datacommando

Well, if he got you to buy something you were not impressed with, it must be down to Mr. Hindmarsh being a superior salesman, as well as an excellent guitar slinger. Pure genius! I've been having a mess around with the Helix EM model today and personally I find it good enough (for what I need). It does a pretty good digital impression of the old analogue swirly and notch filtering along with the mad oscillations and warbling, plus you can get all that clanging and chimey metal noise when the auto sweep is off. Guess it's all down to personal taste. As I previously mentioned - back in the day - I used to have an original NYC Big Muff Fuzz Pi, a 1974 version 2 Small Stone Phaser and the Deluxe Electric Mistress all going into a very old Simm Watt Eko Dek and a Selmer Treble & Bass 50 with a Goliath 18" bass speaker. Damn - when that stuff got lit up on a Saturday night, I could pick up radio transmissions from taxi drivers in Prague! Ha! Digital! Ya don't know your born. May be I could get Line 6 to model the noise of the seventies for us. ;) Oh, yeah. If you are after the Andy Summers "Massage in a Brothel" twangy sound - check this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyYXgJttHj0 Later Marra!

+1 on comment from silverhead. Lose the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 from the set-up - it's simply not needed and is just adding another bunch of signal chopping to whole thing. Use the Helix USB to hook up to Cubase on the PC. Patch your monitors via XLR outputs on the Helix rear panel. Build your own ideal amp/cap and FX preset and try that! Oh, yeah - It doesn't have a"Turn me into a Guitar God" button - you've got to work at that one. And, I have just noticed that you have the Rack Model - I hope you have the floor controller for it, or life will be hell. O.K. Not hell - but difficult. Have fun!

Console tape and a sharpie! A simple solution - a little old skool, but it works for me ;)

Hi Graemey, Just curious, but have you always been unhappy with the Courtesan model or is it a change to the sound since the latest update to the FW. There has been quite a few users who have mentioned that since the update it has somehow seriously changed the sound of Helix. Some, especially notable is Glen DeLaune, have found radical differences - the real big one is with Pitch Shifters. Wondering if this may be a similar thing. Or it could be that a digital representation of an old analogue effect is simply too precise and clinical. I certainly know it is totally different to the sound that used to emanate from my fizzing ancient Selmer Treble & Bass 50 way back in the mid seventies.

Yep, me too. Big fan of EHX But from the info in the manual, the Courtesan in Helix is based on the Deluxe Model Electric Mistress. This is the model that I used for years. A real classic. Why not try running it through a tape delay and a compressor - just an idea. (Oh, yeah - now I should get ready for more "why the snippy comment" comments coming my way for stating the bleeding obvious.) It's just an observation, marra!

Thanks Ralph, It was meant as light amusement, but my big clumpy hands must be far too heavy on this keyboard. As noted previously - Have fun with your new toy. ;)

Ye Gods - here we go again. Not snippy, dude, more my feeble attempt at humour - but as usual it gets misconstrued as a jibe. Has everyone on this forum had a sense of humour bypass operation. :)

Nope - they're "SNAPSHOTS" to me. But, there again, I'm not going cross-platform and suffering from GAS and headaches like you are! Have fun!

Dear Mr. Digital Igloo and other Line 6 Product Evangelists, Just when the whole world and his brother are singing the praises of the fantastic SnapShot feature and Cali amps, etc. I come along to rain on the parade! FYI - Thought that you should be made aware that, regarding your latest and greatest Firmware update, and the claimed "active sensing" bug fix. quote: Some MIDI keyboards (including those by Roland and M-Audio) send active sensing messages every 300ms, which could sometimes affect Helix’s MIDI input to the computer, causing intermittent dropouts - FIXED After waiting 4 months for this issue to be ironed out I'm very sad to inform you that, NO IT IS NOT FIXED! ​See attached image from midi monitor (Helix Test 07-07-16.tiff) - it's full of active sense messages every 300ms, and they only go away if MIDI Thru is switched off. This makes it impossible to have my controller keyboard pass thru Helix and into Logic. Which is kinda strange as it did when I first bought it in November last year, right until it decided to stop functioning in March this year. It's O.K. I worked around the basic problem by removing Helix from the equation. A $3.50 Chinese MIDI to USB cable simply does the job that this expensive black box cannot! This has started to become really annoying now, as my "escalated" CS ticket informed me, over a month ago (30th May), that a real fix would be in the new Firmware! You see, to some users, it's the little things that matter. Oh yeah, on the bright side - the ability to re-amp Helix has mysteriously healed itself and now works as it should. Odd that, because no one told me there was gonna be a fix for that! A nice little extra, so I will thank you for that.

