gkinder

Well yes but in the end the company is expending resources based on income. Some may choose to dig into their profit more in the sake of support but in the end that resource is finite, it *will* end at some point.

 

It seems that Fractal may have a middle ground where every unit is so expensive that they have enough overhead to do a huge amount of development. But then I have no idea of their unit economics so that interpretation could be way off.

 

 

I believe they have also in the past done things like paid amp packs. Anyway, let's hope they keep adding stuff and making the Helix even more awesome. :)

 

The Digitech GSP1101 is a great example by the way. The life cycle of that unit was extended insanely. It was released almost 10 years ago and is still a great choice for many setups. I actually bought a Pod HD rack to replace the GSP and flipped it because it simply didn't win. 

For the 1300-1500 street price of the Helix floorboard, don't think anyone should expect unlimited free upgrades for the life of their unit....that's just not realistic IMO.  If Line 6 upgrades this unit for a year, maybe two, then charges their normally nominal amounts for amp/effects packs, I'll buy them all day long.  It costs a LOT of money to maintain a large IT shop, I'll show you my books if you don't believe it, so Line 6 isn't gong to be able to support freebies forever on nothing but the back of new Helix sales.  I WANT long term support/upgrades and am willing to pay a reasonable amount to get it.  If the price moves beyond what I consider reasonable,then I'll keep what I've got and still be a happy camper....

I'll be honest, I'd just like Line 6 to do a series of excellent patches with logical and useful pedal layouts so those of us without endless hours could just load up a great Bogner like tone with a flange, phaser, chorus and distortion pedal already programmed on the bottom row.

 

I've gotten some of Glenn DeLaunes and they are excellent but would like Line 6 to do some that intricate to download. Most of the user created Helix tones on this website aren't very good. The difference between a generic Helix tone/chain and the super intricate stuff is huge.

Have to disagree with you on this...one of the Helix's strengths, IMHO, is it puts out damn nice tones without having to get super intricate...have just about all of Glenn's patches, and really like them, however my favorite patches have nothing more than a Dr Z Rte 66 with a LA compressor, either a Minotaur or Timmy drive, a delay and/or verb into a dual cab....no fancy routing and playing through a good FRFR amp....even a hobbyist like me can get great tones out of Helix in a short time, then spend a lot of time playing....could a pro do better, yep, but guessing the differences would take hours and be a small percentage....I'd rather play as I don't make a living entertaining so don't need that little extra tone, which is subjective at the end of the day any way.

Like mine too, very well made.  Have no idea what the ammo belt loops are for either LOL

Tried the IRs tonight...they were nice but prefer Helix dual cabs...like pilottes says above, they sound warmer.  

archisc, I'm no expert but have had luck with using variations of the same type of cabs, silver and blue bell cabs or the 20 and 25 greenback cabs, then using a dynamic mic close on one then backing up a condenser mic on the other, or the reverse.....think it sounds better than single cab....haven't tried much beyond that simple setup yet...

I have few Ownhammer cabs..

 

I concur with most people that IR sounds better right out of the box but dual cab can sound even better sometimes...

 

the problem with dual cab is that u really have to spend time to tweak. The combo of mics/cab/settings can drive someone crazy...

 

If there is a library of sounds with all different dual cab combos.. that will save us a lot of time.. I know different guitar/amp use would be different.. but at least u kind of compare...

Every time I start a new patch I try to use the included cabs: I always end using ownhammer IRs because I found them more natural and real sounding.

Okay, now you have me curious so I'll have to give these IR's a try....believe they are from ownhammer....thanks!!

As I said earlier in this thread.

I will not respond to trolls. Which Peter clearly is.

 

For anyone that wants know if I'm being truthful or being a troll myself.

All you have to do is go to the top of the Helix forum and enter the word "muddy" into the search field. It's currently returning two pages of threads.

 

I'm not interested in hearing the mindless ramblings of users that love the Helix. Yet can't even figure out how to use a simple forum search option.

I'm only here to tell Line 6 specifically why I returned it. And ask for them to address them in the next one.

If anyone want's to tell me how wrong I am. Don't bother...I will not reply to you.

 

I'm a little surprised that people were behaving themselves for two pages. But it looks like the trolls and the fanboys have finally arrived.

