phil_m

Just checking... The one thing I'd mention is that the level of the signal coming from USB 7 & 8 can be quite low depending on how hot your pickups are. It's entirely possible that the waveform would look flat, although, I would expect that you should see some signal on the input meters for the track you're using.

Are you by chance using a Variax plugged into the VDI input?

Well, "both sides" is being a little generous... I'm not meaning that to be insulting to the people who brought it up. This is just one thing in which I see very little chance of changing. These sort of basic architecture decisions were made a long time ago, and there is so much baked into it. Knowing a bit of the roadmap coming up, I just can't see Line 6 wanting to take a huge side trip to change this. One thing to remember is that the HX is part of the whole Helix platform, and I think Line 6 has been very deliberate in keeping as much continuity between the different devices as possible. So they would have to consider if the change made sense across the whole platform. As with anything, it's just my opinion. I certainly don't speak for Line 6.

The Split blocks can't be turned on and off via a footswitch. You can control their parameters, of course. The FX Loop blocks can be assigned to footswitches and treated just like any other block in that sense. I think being able to bypass them completely is an important feature, otherwise you'd something be going through unnecessary DA/AD conversions.

I think it just requires thinking a little differently about how you approach things. You have eight snapshots in a preset to work with, and each of those can be a very different thing. I also like to set Preset View to 8 Snapshots, and then it's simple to get into Stomp Mode if I need to. So in my case, I'm not really thinking that I have a separate Clean, Crunch, Overdrive, Heavy Overdrive core sounds as much I have core sounds that include effects. One of my main gigging presets has the following snapshots: 1. Clean 2. Crunch + Dynamic Delay 3. Crunch Dotted 8th Delay 4. Big Washy Reverb 5. Crunch Trem 6. 1/4 Note Delay Crunch 7. Clean Rotary 8. Big Lead w/ lots of delay I guess the one thing is I don't necessarily think of my different gain settings as being hugely different from each other, as much as them existing on a sliding scale. I can still get relatively clean on my crunch snapshot by rolling the volume back. If I need a little more, I can go into Stomp Mode quickly and hit another drive on. The other thing you might want to try is changing the function of FS1 & FS7 to Preset Up and Down. That way you can quickly change presets from Preset Mode without having to leave whatever snapshot view you have there. If the presets you use most often are similar to each other, it's almost like having one big preset with a bunch of snapshots available.

The "Ramp" parameter controls how quickly the transition from the slow to fast setting takes place. All of the HX Leslie models have it, and they each have three possible settings - slow, medium, and fast. You can use an expression pedals to control the Speed parameter to go from Slow to Fast (I usually use a footswitch).

There's nothing you can do in a preset in which you don't use snapshots that you can't do in a preset that you do have snapshots set up... I guess I don't understand your point.

Yes, I realize you're talking about the HX. Even if you use both fx loop blocks in a preset, that still leaves you with 7 blocks, which still gives you quite a lot of options. I think what you're talking about would probably require quite a lot of work from a development standpoint and wouldn't offer a lot of juice for the squeeze, as they say. I'm of the belief that maintaining a consistent work flow in the way the blocks are handled is better than trying to squeeze extra functionality out of something and making the experience of using it clunkier.

I imagine you're coming from the M13 if you're asking this question... The FX Loop implementation on the M13 seemed to trip quite a few people up. Having the FX Loops available as blocks just makes the most sense from a conceptual standpoint. It means you can treat them just like any other block, and can easily integrate them into snapshots and do all sorts of other stuff with them.

I've been using Reaper and Windows 10 with my Helix since 2015, and I generally don't have any issues. You might want to download and run Latencymon and see if you have any kernel modules and/or processes that are causing buffer underruns. http://www.resplendence.com/latencymon Some common causes of issues are things like network adapters or bluetooth adapters.

You might find find those particular cables too short, but, yes something like those. I would think you’d want s little slack, so you’d probably 60cm cables as a minimum.

You need two TS-TS path cables. One cable goes from the pedal’s expression out to the Control’s EXP1 jack (or whatever EXP jack you want to use) and the other goes from the pedal toe switch out to the Control’s EXP TOE SWITCH jack.

Well, the Helix can send MIDI clock, so in that sense it's a MIDI clock signal. But MIDI clock is only syncing the BPM of various devices. It doesn't have data that would sync LFOs or anything like that.

According to this, the Parametric EQ and High/Low Cut models have the same DSP load. These values are only estimates, though, and the DSP use of blocks might change slightly over time as Line 6 is always optimizing things. If you're hitting the DSP limit by adding an EQ block, you must be very close to begin with, as EQ uses the least amount of DSP of any of the effects, except the Volume and Gain blocks. There are different way to write DSP for filters, so it could just be the blocks are using slightly different methods. Or it could just be something related to how the Helix is rounding off the DSP values for different things.

It goes over the VDI (Variax) input jack.