craiganderton

It's worth noting that it was never easy to get a great guitar sound, even with physical amps in a big studio. Room sound, mic choice, mic placement, parts of the cab that vibrated, the effects that were added during the mix, even issues like different speakers in a cab sounding different all complicated matters. So, it's not surprising that dialing in a sound you love on an amp sim is a little complicated. But the good news: You can save it as a preset!!! :)

Thanks for the props! I'm about halfway through the 1.3 update. A couple fine points, though: Updates aren't necessarily just about new firmware. For example, this time around I did a deep dive into the 3-parameter distortions, and how the Tone parameter affects the sound. It was surprisingly revealing in terms of choosing which distortions would be the best candidates for particular presets. The "point" updates are free (like software going from 2.0 to 2.1), but if it an eBook goes to a new edition with substantial changes (like software going from version 2.0 to version 3.0), owners of existing editions get the new one for half off. FWIW I don't see that happening with the Helix book any time soon, though. Line 6's steady flow of incremental updates works well with the "point" update approach.

Like most of the other here, I agree that the majority of the sound is in the cab, amp, and mic. For me, after that comes EQ (before the amp, after the cab, or both) for shaping the sound further. Here's a brief excerpt from my Helix book you might find useful. It's the procedure I use when getting to know the new amps and cabs that Line 6 drops into our laps from time to time :) Dealing with Option Overload Helix offers so many options, it’s easy to be tempted into thinking you’re just a few tweaks away from getting an even better sound. But avoid becoming too distracted. Given Helix’s sheer number of amps, miking options, cabinets, effects, and more, the possible combinations are at least in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. This is especially true because as you try different cab and virtual miking options, the results may not be consistent—a perfect mic choice for one amp might not be the best choice for a different amp. If you’re prone to option overload, try the following steps to narrow down your choices. This procedure is just one possible strategy: 1. Pick an Amp+Cab that sounds close to what you want. 2. Try out different cabs, and choose the one that sounds best. 3. Next, try different Mics, then choose your favorite. 4. Edit the cab’s Distance and Position (and with Legacy Cabs, Early Reflections) for the best sound. 5. Now, run through the amp options to see if one sounds better. Avoid the temptation to experiment further—if you have a good sound, start playing! Although musicians have specific opinions about sound and tone, the average listener does not. People want to hear music…so give the people what they want. They’re interested in the notes you play, whether they enhance the song, and if the tone is pleasing. P.S. You didn't mention if you're doing front panel editing, or editing with HX Edit. If you're tweaking via the front panel, you'll find HX Edit makes life infinitely easier!

The Elmsley is fantastic IMHO, and I fall into the "I like the Grammatico" camp. The update went 100% smoothly here, but to be fair, I followed the documentation :) I guess it's time to start in on the next eBook update!

In theory, there's a MIDI command that will reset a pattern IIRC. You can also reset patterns by tapping the tempo switch, but then the tightness of the sync depends on you, not a MIDI command. I think I'll look into this further, as well as with respect to Helix Native.

I'd consider getting something else if I ran out of possibilities with the Helix, but that hasn't happened yet and probably won't. It's deep enough to keep me interested, and friendly enough to keep using it.

Perhaps he can have someone in the US buy it, update it if needed, and then ship it wherever he's stationed.

The challenge is always how to make advanced technology transparent to the user. When playing the prototypes of effects that had the "listen to me" footswitch, all the guitar player knew was that the effect seemed more responsive. All the heavy lifting happened under the hood. It would be possible to make what went into creating that responsiveness user-accessible, but that would lead to a daunting collection of parameters, and require that people knew what to do with the parameters. I don't think that's what most players want. I think one reason the multiband pack was successful was because people could just load a preset. Tweaking all the parameters in four bands takes forever.

