SaschaFranck

Yeah, for bass players that'd be extra cool. Wouldn't mind some synth-ish things for my guitar musings, though. Or at least something along the lines of EHX' POG/HOG series, which I find to be quite wicked.

Well, not via MIDI at least (as Phil already explained). Basically, they're nothing else but FX pedals as in that they're working straight with the guitar signal and manipulating it - but there's no conversion happening. Either method has its pros and cons. Anything converted to MIDI will more or less automatically result in things not exactly being guitar-like anymore. Slurs, glides, scratches, dead notes and what not, they all won't work as there's a) no sufficient detector/converter in those Hex pickup driven systems for such signals and b) no sufficient parameter set covering them in MIDI land (let alone on any target sound module). As a result, you will have to adjust your playing quite a bit (which usually is also required to make sure the conversion is working well without glitches) On the upside, you can use any "normal" synth and also do nifty things, such as individual string transpositions or such as sending each string to a different sound. The "native" conversion (as happening in EHX/Boss pedals) doesn't allow for the latter, but on the upside, you don't need to adjust your playing style and even your slides and such will be transformed into whatever it might be. There's also a kind of hybrid approach, such as used in the Variax guitars but also in Rolands VG series and now as well in their SY-1000. For that, the signal is grabbed by a Hex pickup - hence each string is processed separately, which allows for individual string tunings but also offers vastly improved "native/direct" synthesis (without going the MIDI route). In the Variax guitars, the Hex pickup is used for individual string tuning and guitar/pickup modeling. I think it'd be cool if Line 6 did something like the synth-ish stuff with their Variaxes, but I'm afraid it's pretty much a niche thing, so I wouldn't think it's likely to happen.

Well, there's Jam Origin already, doing just that, converting polyphonic guitar signals into MIDI without the need for a dedicated pickup. Obviously, certain things possible with a Hex pickup driven setup won't happen (mainly individual string transposition and different strings triggering different synth sounds), but otherwise there shouldn't be an intrinsic problem for L6 to not be able to pull something like that off. Personally, I'd be a lot more interested in "direct synthesis", such as happening on the Boss SY-300 or on the various EHX pedals. But I'm sure this would come at plenty of CPU cost.

I'm mixing my IRs since a long time already, just using what my DAW has on offer. Works a treat. Whenever I find a nice blend, I consolidate things into one single IR.

I never felt I needed a meter for a guitar compressor. But obviously, YMMV. And when you say "Loop FX", these are likely digital units, so they *do* need a meter at least on the input, for you to easily see whether you're clipping their inputs. But that's pretty irrelevant once the signal is converted already (for the same reasons you see no meters on, say, delay plugins). Anyway, I'm not opposed to meters, not at all. In fact, for some things I absolutely welcome them.

Regarding the meters, the main question for me would be: Can I hit eleven?

I would never do that. I'd only use them to check for clipping.

Well, the problem with balancing volumes in fact hasn't got anything to do with meters but all with the actual output volume parameter requiring a comparatively huge effort to get you there. Personally, I only "need" meters to watch out for potential clipping on the master output(s), which can easily become a critical thing in case your patches are leveled rather hot and then you're feeding, say, your sequencer out into the Helix via USB additionally.

A) Not really. At least other units offer *way* faster access to master patch volume. B) My main patch layout is the victim of a bug, I can *only* scroll to the lower output block from the upper output block, there's no way to get there whenever I'm in path 2 (already reported this), so while generally possible, in my case it doesn't work.

Well, I think meters are fine for inputs and outputs - but I'd rather have a quicker way to jump to an output block to actually adjust the levels rather than watching them... Seriously, I have no idea how something as essential as adjusting overall patch volume is handled in such a super-tedious way. Sure, the semi-modular structure, routing to various outs and all that - but I'd take a bet that 90% of all live patches use the bottom right output (ok, maybe the top right, too, for simpler patches) to feed FOH and monitors. So please give me a shortcut to get there quickly instead of having to navigate to it using the joystick. In the end, it's pretty much wellknown in the Helix crowd that balancing the volumes of multiple patches is just plain bad.

Yeah, even with 8 blocks, the Stomp would likely profit the most from something such as global blocks.

This. Really, once inside the Helix, there's so much headroom - clipping anything will be pretty much impossible. The only relevant things hence being in- and outputs.

Why? Do you have meters on your stomp boxes, too?

Yes, that'd be just *really* nice. And in case there wasn't sufficient block space and/or CPU juice - well, there's always the good old "Sorry, we can't do that!" message option. And now imagine being able to save such a mini-chain (say drive, amp, cab) as a "sub preset". Ok, we can dream...

Yeah, same here (see last post). Did so for ages with my real cabs, too. I usually used either a 2x12 or a 1x12, both sounding pretty similar, featuring Celestions or at least celestion-ish speakers, all pretty well worn in. Even replaced the speakers in my Twin with Celestions (well, not completely, a V30 and a Peavey Sheffield which is rather celestion-ish). When recording, I treat things pretty differently, but for live playing, I absolutely prefer being familiar over squeezing the last ounce of whatever authenticity out of my setup.