No problem, happy to help. Now you can get on with the jammin'.

Hi Jake, I'm such a waste of space - I spend all day noodling around to backing track in iTunes. No problem for me. Anyhow, I'm not sitting in the studio at the moment so this is just from what I can remember offhand. Helix connects to Mac via USB, select Helix as the Audio-In/Out device. Connect guitar to Helix input jack socket, headphone to Helix dedicated socket (careful with that volume control, dude). Or, alternatively, some PA or powered monitor system. Select backing track in iTunes - press play and jam away. Uh oh! What? No guitar signal! Check Helix inputs/ouputs are set to Multi - also check Global Setting for USB 1/2 destination is set to Multi and the audio signal is not getting re-routed down a wormhole in space. O.K. Now try again! Let's know if it works or not.

Hi, RSpringer (it's a little formal, but hey!) Looks like you may have solved this yourself but here's a quick suggested set up. Guitar into Helix. Helix into iMac via USB GarageBand Audio-In and Audio-Out both set to use Helix Ditch the Logitech speakers unless you want to use them strictly for gaming purposes. In order to hear your signal you will need some decent (powered) Monitor speakers, PA system or whatever to hook up to the 1/4" Jacks or XLR outputs on Helix. You could possibly use some studio quality headphones to listen via the Helix Headphone sockets - maybe Audio Technica ATH M50X are a reasonable choice, until you get some serious monitoring system in place. Welcome to the money pit. As for the lags - install the custom OSX driver, it's a beta version, but it fixes some audio issues on some folks Macs. As I understand it the camera kit reference is aimed at users with iPad, iPhone rigs.

Yep - mine is a 27" 5k Retina also and I have recently upgraded from El Cap 10.11.4 to the latest v10.11.5. IIRC, a beta test of 10.11.6 is available, but I think I will wait for OSX Sierra 10.12 to arrive. As previously noted - the custom driver didn't seem to solve the problem on my 5k so I removed it. 1. Navigate to Macintosh HD/Library/Extensions. Inside the Extensions folder, you should see an item named “L6Helix.kext.†Drag this file to the trash. 2. Empty the trash and restart your computer. Helix will return to using the class-compliant OS X Core Audio driver. O.K. So I'm guessing that you have run all the usual Mac fix-it routines, repair prefs, permissions etc. And, of course, the Helix is running the latest FW 1.12.0. Zap the PRAM - Turn on your Mac and hold down the Command, Option, P, and R keys all at the same time (all four keys). Keep holding down all four keys until you hear the startup sound for a second time. If you do not hear the startup sound twice, then you most likely have not reset the PRAM - try again! Reset SMC (system management controller) - Shut down the Mac. Unplug the power cord on the back. Wait 15 seconds. Plug the power cord back in. Wait 5 seconds, then press the power button to turn on the Mac. It's a little bit of Mac voodoo that sometime helps! Have a look in the Audio Midi Setup (in the Utilities folder) - Helix should show up as an available input/output audio device. If you now playback an audio stream, iTunes, YouTube, whatever - you can switch between the iMac built in output and Helix output to check for and compare any distortion. I don't know what bug was causing the "bitcrusher" effect and if it was my system tricks that made it vanish but that was the least of my problems with Helix. Four months later and I'm still stuck with the MIDI/USB audio problems. Luckily, the sounds I can get out of the Helix are spectacular - even though it's like driving a muscle car with only 3 wheels - and that's not what I paid for!

Looks like ya just did it Chris! It works fine for me. Need to check out that riff on my big monitors tomorrow - these in the MacBook Pro are a little bit feeble. Oh, yeah! Thanks for all the freebie tones. Bostin.