I would love to see sidechaining implemented in Helix for envelope control over selected parameters. But I think it might be difficult to implement. Line 6 would have to decide which parameters in an effect should tie to the envelope follower, and each parameter would need three controls (amplitude, offset, and polarity) to tailor the response to the envelope. Many people already have a hard enough time figuring out what the parameters do. In a related concept, several decades ago I designed a "Pluck Detector" circuit. It generated a trigger every time there was a rapid upward transient. It (nerd alert) used a floating threshold, so it didn't matter if the transient happened in the middle of a sustaining chord or started from nothing. The pluck detector then went through an integrator to smooth out the triggers into a control voltage. The control wasn't based on amplitude, like an envelope follower. Its purpose was to control parameters based on the intensity of your playing. I used it mostly for delay, so that playing faster pulled back a bit on the delay mix to keep the delay from stepping on the notes. As I played slower, the delays would be allowed to come back in more frequently. I also designed a set of pedals for a startup company that, uh, never started up LOL with a "listen to me" momentary footswitch. The pedals tracked dynamics, plucks, and envelopes, and used that data to create subtle differences in the sound that reflected your playing. For example, chorus modulation could be influenced by your playing so it followed what you did instead of just doing the "whoosh-whoosh-whoosh" from an LFO. Unfortunately companies aren't interested in this kind of stuff because, well, most guitarists aren't interested in it. So I just end up implementing these kinds of things for myself. The Helix multiband presets pack was an exception - it made it out into the world because I was pretty sure a lot of people would like multiband processing. v3.50 is letting me take that concept to another level, so there will be more presets in the future as I get time to tweak them. It took me a year to to the multiband preset pack.

In addition to the excellent tips referenced in the previous posts, make sure the USB cables you try aren't power-only cables used for charging, not data transfer. That's bit me a couple times.

You can think of the Helix multiband compression as a three-band graphic EQ where you can choose the frequency ranges for each band. The parametric is more about boost and cut rather than amplifying or attenuating a range of frequencies. I use the MG compressor a lot to create 3-band crossovers for multiband presets, without necessarily using any compression. If you have my Helix eBook, the Favorites folder in the Free Files section has presets for high/mid/low crossovers using the MB Compressor. I did an article about using multiband compressors for equalization. It's not specifically about the Helix MB compressor, but the principles are the same. It might give you some ideas on how to extend the MB Comp for other applications. Fun stuff!

Glad to help! That one mystified me for a while as well.

This is a more complex issue than it might seem. Due to their high resolution, digital devices have plenty of headroom. For example in Helix Native, you can go way into the red on the input or output and not introduce any distortion that's not in an effects block. Where you run into problems is interfacing to the world outside digital processing. D/A and A/D converters have hard limits for how much audio they can handle without distortion. In this situation, you also need to be aware of intersample distortion. Most meters measure the actual values of the digital waveform’s samples, prior to reconstruction into analog. But that reconstruction process can create signal peaks that are higher than the samples themselves, and which don’t register on your meters. This is why DAWs have True Peak meters - they give a measurement of how high peaks will go after undergoing digital-to-analog conversion. (I doubt the metering in Helix is true peak, but with Line 6, you never know...) For that reason, I always avoid going into the red to allow some headroom for intersample distortion. If you want to know more about this, check out Digital Metering Basics for an overview of digital metering, and scroll to the end for a summary of intersample distortion. For an explanation of how intersample distortion occurs, go to the article Why Is Normalization a Dirty Word?, and scroll down to the section that includes fig. 3. Hope this helps! Disclaimer: This was written by a human being, not AI.

Any chance your presets include bass amps? Presets I've made with bass amps crash Helix Native on Windows (don't know about the Mac). Line 6 is aware of this and will likely have a fix soon. I'm not sure if any other modules crash Native, but if the bass amps can, perhaps some other modules can as well. But I haven't experienced problems other than with the bass amps.

Indeed, noted from your previous post and that will be addressed this week. I just figured this was a priority - the Studio One book contents is pretty just individual items, it doesn't drill down into subheads like the Helix book. And while I have everyone's attention...remember there's a dedicated support forum for all my Sweetwater books. I really appreciate being able to interact in this forum, but not every person on this forum has the book (at least, not yet, LOL) and I don't want to overstay my welcome. Any errata will be posted in that forum, and suggestions for future revisions are welcome.

Sweetwater has posted version 1.2.1, which fixes the problem with the sidebar index showing only thumbnails. I gotta hand it to them for getting on this so fast!! It might take a little bit for any caches to refresh, but it's there. If you've already downloaded v1.2, then download it again for the version with the hotfix. If you haven't downloaded or purchased 1.2 yet, you'll receive version 1.2.1 when you do.

Update: I sent v1.2.1 to Sweetwater. They're really fast about turnarounds, so it should be posted on Monday. @hungri-yeti - I tested v1.2.1 with Skim v1.6.15 on the Mac, and it worked as expected. I also tested it on other readers. Thanks again for catching this! It's odd...every revision (and there were a lot of them) up to the final version worked as expected. I'm not sure why the default changed for the final export, but I'll add it to my list of QC checks before sending files.

