user experience is paramount in music software - that's why you get so many beautiful looking plugins that are utter rubbish.

Not sure how I missed that - I think its because this is the only "Helix" forum that comes up on the main bar Worth a try maybe - thank you Oh I'm not worried about getting money back. I just really want the bugs ironed out. And being the only person to bring up these issues just makes it more important to me that the issues are heard - I've encountered these issues across 3 different computers - over 5 different VST hosts. It's hard to balance being fair and calm with how utterly frustrating it is for me. Mainly because it's never the same bug twice - it's always something new or wacky happening with it. But I'll try to put a post on the Native forum. Although I'll be honest I'm a little worn out with even trying That's strange to me as the difference is night and day... is it really just happening to me? That's the sort of thing I would need some help with from support because its a truly different beast when opening Helix Native. Or maybe I'm just extremely petty and the loading times are fine. But I've noticed them for 5 years so I don't think I'm going mad... Almost certainly related to the graphics rendering - the audio processing works great - but Helix is noticeably difficult to use sometimes due to the lag. Its not unusable - its just not as smooth as any of its competition. Having encountered the issues across multiple machines - I'm sure its a Helix thing. The reason I'm so intent on bringing it to line 6's attention is that I feel something is going wrong somewhere on their end of GPU rendering... or if not - something is going wrong when it is running specifically with the machines I have used it on. Either way I'll post this in the other forum. Cheers to all of you for the help :)

Hi thanks for the clarification - In which case I'll expand my question to include - has anyone else been having these issues? I can't be alone in this? And also - whats the best way to get in touch with line6 regarding this?

This is the single greatest FX system of all time. Easily. But I have had a poor experience with support recently and I want to make sure the following issues do not fall on deaf ears: ISSUE 1 - PLUGIN UI TAKES TOO LONG TO OPEN OR CLOSE This isn't the most dire bug, but its a bug ONLY found in Helix Native - no other plugin does this. It takes a very long time to open/close the UI plugin window. Which can get reeeeeaallly annoying on big sessions. SUPPORT'S ANSWER: Refuses to acknowledge fault and sidesteps the issue. Keep note of "FL Studio is not tested" ISSUE 2 - CRASHING WHEN MOVING EFFECTS BLOCKS AROUND IN FL STUDIO SUPPORT'S ANSWER: "FL Studio is not supported" This is false, following the link support provided sent brings me to this image: "Imageline FL Studio - 12 or above - VST3" This was then marked as "assumed answered". ISSUE 3 - MACRO MAPS CAN BE LOST UPON RELOADING AN ABLETON LIVE SET SUPPORT'S ANSWER: Potentially caused by compatibility issues with VST3 and Ableton Live. I switched DAWs not long afterwards so could not continue testing. Ableton has a poor track record with keeping their software stable and smooth since I first started using it with Live 9 - so I don't doubt that this time the fault is on Ableton... But a similar bug can be found in Bitwig: In Bitwig, sometimes macro mappings stop responding if the software is left on for too long or the computer is put to sleep whilst Bitwig is running. This only effects certain effects blocks such as momentary effects like ratchet, and the pitch units. I used Bitwig for live shows, so this is a pretty major issue. One which actually caused a big hassle in our last two gigs... However I haven't reported this bug - reproducing the problem is pretty difficult as its very much random. THE FOLLOWING HAS BEEN REPORTED, NO WORD BACK YET FL STUDIO: Sometimes loading a project with Helix causes error codes 8201 and 8207 and stops Helix from working. I just want SOMEBODY to acknowledge these issues! Give me actual support and help. I'll do any form of beta testing or debugging or anything... But these are not insignificant issues and they become extremely troublesome if running a live show or doing complex multitrack recordings. I have been using Helix native for 5 years now (since 2019). I can't live without it honestly. But I just want a stable and smooth piece of software. I worry that my bug reports never actually reach the dev team. When the support is saying things that are blatantly false (like FL studio isn't supported - then links me to a page where it says it IS (plus I have checked there is a wayback machine backup of the page in case)), I lose faith in the communication and support for this product... I have read many stories of people being very happy with Line 6 support and technology on this forum - and I don't doubt for a minute that they really were - but mine have not been good. I want to be reassured that this plugin will work correctly, and I also want to aide in ironing out bugs that harm the user experience. So many of my tech problems over the last two years have been centred around Helix, so it's hard to trust the product to work in important situations like live use or for actual paid production work to a deadline. I just felt the need to make my feelings known. I don't like to criticise people unfairly, or to make things seem like a bigger problem than they are - but I'm really frustrated at this point. And also kind of sad.