phil_m

Yep... You can have all 6 blocks be delays if you want. You can have multiple instances of any block (mostly). There are a few blocks for which there are set limits (amps, cabs, IRs), but for effects, you're just limited by the available DSP.

This function works the same way in all the Helix products. You most certainly can change parameters with snapshots in the Helix LT. You have to assign the parameters you want to control to the Snapshot Controller. To do it on the unit itself, just push and turn the knob for the parameter you want to control. Take a look at the 2:15 mark of this video:

I don’t think it’s a fair comparison to compare a hardware product like an effects pedal to a pure software product. For one thing, one of the reasons that people might still be buying these pedals is as backups and/or replacements for existing units. They just want something that does exactly what the product they were using did, and they want to do it without having to deal with a different piece of hardware. So they can still do that for now. You can still buy a new DL4 as well. Those have never had a firmware update, and actually don’t even have a way to be updated. People still buy them though. No one is forcing them... I mean, what sane company would stop selling something if there’s still enough people still who want to to buy it that they can make money selling it?

Why are they still selling them? I imagine because people are still buying them... It’s a mature platform. They obviously aren’t going to be updating the firmware for it anymore, but they can still be useful to people. I imagine if/when sales slow to that it doesn’t make sense to make them, they’ll be discontinued. I have no idea when that will happen, though. I’m sure the current sales don’t justify dedicating R&D resources into modifying and potentially breaking stable and functioning code.

For whatever reason, Sweetwater’s site seems to do this sometimes. They made it seem like the Stagesource speakers were discontinued a few months ago nd they weren’t. It just seems like they need to put some more orders in. I don’t believe there are immediate plans to discontinue the Variax Standard.

That is how the capacitive touch feature works for switches that have commands assigned to them. Are you pushing them with your fingers or with bare feet? You can turn off the touch select feature by going to Global Settings>Footswitches<Touch Select (knob 1). Also, you can get out of the Command Center by pressing the Home button.

If you put a pedal in front of the Helix, generally speaking the input impedance setting on the Helix won't matter, unless that pedal is true bypass and you have it bypassed. Your pickups will be loaded with whatever the first impedance they see is. If a true bypass pedal is bypassed, it just like having a cable running through the pedal, so practically no impedance (other than the cable itself). The lower the input impedance, the more high end sparkler you'll lose, generally speaking. The low input impedance is kind of a design limitation in older pedals that some guitarists came to like. So it's kind of modeling an idiosyncratic behavior, in a way.

Regarding the Big Muff tone, it's worth noting that on their last tour (not sure if it's still ongoing or not), both Billy Corgan and Jess Schroeder were using the Helix and/or HX Effects for almost of their effects. If there's a band that used the Muff tone more than them over the last 20 years, I don't know of it... So I do believe there are some really convincing Muff tones to be had...

Nope... A L6 Link cable is, in fact, an AES/EBU cable.

Which Big Muff do you have? Various ones from over the years have different input impedances, I think. The recent reissue of the Triangle Muff, for instance, has an input impedance of 122kOhms. I don't think the input impedance is as integral to the feel and sound of a Big Muff as it is to other traditional fuzz pedals. They never seem to be that picky about being as first in the chain. I'm kind of surprised you're struggling to match the tone of yours. I've had a few over the years, and I've gotten rid of them all because I thought the Line 6 models were very close, even going as far back as the models in the DM4 pedal (which is what the Legacy folder models would be).

Just to be clear, do you have your speakers or headphones connected to the Helix?

I wouldn't say it was "repaired", but, yes, the L6 Link control integration will be added as described in the release notes. The thing with L6 Link is that it was Line 6's proprietary protocol. It's an ad hoc protocol that works in a certain way depending on the gear you're connecting. It's not a full-blown standard protocol like MIDI. Even with MIDI, there's is a lot of variation in how it's implemented across various product. MIDI just gives a common language so that different devices can communicate with each other.

You need to use a TRS connector into the FX send jack otherwise, the FX Loop R block won't receive a signal.

Well, you’ll be able to change speaker and mic models on the PC+, yes. Basically, pretty much anything you can edit within a PC+ preset, you’ll be able to control from the Helix.

Noise with the 4CM is a pretty common issue... It's not necessarily either piece of gear's fault. It's just that when you have multiple connections between the same two pieces of gear, you have a really good chance of running in ground loop issues. Is the noise a 60 cycle hum noise, or is it more of a white noise? I guess I'm a bit confused as to why you would wait a full year before doing anything about it if you are so unhappy with it... Regardless, you might want to look into something like this. That will break any ground loops, and it should make things a lot quieter.

If you have the Powercab set to Speaker Mode, its XLR out will include the PC speaker model and mic model (on the PC+, you can choose which mic). If you have it set to Flat mode, the XLR out passes the signal it receives from the modeler. If you have it set to IR Mode (PC+ only), the XLR out will include the IR file you selected for the preset.

L6 Link won’t work the way it worked with the HD series, and that was never promised. You can have two DT amps connected to the Helix, not four (although there were probably only a half a dozen people who ever used four DT amps), and there is no automatic topology selection in the DT based on the amp model you’re using. You will be able, however, to set and recall the the topology on the DT amps via preset/snapshot. You’ll also be able to control several other DT power section parameters per preset/snapshot.

That sort of interference - picking up stray audio signals - is basically not possible with these sorts of digital systems. The receiver either receives the digital signal so it can piece the audio together or it doesn't. Basically, if there's interference, the signal just drops out. It's not like the old analog systems where the sound quality changes based on the strength of the signal.

The conversion happens in, well, the converters. Those are upstream of the processor. The Helix is still using excellent Cirrus converters - the same that are used in the Axe FX III, fwiw. Quality converters are pretty much a commodity item now. It’s not really the thing making or breaking audio quality the way it used to be.

Yep, that's the beauty of snapshots...

What do you have the Helix connected to when you're hearing the clipping? Honestly, what you're describing doesn't sound like a firmware issue, because if it were, it would be affecting all units. I can't say I've read a lot of these sorts of complaints. Occasionally there's someone who reports issues something like this, but those reports are sporadic. Have you tried to doing a factory reset?

So, I double-checked this, and I have to backtrack a little. I originally misunderstood something that Cliff from Fractal wrote. He said that the FM3 has essentially the just a little processing power as the AX8, and I took that to mean they were using the same SHARC chips (plus the ARM chip mentioned below). Apparently the FM3 is using two SHARC+ chips. They aren't the exact same chips, but they provide almost the exact same MFLOPS value as the SHARC chips used in the Helix and the AX8. There are some architectural differences in the chips, but one of the main things the SHARC+ allows is processing at 64-bit floating point (which I don't believe Fractal is actually doing with the FM3 - there doesn't seem to be any benefit in doing so, and it would really eat up a lot of processing power). They also have a separate ARM processor in the FM3 that is handling some of the housekeeping type tasks, namely the graphics. In any case, my point is that the SHARC chips the Helix uses aren't really outdated, and I don't think that Analog Devices is selling an upgraded version of them yet. These dedicated processors move at a completely different development pace than the processors found in laptops and whatnot.

You don’t have to register the hardware to install the update, but there’s really no reason not to.

The answer to both of those questions is yes. You can map any CC (as long as it’s not reserved for something else) to control the bypass state of any block, and you can map any CC to control whatever parameters you want (limited to 64 parameters in total). There isn’t a fixed CC map because, well, there’s way more possible parameters you could have in a preset than there are available CCs.