Rikthoven

Is there a way in the Helix to set up a snapshot that actually routes you to another preset? Scenario is this. Snapshot 1 default snapshot that triggers low blue lights for pre show. Snapshot 2 sends a midi signal to trigger lights light routine and a introductory sound clip. Snapshot 3 quickly route to the preset needed for the first song.(If possible) Trying to solve the problem of triggering a sound clip prior to the start of the show, and then being able to start the show as gracefully as possible. I currently have a very good set up in the Helix so that I can easily play and drive my light show via midi. Just trying to gracefully add this midi trigger prior to the show to play a sound clip that's 4 seconds long and then kicking over to the next preset. I'm not seeing a super obvious way to do this. I may need to just be super on my tap dancing game to make the switch graceful every time. Yes I know I can just hit select, switch banks, and hit the preset but that's 2-3(or more if you accidentally miss) clicks vs 1. With 4 seconds it could be hit or miss unless I put dead air in the clip so that I've got plenty of time to tappity tap tap to get to the preset I need and just hover before kicking it on right after the clip finishes. Looking for the shortest ergonomic route to get this happening. Thanks for any advice!

Just proved without question that the upgrade from data without Midi "Wait time" to the latest firmware release produces, at least in my case random delays spread out among the patches. One patch may have 0 wait time consistently, Another patch may have 500ms delay consistently. So random meaning it's different from patch to patch. I took some patches that encountered delays during the show. Moved them to a different patch bank. Tested that the MIDI "wait time" delays still existed. They did. I then went into the Midi commands exhibiting the issue, changed them from the default post upgrade ,"Command" to "Bank/Program Change" and "MIDI CC". I then specified 0ms "wait time" on the commands. It is now MIDI triggering right away like it used to consistently with 0ms wait. It's an upgrade issue, at least in my case. Each patch has 2 commands on it. A MIDI CC command to fire the lights. and Bank/Program change to change the preset on my VE-500 vocal pedal. I'm going to have to go through the entire show and convert all of the generic post upgrade "Command" statements into actual "MIDI CC" and "Bank/Program changes" specifying 0ms wait time. I'm not sure how null data wait time is not being treated as 0. In my case anyway the firmware is producing random "wait times". I know not a ton of folks use the MIDI commands but Line 6 may want to have devs take a look. To me it was super evident because the light changes during the show were lagging significantly and I had to compensate by kicking in snapshots early so the light would change near the beat that it should. Not everyone is going to have something that blatant in their face to indicate when there's a lag. Without a light flashing in your face, a half second or second lag may not be noticed? Don't. Anyway thought I would share. I will do a full backup before I set out to manually "upgrade" all of my commands.

Thanks for the advice. I have it connected via midi cable rather than USB. I do have the drivers updated on the laptop so...it must be something else. I'll have to hook things up and start doing some testing to see where the latency is coming from. By the responses thus far it's likely an issue with the laptop rather than the Helix. Thanks for the the help anyway guys!

Upgraded my Helix LT to the latest firmware recently. I see that with that latest version when programming in MIDI CC's or Program changes you can now put in a delay of transmission, default being 0 ms. I use my Helix to control our light show as well as it's normal use. I have Midi CC's attached to snapshots for every tune, "Verse", "Chorus, Solo" that sort of thing. Those MIDI commands are then "Caught" by a laptop running lighting software which in turn changes the light programming. In running the lights post firmware upgrade, I'm seeing random delays in light switching now. Before it was super snappy, zero lag at all, Now there's randomly up to a 500ms delay I'd say. Before I start forensically combing through software/hardware looking for the source, is this a known issue? Do I need to say, go in and recreate every command so that the midi delay data is overwritten with zero? I noticed commands I wrote pre upgrade do not display the delay option, however newly created MIDI commands do offer that option. Thanks for any help.

So I have an odd one that I can't pinpoint the cause of. I have a Helix LT operating on 2.92. I have a patch where I am using the optical trem to create a chopping effect. I have the speed set to 7.5 and it does the job nicely. The peculiarity is that every once in awhile I'll use this patch I hit the Trem, as a stomp box within a snapshot, expecting the moderately fast chopper sound and instead it's incredibly slow. Going into the patch using HX Edit, if I change the speed base for the effect from clock to "tap" it is set at a 1/4 note. So maybe what is happening is, every so often the trem speed is deriving it's speed setting from the tap based timing(1/4) instead of the clock based timing(7.5). All I know for sure is being on stage expecting a high energy chopper blade like effect and getting a slow whomp .......whomp.......... whomp is less than ideal and I'm not sure what the cause may be. Is it possible I'm "Fat footing" something on the board and hitting something that is causing it to either change the clock or flip it into Tap mode? I am not tapping out the timing on this effect, nor do I purposely hit the tap button while using the patch. Thanks for any advice/help!

The only problem I had is that my global setting for XLR output changed from mic level to line level. This presented itself as a huge volume boost. Upon checking the global settings I saw what had happened and switched it back. Helix LT.

Oh yeah I realize it's user error. It's me hitting both selection buttons at once accidentally which puts it into a "change selection type" mode and if you don't kick "mode" to escape out, your selection mode can change which will really make your life interesting. Is there a way to lock selection mode in so that the selection mode can not be changed on the fly. I.E. Hitting both buttons does nothing, your selection mode can't be changed unless you go into your global settings menu. Thanks!

