theElevators

There is this belief that turning things on/off needlessly is bad for equipment. At work, my workstation is always on, and has been on for 5 years. At home, my laptop is also always on, unless I go on vacation. I think that modern cars that save gas and don't idle at red lights are stupid. Turning the engine off at every red light and then starting is horrible for the motor. Just be reasonable with it and don't overthink it. Need to practice? -- turn it on. Take a coffee break -- leave it on. Finished practicing -- turn it off.

Oversampling can be heard. It's not necessarily "better", but there is a sonic difference. Sort-of like it's more "crisp". You can also only really hear it in isolation. In the mix it makes almost no difference. Like if you export your track as a wav file or a high-quality mp3 -- sounds almost the same.

I will repeat: in terms of sounds and functionality I am 99.9 percent happy with what I have on the Helix. I do not need another better/faster machine to do what I do. A year or more ago if you asked me if I was happy with the Helix, I'd say "not quite" because there was no acoustic simulator. It was the last piece that really sealed the deal for me. The one thing I wish the Helix had better would be: the flat/all knobs exposed design SUCKS! But I made it work, and figured out how to prevent myself from turning knobs, and messing up my sounds live. I figured out what to disable, where to place the cursor, and even came up with my own visual cue by using a dummy SEND1 block. From the sound point of view that the Helix still sucks at are the envelope filter/auto-wah and auto fade-in. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but those two are impossible to dial in right for my guitar/virtual amp/etc: the envelope filter is so darn sensitive to the loudness of the note/pitch, it's impossible to make it work for all registers, so I have several envelope filters for each song/section. The auto-swell is also too darn sensitive and doesn't release when needed. I wound up just adding a volume pedal at the beginning so that the thing would release in-between notes. Other than that, I've used the thing for 1.5 years, recorded like 15 songs with it, played gigs with it. It's a piece of equipment that has its flaws, but it's damn near perfect for me. And unlike other pieces of equipment that never quite sounded/felt right or had inherent problems (like the audio drop-offs when switching the patches), this thing is indistinguishable from the "real" amp + pedals, and has that valve amp interaction with your guitar.

Pod GO

I disabled the light -- it's distracting and useless to me.

You can always use abbreviations :) For my needs, most song names fit just fine, all 50 of them. You can also come up with some nicknames for them...

I love the acoustic sim on my Helix! It's great for live situations for sure. One thing that is very difficult with it, is that it is extremely sensitive to your guitar settings, pickup selection, volume and type of a guitar. If I dial in my sounds for my Brian May guitar, then use a Strat, and the balance is completely wrong. If I just want to strum chords, I set it up with these settings. I have a modded Strat, where I can get bridge + middle in series, creating a humbucker. So let's just say I'm on a bridge humbucker: Mode: Standard Body: 5 Top: 6.9 Shimmer: 0 Level to taste. After that I add a reverb, I happen to like '63 Spring for it. Finally, again depending on your guitar/pickups, there will be some honky notes that just jump out. You need to tame them by using a 10-band EQ. On my strat I have no honkers. I boost 2kHz + 10 dB, for more clarity. It sounds awesome.

https://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Use-same-button-to-switch-to-snapshot-and-turn-on-off-effects/973176-23508

Yeah, Nothing here I'm afraid. I got tired of complaining that my Boss MS-3 had more sounds out of 4 buttons + 2 additional buttons, than the Helix has in one preset :). You need to use different snapshots. One more thing you can do is use the expression pedal to control block engagement. I figured out a trick: EXP 2 controls wah and freeze for example. Some snapshots have the mix of the wah turned down to 0, so it effectively does not turn on, but the effect mix of the freeze is at an audible level. Another snapshot has the opposite: freeze is mixed at 0%, while wah is mixed at 100%. So I can control different things with the same expression pedal in multiple snapshots. There is no limit to how many things you can bypass with a single expression pedal.

I think you need to ask somebody to change those settings for you. So back it up, send the backup to somebody, then they will make the change and back it up on their end, then send it to you.

Here's what works for me, and tested on a stage multiple times. Basically I dialed in an additional distortion block. Whenever my guitar doesn't feed back by itself, I engage a certain snapshot, and it starts feeding back musically. I played on a pretty big outdoor stage and had no issues whatsoever. I use that special feedback snapshot sparingly. Like at the end of the phrase, or right before coming in to convey this "amp about to explode" sound.

Helix LT is a Helix Floor with slightly less features. I own both and use them interchangeably. I back up one and restore the backup on the other.

Firmware and HX version have to be the same. I copy presets all the time without an issue on my Mac.

Yup, it's doing block.Enabled = ~block.Enabled. If you have several things that affect the on/off status, things can get out of sync. That's why I like to minimize that chance and remove all the extraneous factors. Also I only have auto engagement of the wah in a handful of presets where there are frequent wah changes, where it's absolutely needed. Since doing the trick I explained, I have not had any occurrence of this bug. But being a programmer and not trusting computers, I always leave the cursor on the wah-block so I know if it's ever gets stuck/flipped. In a live situation, you can often simply not hear if you have a problem. For the same reason I color-code my obnoxious sounds with a different color of the footswitch, so I don't forget to exit that loud snapshot. Also, having the emergency snapshot to turn off the wah mix, in case it starts doing weird things is an option. But like I said, I have not had any issues yet.