You have indeed found an issue, and thank you for bringing this to my attention! For some reason, the default on Word's PDF Export was not set to generate bookmarks from headings. I double-checked the setting, re-exported the file, and now the headings show up properly. I'll create a hotfix update and send it to Sweetwater. They'll probably have it up by Monday. Try downloading the file again, and check that the version number on page 2 is version 1.2.1. It should then work as expected. Good catch!

@themetallikid - I adjust the frequency by ear, but it usually ends up being around 100 - 120 Hz or so. As to compressor settings, I mostly use the LA Studio Comp's Limit mode to reduce peaks. It's not about using compression to add sustain. @Aged_Cheddar - You could probably bump the cut above 35 Hz, like 50 Hz. See what works best. I often use highcut on the Cab block to tame the "tweeter sizzle," but adding a sharp notch with the parametric around 2 - 5 kHz can also help, if you can isolate the frequency creating the sizzle.

I think it may depend on which PDF reader you use. The eBooks are optimized for Adobe Acrobat, because it's so common. In the sidebar on the left side, you can choose between a thumbnail view (as you show above for v1.2) or a bookmarks view, which has a hierarchical structure that lets you unfold and chapter heading to drill down. I don 't know if the Skim reader reacts similarly. However, if you open the PDF in Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome, you have the same two options for thumbnails or a hierarchical view. I also don't know how many readers have a memory stack when you jump to a link, so you can return to where you were. I haven't yet run into a limit as to how far back Acrobat can go, but it makes it easy to jump around to different parts of the eBook. Neither Edge nor Chrome can do this, as far as I can tell. I appreciate your brining this up, as I can include more detailed instructions in future books about the different views available in PDF readers. Thanks!

Yup. For example, in some presets, I've had the best sound and tracking from putting Poly block effects between the amp and cab. For downtuning on guitar, I insert a lowcut filter before the Poly Capo so it doesn't transpose low-frequency artifacts that you'll never hear anyway. Similarly, I use a highcut filter when transposing up. Bottom line is your ears will let you know what works best!

If you contact whoever you deal with at Sweetwater, they'll take care of you. Tell 'em I sent you :) If there are further problems, I'll step in. But if that's necessary, I'll need a couple more pieces of information: did you buy the original 1.0 version, or did you start with 1.1? If you started with 1.0, did you successfuly download the 1.1 update? The reason I ask is there were some issues early on in getting the updating process nailed down. They had to make some backend changes to allow people to download free updates. Bear in mind I am not a Sweetwater employee and do not work there, so you'll need to go through "official channels." But some other people had this problem, and Sweetwater resolved it for everyone so far. Craig

I'm glad y'all are enjoying the update!! Datacommando is correct, the way to get the update is just to download with the original link. (If you didn't save the email that arrived when you bought the book, the code to access the link is in your Sweetwater account.) I did want to mention that almost all the presets have been redone to take advantage of the new cabs (even if the name is the same as a preset from a previous version). The ones that don't have cabs are pretty much the same. In particular, the multiband presets in the Chapter 9 free files folder are not only new, but also cover amps that were added after my original Multiband Preset Pack was introduced. So, they help fill out that collection. The Chapter 9 files also has a setlist of the 82 new "amp replacement" presets, so you can load the setlist and audition them easily from the Helix library. Finally, let me remind you there's a dedicated support forum at MusicPlayer.com for the Sweetwater books. If you have any questions about updating etc., or there are sections that aren't clear, that's the place to go. Suggestions for future updates are also welcome. Finally, any errata will be posted there, in the first post. Thanks again for your support! Given how much effort it takes to put these eBooks together, it's really gratifying.

Haha! It does seem kind of scary, doesn't it? But I figure with an electronic book that doesn't have constraints on page count or 4-color illustrations, it's worth having a layout where you don't have to squint to see what the images show :) Quite a few people download my books to tablets, so they can read along while doing things on a computer.

The free update for owners of previous versions is now available from Sweetwater. Here's what's new in v1.2: 459 pages (91 more pages than v1.1) 337 Presets and files (over 100 more than v1.1), including new presets for Poly Block low tuning, bass, bi-amp processing, EQ-based cabs, combi-band processing, and 82 new multiband presets for Helix 4-path devices Extensive analysis of all the new cabs and mics in v3.50, with frequency response curves and performance summaries Coverage of the new effects blocks in Helix 3.50: Pillars OD, Vita Dist, Vita Boost, 4-Voice Chorus, Flexovibe, Dynamic Ambience, Boctaver New section on Send/Return block applications Expanded bi-amping chapter Surround sound and multi-channel audio configurations with Helix I hope you find it helpful!