Damn! I was hoping that was going to be a real quick fix for you! Note: you had it working O.K. on a MBP -yes? Question: was it the same OSX on that model and which model iMac and specific OSX are you having the problem with? - maybe we can narrow it down to OSX specific! Other than that - hang on in there because the rumour mill has started to grind out that a new Firmware update is due quite soon. Hopefully this should be the BIG BUG SQUASHER that fixes all this crud, rather than a slew of hundreds fantasy amps and esoteric FX that no-one,wants, needs, or will ever use. We need a Helix that JUST WORKS properly! This far down the line - 4 months of serious malfunctions for me - let's hope for some pure technical fixes to get the mystical black box to work as advertised. I've been using Line 6 gear right from the first kidney bean POD, if I really needed a thousand variations of a few select amps would have bought a Fractal Ax. Let's hope, you and me both, don't have to jump ship to find something that does what it is advertised as being able to do! Oops! I'd better be careful on this forum, don't want to upset the faithfull. Flame off!

Hi again, Scott, Yep - the bit crusher effect is exactly the way I first described this issue, so I'm guessing the custom OSX driver may fix it for you. If not - welcome to hell. If you haven't done so already, check out this other thread discussing the known issues and stuff that the new driver fixes. http://line6.com/support/topic/19809-helix-mac-driver-100-public-beta-now-available/ There seems to have been a lot of problems with certain Mac models and none at all with others. It's all very mysterious stuff. Maybe the alien intelligence that devised the Helix have teleported back to their own dimension without giving L6 all the answers! Let's know how you progress. Good luck.

Hi Scott, Well this certainly sounds familiar to me and some others out here in Helixland. First suggestion, if you haven't already done it, is to download and install the custom USB driver for Mac OSX. Helix Mac Driver 1.00 Public Beta from here: http://line6.com/software/index.html Make sure tick the box for the Beta version or it won't show up. This seems to have fixed the playback issues for many Mac users. Sadly - for some weird reason this didn't work for me and it went from bad to worse. Then for no apparent reason the audio glitches have gone but I now don't have the facility to re-amp the DAW through Helix USB and MIDI is totally FUBAR. Since early March this year I have been soldiering on with an annoyingly malfunctioning Mac/Helix combo, despite raising a ticket with CS which had it's status later updated to "escalated" on May 30. Seems "escalated" means a solution was in progress, but with no idea of a final fix date available, other than "maybe next Firmware update". If you would care to check out the thread that I started about my Mac audio/midi issues - look here. http://line6.com/support/topic/19463-bizarre-audio-midi-fault-its-driving-me-nuts/ Hope this helps.

Nah, dude. It was Digital Igloo who started the whole red herring axiom thing. Right here: http://line6.com/support/topic/21201-firmware-upgrade/page-2 Or, is this really the start of the "Stupid Fun"?

I know this is an add on to an old thread, but this is kinda weird - I just checked this an moment ago - download arrow worked fine for me on a MacBook Pro running Firefox. Yesterday, in another thread, a guy was having issues adding a comment to his uploaded tone. Siverhead posted a note that there is problem with the Customtone site. When I checked that out - everything worked fine for me using my iMac Retina and Safari. I don't understand! Is this a problem for Windows users only? Could it be a bug that is only happening on the US servers and not an issue on the UK and European sites? Just a thought.

Just seen this, so went to check. I uploaded a quick and dirty tone patch yesterday and was able to add a comment - no problem. In the past couple of minutes I have been back into Customtone and made an edit to my original description of the patch, refreshed the browser and the change was done. Went back in an removed the "test" comment, updated it and "whoosh" - everything done. This was done from a Mac running Safari. This may sound dumb, but I'm assuming that you are logged into the site with your user name password. If so, try selecting your custom tone that you want to edit by clicking on the bold patch name beside the icon of the Helix, (it should highlight with an underscore), that should take you back to the tone details page where you should then be able to edit the comments section. If that doesn't work - well I dunno! I have just tried it and worked perfectly for me. Hope this helps.

Well, it depends what you prefer, quality wise - more you spend, better the quality (theoretically) - you pay your money and take your chance. Balanced XLRs will help with noise cancellation and longer cable runs (should you ever need that?) Enjoy!