I have had this happen to me several times where the wah gets flipped. It's not a consistent bug, but is still there. Here's how to overcome it: 1. Un-select snapshot bypass for the the wah. This means that snapshots do not control if the wah is on/off. You already use the wah position to control if it's on/off. 2. If you want to have some of your snapshots to have the wah block off, simply select the mix...... [100%] parameter to be controlled by the snapshot selection. Now pick your snapshot and set the mix at 0%. So you do not disable the wah block, you simply make it inaudible. End-result -- wah is auto-engaged. Some snapshots will not have the wah sound. The wah will be on, but the mix level will be 0%, which is equivalent to it being off. For all my auto-engaged wah presets, I have an "emergency" snapshot where the wah is mixed ot 0%, in case something goes wrong.

You can set up tap tempo globally -- something I don't personally use. Otherwise, the easiest way to set the tap tempo is to use HX edit and update all presets/snapshots' tap value.

buy a cheap exp pedal and use it.

As the Russian saying goes, "for a bad dancer, the bollocks get in the way". I have been using digital gadgets for about 6 years now, all of them can be tweaked to sound good. The only thing that was not addressed on some units was the silence between presets until recently. There were various workarounds for that annoying silence..... In 2021 all digital processors: Helix, AX FX, Zoom processors, Kemper all have a way to seamlessly switch either between scenes/snapshots or presets. All of them have oversampled, stereo hi-fi sounds. The rest is up to the user, how much you are willing to tweak, and how much time you are willing to invest. They all sound good, they all sound like the real thing. To me, the biggest advantage of a Helix is that it's: self-contained has a big display/scribble strips has an amazing editor for the computer, and is very easy to backup/restore things, unlike other pieces of gear Just as an example, for the heck of it, this concert was recorded by running a Vox ToneLab to the FOH. No tube amps, no analog reverbs, or vintage tube screamers. Vox ToneLab came out like 20 years ago at this point. If you know how to tweak it, it will sound analog-y and tube-y. This was 2005. No balanced outputs on that. No oversampling. I bet you when you first saw that Vox processor you thought it was for boomers to play Rollin' Stones at home....

I'm not a pro in terms of pro sound, but to me I use balanced/unbalanced interchangeably (I record through 1/4 out, and play live with xlr or 1/4) -- both sound the same. Balanced is supposed to be without any sound interference. This potential interference can be a real problem when you are playing at a stadium with lots of wireless transmitters, cables running near you, and so forth. But for most applications, lots of amateur-hour events, bar gigs, and festivals I've played at the sound guys expect a 1/4 inch out from the Helix. One time a sound guy pulled out an adapter xlr-1/4 to connect me to the DI box :) At home, I use 1/4 inch outs connected to my studio monitors -- sounds absolutely great. I have it set up so the volume knob controls the 1/4 only, so I can adjust my loudness from the Helix, without messing with my Global Settings. I think balanced out is too much of a gimmick/selling point for real life applications, but what do I know... Lots of keyboards just have had 1/4 out only for decades, for example. If you are recording some kind of a classical violin cadenza or something, you need balanced outs, otherwise, it's the same to most peoples' ears. PS, does your electric guitar have a balanced out 1/4? Nope.

try to change your input to the return 1, 2, etc and see if the sound is still there. Try a different cable -- things can sometimes go bad. But if your input jack went bad on the Helix, there are so many other ways to connect your guitar using return 1, 2 etc.

If you leave left/right plugged in when you power up the unit -- it's fine. I have this issue on my LT and Floor. I opened a ticket and was told it's a bug. Try it with a very slow ping-pong delay. You will hear only one side.

There is a BUG that is not fixed to this day where it does NOT combine left and right. You need to plug a cable into right, unplug it, then into left, THEN it will combine it. How do I know this? I have a very exaggerated left/right delay in one presets and only the left side sounds, until you perform this step.

On stage, my method of choice is the effects loop of a Marshall stack. I set up my sound so that it just works when going into the effects loop -- it's an unbiased sound, just neutral. I leave all the cab sims on, and just use it for stage volume, since I go straight to the FOH and it works fine for me. Usually I don't need to do anything in terms of EQ'ing (surprisingly). I have a global EQ that gets rid of the boomy low-end, and it comes in handy sometimes. So it's either the Global EQ on or off -- I never had to tweak it.... At home, when I build presets, practice, record or mix, I use Yamaha HS5. I have them on stands on foam platforms. I use this as my "single source of truth", whenever I need to make any adjustments. So far, as per the sound guy, my balance has been very good, so the sound guy doesn't need to tweak anything. He's happy, I'm happy. I also have a Headrush 108, that I keep in my car. It's nice and light, plenty loud. It's very bass-heavy, so I need to turn on the Global EQ that gets rid of the low end. I just typically put it on the floor. The only problem with it, is it has a very focused sound that projects straight forward, like a wedge monitor. So if you are standing in front of it, it's loud, a few steps left/right and you can't hear anything, and the fact that it's very bass heavy.

omg.... I just set my presets with whatever setting there was. And don't intend on messing with anything at this point. It's done and done for me. I think that this auto impedance is kind-of going overboard... could always tweak the EQ to get the same result IMO.

Tip: use the Helix backups instead of versioning each preset multiple times. I use one preset-per-song. I need to reorder them as needed when my band decides on the set order. I use another playlist folder to store "backups" of all my presets, just in case I accidentally do something stupid right before going onstage. I make a Helix backup after very single (often trivial) change. That's how I version my presets as well. If I realized that a month ago my preset sounded better than what I have right now, I: 1. retrieve that helix backup 2. restore my presets into another preset folder 3. copy and paste it from there. It's a lot easier than keeping a ton of old presets IMO. But to each his own.