phil_m

When you say the knobs on the amp are "practically useless", do they have any effect, or just very little? Do you have an FX Loop block in your Helix patch?

So where does the Powercab come into play? Are you using that live? As long as the output levels from your presets are roughly similar, it really shouldn't be that big of a deal hooking up to different PA systems. You'd want to use whatever believe is your loudest sound when doing soundcheck and make sure that the channel you're plugging into is set up for that. I'm not sure what you're experiencing, but I'm not sure I'd be so quick to blame it on the Helix. I mean, if you're setting up your tones in isolation, it's always possible that a tone sounds OK on its own but not so great in the mix. I think we've all had that experience. It's happened to me with real amps... I just think that the fact that you're using so many different patches is complicating things for you. You'd probably be better off consolidating some. If your guitar tone is varying greatly from song to song, you're not doing the soundguy any favors either.

Well, now we're getting somewhere... All of these scenarios are different output devices, and none of them are true FRFR systems (although, I'm not sure what type of speakers you have connected to the mixer). The Powercab Plus in FRFR mode is really only FRFR-ish - the tweeter is active, but the woofer is still essentially a guitar speaker. It is fine for monitoring in that mode, but I wouldn't depend on it for patch creation, necessarily. I mean, it can work, but you have to realize its limitations. For one things, it has less low end than a typical PA speaker, so it may lead you to want to compensate by adding more low end in your patch, which would make things more boomy when playing through a speaker with a wider frequency range. It's not unlike mixing an album. You want to have speakers that are flat and uncolored for tone creation as that will give you a clean slate to work with, and it makes it so your patches will translate well across more systems. The volume you create your patches at also comes into play. Something that sounds good at low volume will often sound bad at higher volumes because of the Fletcher-Munson effect. Basically, the more commonality you can have between the output device you use to create your patches and what you use to amplify them at the gig, the easier things will be.

What do you mean by not showing up in the Edit section, exactly? I'm not sure what you're expecting to see.

Just to be clear, are you trying to drag them from the IR Librarian window into the Edit window in HX Edit? That won't work. You need to select the Impulse Response block from the block menu in the Edit tab, and then you move the slider to select the IR you want.

80 patches a night is kind of insane... That's just a lot to manage, and again, I don't think meters would make it all that much easier. What you're hearing is perceived volume, which is totally different than what a typical peak dbfs meter is going to give you. The main difference with the Helix compared to a traditional amp and pedalboard setup is that with the Helix, you have the ability to change out the entire signal chain on a patch per patch basis. The gain structure can vary greatly from patch to patch, and even the dynamic response can be very different. So if you switch guitars, for instance, the way your patches react can change. I just don't know that it's even a realistic goal to expect equal loudness between 80 different patches, especially if they're all using different amp, cab and mic models.

The guitar pick icon means they’re from the Line 6 Marketplace, so you have to be signed into your Line 6 account in HX Edit in order to access them. There’s a link on the lower left hand corner of the screen in HX Edit that says “My Account” where you can sign in.

The forum only wants what's best for you... Line 6 cares about your mental health. :-D I honestly never knew this was something that was limited... I think it might be in response to some of the troll-y type people that come occasionally and start downvoting everything in site.

I occasionally read a sports blog from the college I graduated from. This reminds me of some of the hand-wringing I see in the comments there. The other day I saw a guy say something like, "if the other team would have scored touchdowns instead kicking all of those field goals, they would have won by 20!" as if it were some sort of indictment on the team's coaching ("our" team won, btw). It just cracks me up. Some people will dig very hard to find unhappiness...

It's hard to imagine many failures in a typical rock show where the word "catastrophic" can legitimately be applied... The stage collapsing, rigging failing, pyrotechnics burning down the joint - that's catastrophic. A loss of signal from the guitar, well, that's just an annoyance. ;-) I saw U2 a number of years ago, and it was pouring down rain most of the show (an outdoor show). They were troopers and played right through it. During one part, the Edge just started walking over one of the catwalks right as he was starting a big solo. His wireless pack completely cut out (shorted out, I imagine), and his guitar went completely silent... This was in front of 50,000 or so people. No one panicked. He just walked back to the stage, a tech brought him another guitar - and they went back and played that part over. This stuff happens. It's not that big of a deal.

Well, you can easily record a dry signal via the USB connection, and that's really all you need for re-amping.

I think what others are saying here is that the firmware is pretty much stable to this degree already. Yes, there's always a chance that something will pop up, and I'm sure Line 6 wants to get to the bottom of it. Sometimes there are some pesky bugs that don't want to be caught.. Just to be clear, is it only in this one preset where you've experienced this issue, or is in it multiple presets?