To the guys in the past two pages. Thank you for being cool and open minded. And allowing me to say what I didn't like. But I think we've finally hit that inevitable point where it's just people that are trying to "Win The Internet".

It had to happen eventually.

 

​Think you just stepped over the line into trolldom.  Peter is obviously NOT a troll...he's a professional musician and a beta tester for Line6 and the company wouldn't put him in that position if they didn't highly value his opinion, input, and technical expertise.  You are beginning to sound like someone who delights in picking gear apart and that it wouldn't matter if you were given a Helix, Fractal, Atomic, or Kemper, you would always find something to rip apart.  To universally say the Helix is "muddy" is psycho babble, same goes for the other quality units available.  You can make anything muddy, including the best pedals running into the best tube amps and cabs available, if you don't dial them in properly.  If you didn't like the Helix and returned it, fine, no one has an issue with that, but to come onto Line6's SUPPORT forum and start taking shots at the Helix is starting to smell of trolldom at this point, especially when your claims are pretty much without merit.  Peter is correct, if YOU can't get good tones out of any of these pro level units, it isn't the gear that has the issue....

Couldn't disagree more. Not sure where these legions of people are, not sure how they are listening to Helix, but I have had zero problems with muddiness in this unit.

I don't get it either, my Helix is anything but muddy unless you over saturate the heck out of something, but then my old tube amps and pedals did the same exact thing....looks to me like the Helix is reproducing its modeled units pretty well

Thanks mucho everyone!!!  Been VERY happy with the built in cabs so may just stick with those....the third party IR's sound like more trouble than they may be worth.  Thanks again for the education!!!

Haven't played with third party IR's but was given a number of high quality IR's by a friend to try out.  Haven't tried them yet but it occurred to me that with Helix cabs there is a mic type and placement option, does that apply to external cab IR's as well or is the mic used to generate the IR a set value?  Sorry for the noobie question, learning here.

 Cool...if it's the reason. I assume horse power won't determine sound quality, there's either enough power to crunch the math a block needs or not. You have got me wondering though in terms of processor headroom, latency and whether that could affect quality.

Those were what I was wondering about too....know it's a lot about how much you can throw at processors to crunch, but would think you would also have to consider the I/O in and out of the CPU's and other system components as well....it should be like any other network, I/O speed is often more important than processing speed when it comes to smooth/optimum performance....

No, it should sound the same I believe. It is possible you are doing the same or similar as I did  http://line6.com/support/topic/19035-cool-mistaketip/

The input to B. should be set as none, in theory, if set to All extra DI guitar will be added to the chain post amp.

I do still like to split the blocks between the DSPs. Can leave more spaces for future additions and I feel the preset has a slightly faster loading time if they are sharing the work. Apparently some of DSP A also handles further operating system functions so I weight block balance to DSP B. Not confirmed.

Thanks mucho!!  I just read your other thread.  I'll have to check what the settings are, saved them, but may need to pick everyone's brains again as I'm just starting to explore using the multiple paths....if it's the same as what you found in your thread, I kind of like the results....thanks again!!!!

Sure this has been covered so please excuse the question again....and hope this isn't a bonehead question.

I was building a patch on the A pathway the other evening with a Dr Z Rte 66 amp, a room reverb, with dual cabs (silver and blue bell) then throwing five distortion pedals in front of the amp to do some tone sampling of the drives...when I went to add the fifth drive option in the block selector, things were all graying out which I believe is Helix's way of saying you are going to run out of processing power.  Haven't used the second path option so figured out how to push path A into path B and the models started lighting up again....so am guessing that each path uses one of the two processors for its processing?  Is this correct?  I then started playing with the basic three models above playing them on a single path together with one drive, then pushing only the reverb and cab model down to the second path with the pushed A to B routing....the later configuration seemed to really open up the tone of the Helix, i.e. it just sounded better when running the four models into the two pathways routed together....thought I was hearing things so asked my wife to listen and she agreed that it sounded fuller and more detailed with the paths together....is this an accurate observation in the increased horse power producing more articulate tone?   Thanks in advance!!

Attention armchair product managers: Think you can do better? We're hiring.

LOL...Yep, TRY to find QUALIFIED employees and then tell everyone how it is....been trying to hire five employees for a year now and have gotten ONE out of TWENTY-THIRTY that was qualified and worth hiring....

