AndyTheDude

I cannot believe that program changes via midi have still not been introduced for VST3. All other major amp sims have this ability. Snapshot change is not enough. I now have 6 instances of the Native in my ableton set which affects the loading times.

Line6, get your act together, ffs!

I have raised a ticket with customer support. They were able to replicate the error and passed it on to the coding team to get it fixed with the next update.

I am getting a C++ error every time I click on midi learn button and then Ableton crashes. Screenshot attached. Can anyone check if it's the same for them before I open a support ticket?

To duplicate: open Native 3.70 and click on the midi learn button right next to "MIDI In" slider in Automation pane.

Every instance of Helix Native adds 7 seconds to my Ableton 10 project loading time. This is not good as I have 5 of them already and am longing for even more. My system is I5-10400, NVMe SSD and 16 gigs of RAM. It is not connected to internet, so the Native calling home scenario is out of the question here.

Has anyone found a way around it? Is the floor/rack unit that slow as well when booting up?

Whoa! This update is REVOLUTIONARY!!!

I don't own a Helix pedal, I use Native. A VST real-time polyphonic pitch shifter of this quality is something I was looking for for years. This is simply brilliant! I have only tested it for a few minutes so far, but it looks like it blows my MicroPOG out of the water... 10ms latency in fast setting compared to over 30ms on the POG. Flawless tracking of my bass.

This is fantastic! There's nothing like this on the VST market.

I've just posted a video of one of my tracks on youtube, all the overdriven sounds are done with the Native. What a great tool it is! One of best purchases ever. Enjoy.

Dirty Weasel

The method I use is to have two or more instances of HN with different presets on a track and switching them on and off using envelopes in Ableton. Not ideal, but it works.

I had the same problem with the trial, in Cakewalk and ALK2. Oddly enough, my projects with the Native plugins i had saved would play normally, I just couldn't open the Native GUI to change any settings anymore.

The only solution was to reinstall the trial, which I had to do daily.

I don't have any problems since buying a full license though.

16 hours ago, craiganderton said:

 

That's excellent performance! What are the computer's specs? Were the Native presets relatively simple (e.g., a single amp/cab), or complex?

Hi Craig, I hope you're well. Vast part of my (and most likely thousands of others') knowledge about Cakewalk and DAWs in general comes from your excellent posts in the Sonar forum. Good to see you around, mate.

My PC is nothing special really:

Asus Sabertooth Z170

6700k @ 4.5 Ghz

16GB DDR4 3200

Steinberg UR 12

As for the Native presets, some are fairly complex with parallel paths, others contain 5-7 blocks. I use Waves plugins too.

I think the performance comes from the projects being extremely lean. Just to give you an example, I have a project with 1 MIDI track with EZdrummer on it and 10 audio tracks with looper/track volume automation. Only up to 4 of them play at the same time. There are no audio clips in my projects at all. 

My dilemma is over as I bought a Native licence second-hand today. So far, so good. I've been testing it in Ableton and things look really promising. I loaded 5 instances of the Native in one of my projects and the cpu usage was around 30% only. That's at 192kHz with 128 samples with RTL of 5.5ms. I haven't experienced any glitches or drop outs so far and things seem to be very stable. All in all I am happy I didn't spend over 1k euro on the Helix.

As for Parallax, thanks for the heads up. I will give it a try later on. Native will definitely cater for all my "guitar" needs though.

8 minutes ago, soundog said:

Haven't used Native on stage, but find it to be highly reliable. For live use, you'll want good MIDI control, and the level of that you can achieve will depend somewhat on what you use to host the plug-in.  I'm not sure how it would work out with Sonar, for example. You're a solo live-looping bass player? So what about vocals, other instruments, etc?

I plan on using Ableton Live. No vocals, it's an instrumental music. Just bass and either drum loops or midi/soft synth combo like ezDrummer. I play "guitar parts" on my bass, that's why Helix/Native seem to be a perfect match.

Greetings, guitarists. A solo bassist here.

I downloaded and used Helix Native trial some time ago. Mostly with Sonar (Cakewalk) and with Zen Audio ALK2, a new kid on the block live-looping DAW.

I've recently bought Ableton after finding ALK2 too unreliable, buggy and undeveloped.

I want to start playing gigs as a solo bass artist, live looping on stage.

I am considering two options:

1) Helix Rack. 

Pros:  a physical piece of gear that can be sold easily should things go wrong with my little show. Reliable. Can be used as an audio interface. All ins/outs I need to get this show on the road. 

Cons: outrageously high latency (~20ms I believe). Pricey.

2) Helix Native

Pros: I am an ITB guy, have been working in-the-box only for the last 25 years. Less kilos to carry around compared to the rack. I could use two or three instances of the native in a project. Price difference would allow me to buy a good, low-latency interface.

Cons: Price (440 euro is steep). Reliability(?)

So, how's Native been for you? Any problems? Is using the Native on stage a good idea?