htimst

Thanks for all the replies folks. Honestly, I felt a little dumb about the conundrum I was in, but after reading the replies, the suggestions and solutions allowed me to see that I'm not actually out in left field with my wants and desires. The beauty of the hardware to me, was always the ability to monitor it directly and control latency. The trouble I have with the helix on a desk is desk space is at a premium in my setup. I do thank everyone for their replies and I think I'm leaning towards the helix rack. Cheers

I will try and keep this explanation short. I am looking to add a Helix (of some flavor) to my setup. This will likely be in replacement of some aging gear in my rack that currently holds and 11R, AxeFX Ultra and a PodHDx Pro. I have a bad habit of adding things to my rack and not taking stuff away. I am not a gigging musician. I work entirely out of a home studio and will likely never take my show on the road. The helix rack looks tantalizing to me with the helix controller...but then I started thinking that the helix would give me that same functionality as I typically spend most of my tweak time in AxeEdit or HD Edit on my Mac. Other than reaching for the tuner button, I don't really interact with the hardware much. I do like to have a floor controller though and use a Shortboard for my PODHDx. My conundrum is the upcoming Helix Native. My current thinking is Helix Rack with Helix Control and add Helix native for when I am actually recording. The question is, will I be better suited with the floor Helix and then Helix native? Will the floor Helix provide control of Helix Native? I'm not on a budget, but I also don't want be wasteful. Help?

So, after updating to Mavericks and updating all drivers through L6Monkey last night, I have some very odd behavior in Logic. I haven't confirmed the same behavior in GarageBand because I just thought to check but am not in front of that computer. Anyway, with the HD500 selected as the input and output interface in Logic, and the HD500 selected as the input output sound interface in OSX, my experience is entirely different that expected. Problems: 1. Adjusting input levels in Logic has zero effect on the input level from the HD. That is, putting the mixer input level to zero still records the same signal I'm getting from HD's output through my studio monitors. I used to be able to adjust the input slider and predictably lower/raise the level of that track when recording. The slider works as expected with playback. This problem is solved by NOT selecting the HD500 as the sound output device, but selecting Built-in audio instead. 1.5 Adjusting the system volume when the HD500 is selected as the output device, has no effect on the output volume of the HD. This is new and though not catastrophic, it's really annoying as the only way to adjust the system volume is on the HD500 itself. 2. The input level on the track being recorded from the HD can look favorable with slightly bumping into the "yellow" but the waveform has tiny peeks and playback volume is very low. This was not the case prior to the update where I used to hear the same level on playback as I did on input monitoring while recording. 3. Logic is recording on tracks that aren't armed for recording. If I select the track but don't arm it, it's still recording on it at an unalterable level (see problem #1) 4. I can't shut off input monitoring. I can make the pretty lighted "I" unlight, but I am still hearing the doubling effect of the track armed or not. All of these noted behaviors did not exist prior to Mavericks. Recording, playback, monitoring...were all very predictable. I've tried dumping my Logic settings files com.apple.Logic10.plist (or whatever it's called), rebooting, and reloading Logic, but I get the same behavior. I was wondering if anyone else was having issues like this. I don't want to start cross posting to Apple/Logic forums and I will do some more troubleshooting trying a couple of different audio interfaces, but update quirkiness like this really exhausts me. Too much time spent trying to get stuff to work that worked before, and too little time playing/recording my guitar. Thoughts? Tom

Good point. I've done that with an HD500 and and Eleven Rack with the HD's SP/DIF to the 11R. I had control over both via software interfaces, concurrently though so it didn't really disrupt workflow to change things around. Having control over only one POD device at a time makes connecting them somewhat more time consuming for tinkering. I'm kind of lazy in that sense, preferring things to be on my computer desktop rather than crawling on the floor or tinkering with my aging eyes on little LCD screens, or selecting/deselecting interfaces and starting/stopping software applications to make changes. I'm just looking for the greedy solution. Bleh Thanks for the reply though, it's a good idea in a pinch.

Yes, sharing the DSP was my original primary intent, but I was hoping for a less painful way of approaching this. I don't run into the DSP ceiling very often, and when I do, I don't really need that third delay in the patch. The HDPROX is probably going to give me that overhead that I may occasionally use, and will clean up a ton of cabling. Thanks again for your help.

Thank you. That is very useful information. It seems like a more productive path to go with an HDProX and and FBV and take the 500 out of the picture entirely.

I have an HD 500 and am looking for a studio rack unit and am considering the HD ProX and wondered if anyone has experience in using the two of them together. I've read that the HD can control patch selection and stomps of the HD via MIDI, but I'm more interested in sharing their DSP's. - Can L6 link be used and what sort of control could I expect (using exp pedal etc)? - Can HD Edit communicate with both units? - Is HD Edit ProX a different program? In my studio I would be primarily using the ProX, but am just wondering if I can still utilize the 500. The Pro will certainly take my ungainly mess of cables and move them to the rack. Just curious if I'm barking up the right tree. Thanks