Apologies for stoking the interflames, ignore if you want, but if you're considering a Fractal product, check this:

http://www.tonymckenzie.com/axe-fx-II.htm

 

Specifically, check the GS link near the bottom of that page, and the threads spinning off from there.

 

Whatever you think of Tony, the linked threads don't paint a picture I'd be super happy to be a part of. Shame, really. Nice tech, from what I understand. (Not that I've 100% crossed the Axe off my list of possibles myself, but close... I'd much prefer the Helix to work out, when I get one.)

Just read some of those threads....Yikes!!  Tony is okay, just take it all with a grain of salt, but some of those posts, some with links to other posts along the same lines, were pretty eye opening.....

With my GNX4 and my VTS's this behavior does not happen anywhere near as much. The guitar does not get pushed into the background so drastically.

On the Helix. The guitar source gets pushed back more than I like. And it's next to impossible to bring back in front again with EG or any other settings.

It's not an EQ problem. The pedal just isn't hot enough for me.

Not enough presence. Not enough crispness. Not enough source sound. Not enough Drive. Or whatever adjective you choose to call it.

I would need to use external reverbs and other equipment to overdrive the pedal's sound into something I liked. And that would make no sense.

 

At this point I'm just repeating myself over and over. So I would prefer stop here.

Talking about the same things I didn't like over and over with forum members seems more like complaining, than constructive feeback.

I've said everything that I want to say about why I returned it. It's up to the company now to use my feeback, or toss it in the garbage bin.

 

It was nice chatting with you guys.

I just want to stop saying negative things at this point. Enough is enough.

 

-ScottA

I'd go buy something else if I were you.....maybe a Fractal or Kemper, both excellent units.....don't really understand what your after but I'm having zero problems getting some pretty forward sitting tones out the Helix, but maybe you're a pro player with higher end needs than me....good luck.

In response to post # 24 from phil_m the UberGuru who posted the following response . . . . .

 

 When it's available it is really just going to mimic what's on the Helix's screen.

 

Here's the deal Phil !  I have terrible eyesight even after my Cornea transplant & Cataract removal 3 years ago.  So I figure my 27" monitors are substantially larger then the LCD screen on my Helix rack which should help me immensely, Ya' think?

 

' nuf  said! It's Christmas in the middle of March thank you Santa! Thanks to everyone @ Line 6, I just brought my Helix Rack home yesterday & I think it is fantastic! Good job guys, good job!

Having had two major back surgeries in the last five years the new editor is going to save me a lot of pain from having to try to bend down to tweak things....others, such as yourself, have other physical issues that make using the excellent on-board editing of the Helix LESS than ideal....the same interface in a scalable software editor is going to make using the Helix perfect for many...

It doesn't even fill a 1440, even when made as tall as it can go. This was surprising to me, because one of the bigger complaints, or so it seemed, about the editor for the HD was that it was not scalable. Having said that, I can see there not being much use for scalability with the current Helix app, widthwise anyway. But certainly there shouldn't be a problem making it as tall as the monitor resolution, regardless of what that resolution might be. Even if you use the monitor in portrait mode, it shouldn't be a problem and it should fill the entire height. There's no need to cater to the lowest common denominator with user interfaces. That just seems lazy to me. A good UI shouldn't be dependent at all on resolution.

Agree 100%....however if they want the new editor/librarian to be globally successful they need to put some sort of resolution scaling into the application or it won't be usable to anyone with a mid-tier to high-tier monitor/resolution, just like the current librarian....all the newer hardware, last few years, is moving to higher and higher resolutions so what's the point of developing to decades old settings?  The current updater is just as bad, I can't even read the text if I don't back down my resolution to one of the lowest settings....that's simply poor design.  My guess is the current utilities are just patchwork solutions until Line6 gets the full editor/librarian/updater done and deployed, at least that's what I'm hoping......  

But... they better make it work with the guy who has a non-retina macbookpro or Air or some such or a small laptop. There's a LOT of those things out there, and the visual look of the screen will not matter to the sound.

A properly designed UI should work well in multiple resolutions across multiple hardware platforms....the librarian as it is today is at least a decade behind that minimal mark....if the new editor is written the same manner it will be useless to many, though my guess is it won't be and the librarian we have today was just a quick patch to get them through until a proper editor/librarian was done....

