SaschaFranck

No, I wasn't talking about that kinda stuff (which might even be irrelevant, at least for a long time being...), but... Yeah, but the main aspect IMO still would be that, once latency occurs, when using headphones it comes without any further audible clues. In other words: When you move a meter away from your amp, your monitor speakers and what not, the sound is likely gonna change quite a lot due to completely changed reflections - which is an audible clue that the distance to your sound source has changed. And because we're used to deal with these audible clues of distance (or rather even "trained by evolution", because some years ago you just had to be aware of these kinds of distances when that saber-toothed fellow was approaching from behind). As a result, we're likely just able to accept distance in the physical realm kind of easily. But once you get 3ms more of latency through your headphones (which pretty much exactly equals 1 meter), there won't be any change in sound, the latency is just added on top, so that can become irritating quite fast. Add to this that when wearing headphones, you're losing the last bit of audible connection to your actual picking attack even at household levels. Thing is, even when the musical timing issue isn't relevant anymore (and quite likely we could spend another lifetime on debating when exactly musical timing becomes an issue, whether it's only an issue once someone hears it or whether there's "sub-implications", how we compensate for it once it shows up, etc...), which I assume we could at least for now agree on, would be the case once we're talking latency differences of, say, 2-3 ms (otherwise we wouldn't be using modelers at all), our ears and brains are still incredibly sensitive to time-related things. Possibly the most blunt example: When you close your eyes and someone is talking to you from very close distance (like, the heads just a handful of centimeters apart), you will instantly notice when that person will move left or right by just a few centimeters, even in an anechoic chamber (with all reflection clues removed), possibly even more so. Also, as an example out of my personal experience: When playing some rhytmically relevant stuff through a patch with a sharp attack through a sound enhancing all attacks (like a super clean amp) using plugins and through headphones, I can almost reliably tell whether my host's buffer size is set to 32 or 64 samples. We're talking about the difference between 4.6ms and 6.0ms here. And well, while I like to think of myself as being a timing-savy player (who wouldn't...), that's *way* below anything I'd consider myself noticing in whatever possible raw timing tests (in fact, there's some of those tests online, which can be quite revealing). So, how comes I can still pretty much reliably tell about the difference (I'd roughly say in around 80% of all cases in a direct A/B comparison, I once even had a mate switch a delay of 1.5ms on/off while I was playing)? My personal explanation would be that our senses (in this case those of my picking hand) are almost as trained to deal with time and distances as our ears are (which, historically, would make as much sense because we defenitely need to hit our saber-toothed friend in time with our spear - waste just a handful of ms and you're qualifying for further issues...). Interestingly enough (and to take that to yet another level/layer, but I told ya, can of worms and so...), all that is still working with our typical reaction time being *way* above anything we're dealing with here (typical reaction times between perception and reaction are in the range of 0.3-0.4 *seconds*, IIRC), so there must be a higher instance in our brains, lining things up and sorting them in a fashion that we can still perform with proper musical timing, such as in "getting into the groove" or so. Which might as well explain why we (at least that's most common among the folks I know, myself obviously included) often aren't "in the pocket" on the first few beats of, say, a recording, making it a good idea to already start the picking movement (ideally in the air) during count-in. Fortunately, at least we're not singers. Because in that case we'd also be talking about headphone introduced phasing (which can sometimes be avoided by actually *raising* latencies, go figure). Very interesting stuff IMO.

Well, that could be a can of worms we're opening here. DAW introduced latency through headphones is something pretty different from physical distance latency, at least usually - simply because the latter comes with further audible clues (if we'd really open that can of worms, we could as well introduce visible clues, but lets keep that out for now...), whereas electronically caused latency doesn't. Which is why a bit of a room ambience sometimes does a great job in masking that effect. But that's still not all there is to it. When monitoring through speakers at moderate levels, you will likely still have a bit of sound straight from the guitar attacks left, so that could become your "rhythmic anchor", whereas when listening through headphones, it's likely that the sound coming out of them will become your main reference. Hence, we may compensate for latency or we may not. And btw, compensating for DAW-introduced latency isn't exactly a good idea because that "manual compensation" will be recorded, and as a result, it'll be a tad early on playback (because on playback, the DAW compensates for latency). This is quite different to real life latency compensation, when what you actually hear will be recorded. Now, with modern technology and generally small latency numbers, all that might not be too relevant timingwise, so we may probably only have to get used to it, but still, IMO it's a good idea to be informed about the various aspects and implementations of latency.

People have been reporting scrollwheel related crashes already. Did you use that?

Fwiw, some folks mix up device latency with audio interface latency. Even if partially releated, these are very different things. Just sayin'.

That's true. And it's quite a shame as it goes to show how much L6 ignores their very own forum.

