phil_m

Those threshold settings are so low, I’m surprised the gate is doing anything. It seems like the gate would just always be open.

You don’t need to use a split path for the 4CM. There’s a video on YouTube where a guy is supposedly demonstrating the 4CM with a Katana amp and does this, and I have no idea what he’s trying to do, but whatever he’s doing, it’s confused a lot of people. All you need to do is put a single FX Loop block in your signal chain (not separate Send and Return blocks). Anything before the FX Loop block will be in front of your amp, and anything after it will be in its loop. It’s as simple as that. The cable connections you have shown are correct. Just use a single path and a single FX Loop block, and it should be fine.

How much of a volume drop are you talking? There can be a perceived volume drop with a wah, and you can generally compensate for that by increasing the Level parameter in the wah block. If it's a big volume drop, there's probably something else going on.

The loops should be quiet. I suggest you open up a support ticket.

From everything I've seen, the Helix drives are very, very close to the real deal, and honestly, I would suspect that other VSTs are less accurate in the way they model drives. I wouldn't expect that putting a drive pedal with a lot of gain in front of highly saturate amp in real life that you would hear a lot of the character of the pedal coming through. If anything, I would expect it to sound like a muddy mess... That's just my perspective.

Native is 64-bit only. It works fine with the 64-bit version of Reaper, fwiw.

I guess I would try sending the update again. If that doesn’t work, open up a support ticket.

Hold down the two footswitches in the lower right hand corner (Tap and the one to the left of it) while powering up. This will reset the unit.

Sounds like you need to insert an FX Loop block in your signal path.

Older Line 6 modelers had these in the past, but they were just as much as source of confusion as they were helpful, probably even more so. Part of the problem was that it wasn't always apparent to people when to use what mode. For example, one thing I saw all the time with with the HD series was people setting the output mode to "Combo Front" or "Stack Front" when they were using the board for effects only. They would then write posts asking why all their effects sounded so muffled... It happened all the time. As far as using the amp and cab modeling in front an amp, that's always going to be a compromise, anyway. I think Line 6 is really trying to educate people to the fact that FRFR solutions are really what they should be using if they want to use amp and cab modeling.

I don't think that would really work all that well. You could plug the AMPLIFi into the Spider V's Aux In, but that would mean you'd have to use an 1/8" connection, which isn't great. I mean, it's possible, and if it's just something you'd do occasionally, it might be OK. The Spider V doesn't have the Bluetooth streaming capability, but you can stream audio to it from a mobile device via the USB connection. Like you said, you just don't get the tone matching stuff.

No, the AMPLIFi FX100 won't work as a controller for the Spider V.

So I asked DI about the mic emulation on the regular Powercab, and it's always an SM57.

It really can be very hard to demonstrate things to people... I worked in music retail for a little while, and I know it sounds bad, but people either get things or they don't. I mean, I remember spending a lot of time trying to explain things to some potential customers just to have them throw their hands up and be like, "I'll never get this!" and decide to go with something else or not buy anything. It's like some people have conceptual blocks that they simply can't get over. I've also met plenty of people working at stores who have strong opinions against modeling and are simply closed-minded about things. So that doesn't help either. I have to imagine that when it comes to Helix sales, that the number sold at brick and mortar stores is relatively small compared to those bought online. Most GCs don't even carry the Helix.

1) I'm not sure... I was wondering about that myself. 2) Yes.

I would say this sort of stuff warrants opening up a support ticket, as it's very hard to troubleshoot it in the context of the forum. I'm sorry, but the pages of text are not helping me understand the issue. I would say either call support or open up a ticket and go from there. If you want to post some patches, I can take a look at them and mess around a MIDI monitor on my end.

Hifi speakers aren't designed to be flat response, really. They most often hype certain parts of the frequency spectrum, and depending on your system, there's sometimes other DSP processes applied to the signal that would be messing things up. As far as the Blue Jr, you could use that with the Helix, but I would I would recommend using the Helix for effects only in that scenario. Running amp and cab modeling through it won't work well.

Yes, if you are running the Powercab in one of the speaker simulation model, the XLR out would apply a mic emulation to the XLR outs (on the PC+ you can select the mic model). If you're running an IR in the PC+, the signal from the XLR out would just have the IR applied.

Yes, this is generally what's called a ducking delay as noted above. There are two delay models that do this in the Helix. The HX version is called Ducked Delay and the Legacy version is called Dynamic Delay.

And that’s the exact wrong approach to take... If anything, it shows that there’s a need for more training needed with music store staff, but even that can be tricky as those sorts of jobs typically have pretty high turnover rates. The long and the short of is the Helix is a pro-level piece of gear that requires some amount of background knowledge to use it well. I think it’s one of the easiest pieces of gear to navigate, but it isn’t going to magically give people the sound that’s in their head.

Well, I think the main issue is he's plugging the Helix into the effects returns of a couple amps. He mentioned in one of his other threads and in a PM to me. So when you're doing that, that's using an amplification system that's inherently limited. I actually think there are some of the factory presets that are OK. I can use them without much editing at all. Everyone has a different idea of what sounds awesome. I have S-Gear, and I don't think most of the presets are awesome. There are some that are OK. There aren't any that I think I would just use in an actual recording without editing, though.

The controller limits are the same as on the Helix - 64 total controllers per preset, and 8 control assignments per footswitch. You can have every parameter in an an effect assigned to a snapshot controller if you want. The graphics are different on the HX Effects for controller assignments. The parameters don't show up in brackets. There's just the little notches on the bars.

I actually loaded this preset onto my Helix last night and messed around with it a little with my Les Paul. I didn't think it sounded nearly as bad as your clip did, but, yes, it did have a lot of hash going on in the mids. To me, lowering the gain on the RAT made a big difference. I also was able to tighten things a lot by lowering the Bias parameter on the amp model. Moving the mic farther away also helped a lot. Putting a Parameter EQ and notching out some of the crap around 400Hz helped even more. I guess all I'm saying is that there are sorts of tools to deal with it. I also found that out of the gate, the Legacy RAT model (called Classic Distortion) seemed a little tighter than the new one. I can't say, though, that this combination seemed necessarily broken to me. It just sounded like a ton of saturation. It seems like it could easily happen with the real deal. One thing I'm not clear on still - for you clips, were you using the Helix Floor as the input, or are you using a different interface going into Native?

I don't believe the stuff in the Command Center is supposed to be copied with snapshots.