Hi Rushfan76, Yup, you're correct - the 1/4'' out sockets on the rear of the Helix are unbalanced jacks and the XLRs are balanced connectors. If you're intending to splurge out over a grand on a brand new state of the art, super dooper, whizz bang audio processor why worry about a few quid more on the cables to do the job? Can't see how that would be a deal breaker. The right tools to do the job and all that stuff! A little general information re Balanced and Unbalaced: It’s important to note that using a balanced cable on an unbalanced signal gives you no benefits. The jacks on the gear on both ends of the cable must be designed for balanced signals as well; otherwise there’s no circuitry to do the phase inversion that produces the noise cancellation. On the flip side, however, using an unbalanced cable with gear that expects balanced signals will “work†(in the sense that audio will go from point A to point B), but the signal will be unbalanced and susceptible to the same noise as any unbalanced signals. Check the documentation of your gear (or the labels on the gear itself, near the jacks) to determine what type of signal a given jack is designed to support, if you’re not certain. Note: I ditched my Focusrite Saffire and hook up to my near field monitors from the Helix 1/4' sockets, the cables have gold plated jacks and it works just fine for me. Hope this is some help!

silverhead, You are like my dog with a car tyre - you just don't know when to let it go! This is like trying to explain to some one who was born blind - what colour red is! You know what they say about opinions - they are like belly buttons - everyone has one! And everyone else's stinks apart from your own (the other version of that brings up lollypops if you know what I mean?) Well, it was just my personal opinion that the original answer was glib - surely, I'm entitled to that. You don't like it - fine, it doesn't bother me one iota. It's a comment! Seems that you also think it was wrong when I then queried if "phil_m" had comprehended the original posters apparent issues, as illustrated by a diagram of USB, featuring the 8 channels hooked up to a DAW. It seemed to me that's what was being asked. Judging from the guys secondary post, above - that's mainly what what he was chasing, AND that is what "phil_m" has subsequently explained in great detail. Excellent! More like a Guru! I am entitled to my opinion, and to comment as I feel, and I think it may be time for you to release your grip on that tyre - now. Bulletin Board Sysops - same the world over.

@ndutyme, See what happens when you take your time and ask a perfectly reasonable and sensible question - you will get a perfectly reasonable and sensible answer from these kind gentlemen on this here Helix forum. Excellent work from the guardian angels! Although, I do still feel that your original question could have been given the same measured and considered response. Me, for my part - I state once again: "Oh. mea culpa. Seems we have two interpretations of the same question." If that is being unreasonable then, so be it – I think I will remain a belligerent, offensive, aggressive snarling dog. Must be the Doberman bloodline in me! :rolleyes: Jeeziz -some peeple! Flame off!

Oh. mea culpa. Seems we have two interpretations of the same question. Quote: "He didn't specifically (or even mention at all) the USB recording issue". And I was just responding to this specific question, not commenting on the entire thread. As the original post was to this thread, entitled "Helix-and recording" and along with the associated illustration, I foolishly took that to be relevant to the USB connections to a computer system running a DAW. I'm obviously an idiot, and you were under pressure. Quote: "I would think that for most people using any of the USB outs beside the 1/2 pair would be relatively rare, but it does give you the ability to use the Helix as an outboard effects processor for tracks in your DAW." Oh really, come now, Phil. Do you seriously believe that anyone armed with a Helix and a digital multi-track recorder would only be interested in capturing the fully processed audio. Surely not! This thing is being marketed as "the nerve centre for your entire guitar rig" plus "Helix also functions as a high quality, multi-in/out, 24-bit/96kHz audio interface for Mac and Windows computers, with DI, Re-amping and MIDI functionality built right in". It's designed for stage and studio use and I would guess that might even get a drummer to experiment with USB. As for the USB in and out functionality, that you mention above, I would have thought that info may well have been better aimed at the guy who raised the original question. I am more than familiar with it's operation, having spent several weeks trying to sort out my own Helix/USB issues. BTW & FYI: yes, I have still got an open ticket with support in Europe. I was informed that the QA team in the USA have been able to replicate the problems and a solution is in the pipeline. Digital Igloo thought that it may have been "patched" in the latest FW (1.12) update but sadly not for me. I will possibly have fixed it all myself by the time anything else happens. Why, oh, why did it just stop working? Plus, still no answer to my question as to why my Mac now "sees" Helix as 4 pairs of audio streams rather than the 8 separate channels that I had previously?