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This is what I'm slowly finding to be the case. Essentially going back to theory and it's working out in practice is that, the higher the input impedance you can get the better. i see what someone is saying about the signal potentially being too hot but I got back a DI from another person and ran it through my setup and this sounded as expected, pretty awesome. However! His signal was orders of magnitude louder than mine. With mine around --30 - -22db his was printed around an average of say -8 - -10db, so a much hotter signal yet his still sounded cleaer, less top end, much more rounded and FAR more where it should be. Now whilst that might sound simple to get more impedance, it seems most higher end equipment still tops out around 1Mohm, and guitar from my calcs seem to want at least a minimum of 2mohm (tbh this all comes down to how hot the pickup is, proximity to the strings as well etc etc and 2mohm can just be the starting point), but fundamentally it means I had to dig out something which when I checked the tech specs, 4.7mohm on it's rear input - what do ya know, a marked improvement in the tone. It's being coloured on the way in with this preamp, so it's a prompt to look for any recommendations on a high impedance DI if anyone has one? As clean as possible. As an aside the pre's might sound "cold" but that's actually the beauty of clean Midas pre's they don't colour the sound so we know what on earth is going on. I want to thank those who helped it was much appreciated, and whilst it definitely CAN be input level, it's very much a contributing factor it seems. I mean unless someone wants to tell me it's all wrong and explain some theory but the sound is telling me otherwise.

Did you watch the video? The signal chain is so insanely simple, we've replicated it on the DAW inside Native and outboard using the HX stomp. The moment the stomp gets involved the sound inside Native dramatically improves. I've now got 4 different people with 4 different interfaces who are all trying different line level tests as they are just as shocked at the difference. Hence why i wanna know what's going on with the HX stomp on the input and how i can match those specs, cos for the most part either a) people are happy to settle for a crappy tone or b) just got damn lucky on certain setups (or peoples ears are a touch bad / got used to the sound)

Welp you're wrong the first 50secs or so is 2 different guitars, 2 different locations, SAME patch and IR running through native, the last part of the sound is the SAME SETUP just using the HX stomp for the DI tone, nothing more. So just to clarify, the HX stomp was used to create the tone which doesn't sound like arse, it was recorded in dry THEN the helix native was added.

Metal Stuff.hlx As requested, however we've been using external IR loaders like Nadir, as described in the video that was linked and the same throughout. The exact impulse used was OH 412 ORN M25 OH1-05 in both the video and in our tests and comes from the OH Heavy Hitters collection Vol 2

Whilst I appreciate your success with the Native, unfortunately myself and others have noticed the problem. You're right, the first thing we went to was the input level, I can drop 12db using the trim and I can pad the DI guitar down another 20db on the input I've check the input range on the helix is between -36db and -12 as it says, however I've found the most consistent feel is around more -18 to -12 BUT the fizz is horrendous and nt at all the same as the stomp. Unless of course the stomp was used to create the DI. Nothing more.

Sorry for the necro but I wanted to post a link to recordings using the native and the HX stomp back to back https://www.dropbox.com/s/4uxapgw9rmkrq0z/Helix_test.wav?dl=0 I've been chasing why all the plugins sound so fizzy, I know a producer who took the exact same patch and played 2 different guitars through then, took a guitar and ran it through the HX before hitting native. Now listen to the audio file - you tell me which one was the HX stomp, the difference isn't slight its utterly beyond comparison, please please check the link i posted as we're trying to find out why this, and we feel subseqently all other amp sims might be getting a bad rap for being hard etc etc. We've record through focusrite interfaces, behringer x32 interfaces etc and we need to find out what the issue is. I don't want to have to rely on the hardware unit to get sounds ITB. This is the video that started it all https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8NaX2u1anw&t=420s he's using the NATIVE and only the HX stomp can get the tone he's showing. We copied his chain exactly all plugins, all settings down to the letter. Can line6 say without a shadow of a doubt what my interface/input specs need to be in order to match the HX stomps tone when ITB?