I'm pretty sensitive to latency and my current setup features 2 modelers in series, coming in at 2ms each (Amplifirebox or NUX Amp Academy and an HX Stomp for spatial FX), at least for leads. Works fine, even under headphones. I still take care of those values not getting any larger though, because there's always the odd moment, when more latency is added (digital consoles, less than ideal DSP controlled monitors and what not).

Haven't seen anything, either. But then, my monitor is switched off.

When it comes to just that, there's pretty much nothing like the GT-1000 (oh well, and the Iridium and the NUX Amp Academy, but I guess we can rule those out for now).

Hm, I don't think you'd love an FM3 much more then, at least not regarding the on-unit editing aspect. When it comes to just that, I think it's either a Helix Floor/LT, a Headrush or maybe a Boss GT-1000 along with Boss Tone Studio on a tablet. All others pale in comparison. But as said, that's just the on-unit editing aspect, which defenitely isn't all.

Would you run the unit along with your HX Effects? If so, you could as well consider 1-2 of the mini-modelers along the lines of a Strymon Iridium, Atomic Amplifirebox (even if the company at least sort of s***s) or whatever. You could easily connect two of them in the loops of the HX Effects. And you could still enjoy the easy editing of the HXFX. With all the HX series drives, you should be able to get plenty of great tones just out of 1-2 baseline amp models. As far as the FM3 goes, yeah, I gotta agree, the Fractal amp modeling is absolutely great. And while most people (myself included) often aren't able to distinguish a Fractal unit from a Helix in A/B listening tests, I think playing either does reveal some differences. I absolutely think that Line 6's modeling is fine, but Fractals is (or rather feels) extra-fine. Had an Axe FXIII borrowed for a few days and it was super great playing fun. And yes, I liked it a bit more than the Helix. Anyway, if you need decent on-unit editing, the Fractal stuff is really, really bad. Yeah, it's been improved a bit, but compared to most others it still feels like being thrown back at least a decade or so. For me, that's an important thing to consider.

Also, did you make sure to NOT sign in within the Line 6 Updater but went to Offline Mode straight ahead?

For how long did you wait?

That's precisely why I have collected a bunch of "granted to work, regardless what I throw at them" USB cables over the years. And fwiw, given how many of them I owned, the percentage of really well working ones is astonishingly small. And it's not because I only bought cheap stuff. In fact, one pretty much horribly expensive cable from Belkin never worked properly, even went as far as sending it back, just to find out the replacement wouldn't properly work, either. Fine for occasional printer connections, miserably failing with interfaces and harddrives.

You could post the patch so we could check whether that's a general issue.

Did you boot into safe/update mode before trying to update?

I'm using a Zoom UAC-2. Pretty affordable. At 44.1kHz and 32 samples buffersize, RTL is 4.6ms, at 64 samples it comes in with 6ms. Quite decent. These days, I might rather get a Motu, though, they considerably upped their driver game as it seems.

Of course, and I'd even agree, at least partially... but then, these days, the lines are pretty much blurred. I mean, using the HX family stuff without computer assistance would be vastly less efficient, at least for me, so as soon as they're not supported any longer (which eventually will happen), their value (and I'm not talking about the monetary value) will dwindle.

Pretty much depends whether you have to use software along with that stuff. For instance, many older audio interfaces simply don't work anymore as there's no actual drivers anymore. The same could happen to the HY family, so using them as interfaces or using HX Edit will not work anymore. Which would also result in not being able to load IRs onto them anymore. So it's really not *all* that different.

Does that work on, say, raising kids, too?

Observed something similar on the HX Stomp (for the upper right encoder), but so far it only happened once and after I twisted it around some, things went back to normal. Keeping an eye on it...

In fact, it's pretty much a rule of life in general (at least as long as digital devices are involved, but it probably even goes beyond that...).

Ok, finally up on Ideascale: https://line6.ideascale.com/c/idea/1054091 Make sure to share it wherever you can.

I don't think it's ever gonna happen, either. One of the reasons I scaled down to a Stomp because I wasn't utilizing the various recording related aspect of the Floor anymore. Anyhow, I still think they need to improve on that with any future hardware iteration. I mean, it's one thing to deliver a sort of ok-ish interface with your modeler (which pretty much all of them do) but quite another thing to deliver the worst performance of the whole bunch. And as far as this hurting sales or not, we simply don't know - but that's beyond the point already, I just happen to think that any modeler in that league should be sort of up to certain standards (otherwise, just leave the interface part out).

How near exactly is "near"?

I think it's a must that they improve the interface part. I mean, they're trying to play in the top tier modeler league but the interface is the worst of them all when it comes to latency, even beaten by the cheapest things from NUX, Joyo and what not. And by a wide margin even. Heck, my really sort of shabby Zoom G3 delivers a roundtrip latency under 10ms. That doesn't bode well with L6's general claims.