So there I was in Snapshot/pedal view and I fat foot a snapshot or accidentally click both selection triggers and now suddenly my Helix is in a completely different selection mode and I am SCREWED during the show. It switched from being able to swap between banks of patches to swapping between snapshots in a single patch. Of course I didn't remember the specific modes I had set up in the global settings in the heat of the moment. It was all I could do to switch to my main rock patch and finish the show using that only. Once I got home and got the old manual out I got the board back to the way I had it. Is there a way to lock the bank selection triggers so that you CAN'T change selection modes on the fly like that? That is super annoying. I don't know how many times this has almost happened and I've kicked the mode button to avoid things going horribly wrong. Am I missing something obvious or is there no way to to do this? Thanks for any help I appreciate it.

Yeah that's what I thought. I'd like to use an external unit like the mission unit because it's purpose built to handle road use of the wah, more so than the Helix itself. I think extended road use of the Helix LT's expression pedal is not as realistic as it would be for an external unit. From the factory my LT had almost zero lubrication and started squeaking and wearing within hours despite adjusting the tension. If you play songs that require a lot of rocking of the pedal, it heats up and starts to wear and squeak from the friction. I wound up taking it apart and lithium greasing the "axle" and plastic washers. The problem has now been "resolved" for now but in looking at the construction...It's not bad, it's just not, in my opinion, built as durably as something like the external mission engineering units. Since the LT expression socket is a TRS socket. I wonder if it's possible to, through firmware, be able to allow for a TRS to y quarter inch set up to allow LT and even floor users to use an external unit with toe trigger. YEs the 1% sweep parm trick would work some of the time but there are times when you want the wah just on, or times when you need full wah sweep. For instance we play "Bulls on parade" there is a lot of full sweep wah in the intro and outro plus the verses have the wah just kicked on, not open to get that nasally tone Tom got during the verse. Yes it could be done via other means involving triggers or snapshots. It would just be nice as player to not have to adjust workflow from normal, analog wah use. To be able to just trigger your custome set up Helix wah just like you would an analog pedal. To use the Helix tone with the convenience of "built like a tank" expression pedals. I like the helix tone, just don't want to wreck my unit.

Using the Mission Engineering SP1-L6H with a Helix LT. Considering purchase. What I need is an external pedal that can trigger the wah on/off basically function exactly like a real wah pedal. The LT has one external expression socket that will accept TRS. If I run a TRS to to 1/4 inch cable to the expression pedal can I use both the toe switch to turn on/off a wah block and use the sweep portion of the pedal to control the sweep of the wah? Or is the External expression pedal limited to ONLY sweep? Thanks!

So there's been a lot of hub bub about a lack of undo and the response for a couple years now is "The editor program is just a remote control and the unit itself has no undo therefore the desktop editor doesn't either." I will give you that to put undo into the Helix firmware/hardware is likely difficult and expensive. However putting undo in the editor is not. When a user brings up a preset. Cache the entire preset's setting in an array of preset objects in memory. As changes are made to blocks in the editor and sent to the, update the array in memory. I would update the array any time a block object lost focus and there were changes from the previous instance of the object. Index 0 is the preset at the start. Index 1 is your first change etc. It would not be difficult to program for that in the editing software. It would give users of the editors the ability to undo even though the actual unit can't. If a user selects undo Grab the highest index in the array and send it to the Helix. That would in effect "undo the last change". If you wanted to get fancy you could allow for "Re do" as well, just walk up the index of the array, sending the changes to the Helix as you step through the array. So it is possible. It just needs to be prioritized. Those using the editor expect it to behave like a normal desktop app and when it doesn't there's frustration. Those editing on the Helix itself would expect it to behave like a rack unit where, yup, undo is a bit spotty or non existent. That's my suggestion to help improve the user experience. This is a great unit. I just think a small tweak to the desktop editor as I've outlined above would improve the editing experience especially for tone tweakers. Thanks!

So there's been a lot of hub bub about a lack of undo and the response for a couple years now is "The editor program is just a remote control and the unit itself has no undo therefore the desktop editor doesn't either." I will give you that to put undo into the Helix firmware/hardware is likely difficult and expensive. However putting undo in the editor is not. When a user brings up a preset. Cache the entire preset's setting in an array of preset objects in memory. As changes are made to blocks in the editor and sent to the, update the array in memory. I would update the array any time a block object lost focus and there were changes from the previous instance of the object. Index 0 is the preset at the start. Index 1 is your first change etc. It would not be difficult to program for that in the editing software. It would give users of the editors the ability to undo even though the actual unit can't. If a user selects undo Grab the highest index in the array and send it to the Helix. That would in effect "undo the last change". If you wanted to get fancy you could allow for "Re do" as well, just walk up the index of the array, sending the changes to the Helix as you step through the array. So it is possible. It just needs to be prioritized. Those using the editor expect it to behave like a normal desktop app and when it doesn't there's frustration. Those editing on the Helix itself would expect it to behave like a rack unit where, yup, undo is a bit spotty or non existent. That's my suggestion to help improve the user experience. This is a great unit. I just think a small tweak to the desktop editor as I've outlined above would improve the editing experience especially for tone tweakers. Thanks!