Hey mate, same issue for me: was coming from Guitar Rig 6, amazing sound and now on Helix Floor everything sounds muffled/flat or like you describe (and this was also the first thing I thought when I used the Helix for the first time): "distant". I am starting to realize from reading forums that some people may simply not be sensitive to this (or that we got too used to an "in your face" type of sound). Although after tweaking my guitar knobs and making homemade Helix presets, I figured out a few ways to get close to that "in your face" sound but it certainly is not easy and I am still not 100% happy... I am personally thinking about giving it another ~7-10 days of testing and return it if I still cannot get a series of sounds/tones I 100% like :(
EDIT/SOLUTION: for whoever else who initially faced the same "issue" coming from a "I used to play in front of my amp" background, the "distance" felt in the Helix factory presets comes for the most part from the amp+cab block (instead of simply using an amp block or because the cab options are garbage) and sometimes a lack of reverb (for the volume). For me, I never realized (I was a kid back then) that my father's "amp" was really an amp-cab combo... but obviously it was not mic-ed since I was simply listening to it direct. I understood this misconception today after creating a preset from scratch and testing one by one the amps without a mic-ed cabinet, and now I am finally enjoying the sound I know and like! I will do some more testing but I am likely to keep my Helix now.
On a not so unrelated subject, I feel strongly that Line 6 should do a MUCH better job at "taking on board" their customers. People like me who had no previous experience using mic-ed cabinets are most likely the same ones commenting about flat/distant sound, also and this should be a priority: the initial Helix setup and firmware update should REALLY be streamlined: it was a pain in the butt to figure out where and what to download in terms of softwares/drivers because the bloody manual as never been updated (which mention ASIO drivers, now included in the HX Edit...). Hello Line 6, we are in 2021, and honestly even back in 2016, this should have already been a plug-and-play device. You most likely lost quite a few customers who returned their product because of stuff like this (I almost did myself).