I think you're attributing a lot of power to meters... I have a hard time believing it would make dialing in a tone all that much easier. There's a ton of variables at play, and the signal level is only one of them, and, really, the thing that is going to have the most impact on is probably going into the amp model. So as long as you aren't doing something totally out in left field prior to the amp block, it shouldn't be that big of a deal. Like I said earlier, there are blocks that you can overload, but that becomes pretty obvious when that happens. I think the phenomenon you're describing - it being easier to create bad sounds than good ones - is just part of the process of using a model with a ton of amp models and effects. Personally, I don't use most of the amp models. I stick ones I know I like most of the time. I will sometimes try to spend time with one I'm not that familiar with and dial it in to something I like, and that can be fun. But if I were trying to create a bunch of tones really fast, I'd stick to what I was familiar with. Again, I'm not against meters being implemented in some way, but I don't see them being a silver bullet for anything, really.

I honestly don't think it's political in the sense that I think that's the way they genuinely see it... What if I told you that the early plans for the Helix included meters?

Try powering up while holding the ">" button down. That should force it back into Update Mode. Try running Updater again, and eventually the update should go through. If you're still having problems, try different USB cables and/or USB ports.

In the Helix, go to Global Settings>MIDI/Tempo, and make sure that "Receive MIDI Clock" is set to Auto or On. Also make sure that "MIDI Over USB" is turned On.

Not trying to argue about it too much, but I think these are different situations. When you're recording, you need to meter the source to ensure that you're not going above 0.0dbfs as any information beyond that threshold will be lost forever. As far as live, it's a little less critical than recording, but it's possible that may actually clip something down the line. I don't think anyone at Line 6 would necessarily meters are bad, but just that it could lead to a misunderstanding of what's happening. Most of the time there's no real penalty for going above 0.0dbfs "in the box" as long as you account for it later somewhere. I think a master output meter would probably be the most useful thing, followed by an input meter. Meters at various points along the signal chain, not so much. Personally, I felt like my mixing in Reaper improved dramatically almost instantaneously when I learned I could basically ignore the meters on individual tracks. Of course, I still have to be careful that I'm not overloading a plug-in somewhere, but if my tracks are hitting red, I just ignore it most of the time unless I hear something weird. I'll just lower the master fader before mixing down to ensure the final track isn't clipping.

I think having meters might be nice, but I think you're exaggerating the impact they would have. There are input and output meters in Helix Native, and I hardly look at those. mentioned above, pedals in the analog world rarely have any sort of metering (and, really, it's rare that there's one knob position that represents unity gain, especially for OD and distortion pedals). At 32-bit floating point, it's pretty much impossible to actually induce digital clipping in the box. It is possible to push certain blocks into overload conditions, just like it's possible to overload a VST in a DAW. In the Helix, that usually means you have some extreme settings before that block. There are really only two blocks in the Helix that can be pushed into a true clipping state, and in both cases, the clipping is part of the effects. There's the Bitcrusher and the Vintage Digital Delay. If you low the Bit Depth parameter in those, you can induce digital clipping, and you'll hear it right away. In the Vintage Digital Delay, there's a Headroom parameter that can offset this so clipping happens later. I think the hardware may see some sort of metering at some point, but I don't know. I know the reason Eric Klein (aka, Digital Igloo, the Helix product manager, no Chief Design Architect at YGG) has given for not including them sooner is that they don't want to make it something people get hung up on. Having the levels perfect isn't really going to make it all that much easier to get a tone you like. It matters to some extent, but it's pretty easy to remedy if you run into issues. I've been using the Helix for over four years now, and I've rarely ran into an issue.

The thing is that there are over 50,000 Helix/HX units in the wild currently, and many of those are being used on stages all the time... Some for real-deal world tours in arenas and such. Personally, I wouldn’t let this one bug dictate whether or not it’s worth using it or not, but it’s up to you...

Yeah, I got it also... Wouldn’t be surprised if it went to every user.

There was one other thing I thought of before but forgot to mention. You mentioned you’re using IRs. Did you import those IRs into Native? They don’t automatically tag along with the preset, and the IR library in Native is independent from the one in the hardware. Not having the IR loaded would definitely cause there to be an audible difference between the two.

I don’t really have experience with Cubase, as I’ve mostly used Reaper, but I’m confused by what you’re saying when you say you, “sent the recorded dry signal to a group track with Helix Native”. I mean, I understand the concept of group tracks, but I don’t see why you’d be using them here, necessarily. I think you’d want to have a single track with the dry wav file on it, and the Native VST initiated on that track. I have done extensive re-amping with Native in Reaper, and it always just works. So it seems to me that there’s something going on with your setup.

Convolution reverbs are much, much longer than the 2048 sample IR that the Powercab will load. Like, 20 times as long. They would be truncated and wouldn't sound like a reverb.

If you're using the same input/dry track, the hardware and Native will sound exactly the same. Using a different interface, all bets are off (although, you should still be able to get them reasonably close). For one thing, it sounds like you're input level into Native may still be too hot. The manual recommends the input level for Native be somewhere between -36 and -12dB. Really, most of the time it means that you want unity gain from your guitar through the interface (no gain or attenuation). The one exception would be if you have particularly hot pickups - you may want to attenuate the input. A better test of Native versus the hardware would be recording a dry track using the Stomp as an interface and then feeding that into the Native. That should sound exactly the same through the same preset.

Correct. The Powercab needs a line level input from a preamp. It has no preamp on its own. It's not a standalone guitar amp designed to have a guitar plugged straight into it.