AWESOME!!!!  Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

EASY ! 

 

Extend Looper capability with a built-in SDHC memory card to allow huge amounts of loop or audio storage. TO use as multi-loops, backing tracks - you name it !

 

http://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Extend-Looper-capability-with-add-On-pedal-w-SDHC-memory-card/802351-23508?submitted=1

+++++ 1,000,000   Seems like a natural fit for these modeling units and everyone I know who has owned them has posted or sent this same suggestion off to the manufactures....don't know why someone hasn't implemented it yet....all the basics are already in the units so it would be pretty simple to implement....it's not like SD readers are expensive and they've been around for quite a while and are stable tech....

Well, I do about 100 gigs per year, all from outdoor gigs to pubs and arenas. I don't pubs in Scotland are any rougher than countryside Norway ;)

Anyhow...they just stopped working after a while. No power....no leds etc. Could maybe repair it, but probably not worth the hazzle, so I bought new ones.

Picked up a G50 now. More sturdy.

Try a G70....thing is built like a tank....

Been using my Helix since last October and can honestly say I've not experienced one problem, however I've updated the firmware the day each has been released without fail.  Not using USB or some of the other features, but a good chunk of those reported have had to do with Apple's OS and some things they've done in their recent releases.  Line6 has been really good about jumping on the bigger items and getting them fixed ASAP from what I've read here.  The current librarian is pretty basic and I'm not using it as it doesn't render on a 4K monitor worth a darn.  Hoping the new editor due out shortly is much more robust and scalable to the newer high res screens....the current UI looks like it was developed for a 1024x768 screen resolution which is really behind the times....

The AX8 cost $1500 also?

 

I did get to hear an axe fx (older one) and it was ok.............but not magic. Was 3 maybe 4 years back so I just have a memory of it in the back of my mind. my helix sounds better to me than it did.

 

I'll stay on board this helix train until the day line 6 charges us for Amp packs.

 

I've tried a lot of multi fx boards and this one is my favorite so far. Stupid easy to use. The Mesa dual rec sounds and acts like my real amp.

 

My only want now is a few more of my favorite amps.

 

I got my helix 10/14/15 and in that time other than bug fixes I've had two real updates? Two pedals in 1st then more pedals and one amp in 2nd.

 

Line 6...... I really hope that your not saving up amps to sale in amp packs. That will be the day I get a new ax8. I bet lots of other people will do the same.

According to posts on here, Line6 is concentrating most of its efforts right now on the new editor, probably because most are bitching about the lack of an editor.  After that's out they have said we can expect any number of additions to the Helix including amps, cabs, effects, features, etc.  In all fairness, Fractal has been out for years with their engine and the Helix has been out 6 months, wish everyone would put some perspective to what can and cannot be produced in 6 months.  Line6 is going to upgrade the Helix long term, they've got a real winner on their hands and they'd be foolish not to.  I agree with most of the items posted above, but for the Helix to be this close to the Fractal product this young in its lifecycle speaks volumes....

I too wish they had left the foot controller off the floorboard and slimmed the unit up a bit, but that's just being nit picky....they may have needed the width though to handle all the I/O ports so the foot controller is kind of bonus for those that want it....

Have you tried to transformer isolate the xlrs? Like what an ART DTI does.

In my rehearsals I get a nasty noise. ART DTI solved it. Ground loop. I don't think phantom blockers isolate the signal / ground.

 

Bonus: the ART also blocks phantom.

I'm no expert on this stuff by any means, but after reading a number of posts about the XLR issues folks are having I decided to mess around with my Helix/Gemini 2 setup, which is using the XLR outs, and found grounding has a LOT to do with noise or no noise....simply hitting the ground lift button on the Helix created all kinds of noise, off it was dead silent.  Have some known grounding issues in our house that I've got around with various methods with other gear over the years.  Reversed some of those to see what would happen with the Helix and presto, noise...put them back in place, no noise.  Wondering if it's not so much the XLR's but rather grounding issues folks are experiencing?  Sure looks like that in my simple setup.  Food for thought at least....good luck everyone.    

Have all of Glenn's patches as well...going to pickup the Artists Pack as well....have had to make some minor tweaks to the patches but that should be expected based on the gear used in each rig....Glenn's a cool guy and great to deal with...