SaschaFranck

Fwiw, regardless of what their next (post-Helix) modeler line might look like, I seriously hope they will considerably up their audio interface game. Given all the routing options, plenty of inputs that can easily be abused to record additional signals simultaneously, easy re-amping options and what not, it could actually be a pretty decent audio interface. But as software monitoring has become a staple in the land of working with DAWs, latency needs to at least be brought down to a somewhat acceptable level. Something like, say 7-10ms when running the unit at 64 samples buffersize is a pretty common value even among pretty affordable consumer interfaces and with values as low-ish as that, you could at least give other amp sims a testrun. But with those almost 17ms of the Helix, that's just not possible (at least not for me). Oh, and it needed a decent routing/leveling/mixing matrix for the entire USB-audio signalflow, ideally outside of HX Edit - and especially outside of the hardware.

I can change buffer sizes in my host's driver setup. And from all I know, that's possible in any host on either Windows or macOS. Of course it does use the project sample rate. There's no point (and also no way) to use various sample rates within one project. It's just how digital audio works. It's pointless to use the Helix as an interface to actually play through other plugins via software monitoring, though, as the latency is simply abysmally bad. It's the worst latency you can think of, even in the land of super cheap audio interfaces.

Might generally be true but in this case it's not all too relevant. The entire thing isn't just about brute force processing power, it's a whole lot about how you utilize it. And regarding that, the current hardware would likely be good for another decade to come. Also, just look at the Kemper. Still going incredibly strong. In most cases, hardware obsolescence isn't happening because of the hardware not being decent enough anymore but simply because it's planned. In the land of all things computing that's just absolutely common. Economically that's just how things are like (as stupid as it might be), ecologically (and of course also socially) it's a large part of the reason why the world looks as it looks like today.

It's not exactly aging - especially when you consider that apparently there's still room for efficiency improvements. Add to this that the demand for the Floor easily exceeds what can be supplied at the moment - now, we all know that hasn't got exclusively to do with the Helix' success but rather with a general supply shortage, but then, that'd be just the same if L6 had a sucessor on offer. So, at this moment in time, it'd possibly be economically stupid to invest in whatever new hardware development when even the "aging" hardware is constantly sold out (heck, over here there's not one single Floor in eBay's classifieds section). Further, I'd take a bet that all things currently developed will also find their way into the next modeling generation, so it's not wasted time, either. And finally, supporting the current modeling line that long is raising confidence and trust among users. So once times are better economically, there's gonna be plenty of customers willing to buy whatever new units. Really, as much as one may like the Line 6 folks, they're not doing this for fun or just to please their customers (at least not just for that). After all, it's a division of Yamaha, and anything done serves a bigger picture. And the main aspect of that bigger picture is to generate as much revenue as possible.

But could you load an IR and a dual (legacy) cab block simultaneously on the Stomp before? I never tried...

Yeah, pretty awsome player and a cool dude as it seems. If anything, his channel is a little short on rhythm tones (and as we all hopefully know, it's rhythm tones paying the bill, noodling is always only on top).

Not really. As an FX unit, the HXFX is *vastly* more powerful, just alone by the fact it's allowing for 16 blocks instead of just 8. I am by now using an HX Stomp as an FX-only unit (originally used a Floor but completely re-arranged my rig) and while it's doing pretty well, I have no problems to run into its block limit easily. Sure, regarding hardware, the Stomp XL is defenitely blurring the line between them, but adding cab blocks to the HXFX would blur the line some more, which likely isn't in the interest of Line 6.

Someone explained it somewhere, the new cabs seem to access the same "improved processing area" (in lack of better words) as the IR blocks, and apparently there's a limit of 2 IRs being processed at once, the new cabs in this case are seen as an IR for each cab, so with a dual cab, the limits are reached. The old cabs however don't fall into this category, as they don't seem to be brute force IRs (which the new ones are). Sorry for not being able to explain this any better, but someone (maybe even someone from L6) explained it along these lines somewhere.

Line 6 should have a download repository offering all previous and current factory presets. I forgot to export them after updating and just restored my backup, so they were gone before I could even give them a testrun. And now I can't be bothered to do another backup and reset just to get to some factory presets. Not that I'd really be using any presets (in fact, I never do), but apparently some other folks do. So they should just be available in a "link, click here" fashion.

Hm, ok, apart from booting the unit into update mode, it's pretty much the same procedure. I should possibly add that to the startpost.

No options have been taken away from you. You don't have a re-captured U87, correct. But then, all you had before is still there, so "taken away" simply doesn't apply.

Well, yes and no. Many people aren't constantly logged in with HX Edit or online all the time (myself included), so you'd likely miss that there's an update.

My guess would be that if Line 6 keeps supporting this iteration of the HX hard- and software series, they will subsequently add some more cabs and mics. Fwiw, on a sidenote: While I quite like the new cabs, I guess I will just stick to what's a handful of carefully curated IRs (in fact 2 main ones and 3 more when I feel bored). They suit me more than well and I just got used to their sort of special (if a tad neutral) sonic fingerprint. Might fire up the new cabs for recordings ocassionally, though, but others than that I'm absolutely happy being able to call it a day, at least more or less. It's also why I'm not particularly psyched about this update (but I can perfectly understand people who are).

Use one of the old cabs if you liked it so much.

Of course. It always made a lot of sense. Even with just the 4 knobs of the GT-10, I got quite some extra mileage out of that functionality back then.

Yes please. Ideally, you'd have multiple pages. That way you could, say, adjust all your drive and overall levels on page 1 whereas page 2 might have delay feedback and mix plus reverb mix. Or whatever. Fwiw, Boss does it pretty much like that already (minus the page thing), since ages even. But then, I really doubt anything like that will ever happen. Maybe with the next hardware iteration.

Well, the procedure as intended by Line 6 would be: No need to update HX Edit manually in case you're using a version newer than 3.00 already. So, when starting HX Edit and logging in, you should be told there's an update. In case you follow the instructions, the first thing to happen before your hardware unit gets updated would be that HX Edit would update itself. Only then will the actual firmware process start (and before anything starts at all, even before HXEs self-update, you'll be asked to do a backup). Now, at which point in time and why there might be glitches happening - only Line 6 will know for sure, but they seem to happen. Sometimes it's users not following the instructions carefully, using a weak USB connection and what not. But it also seems to happen out of the blue (I had that with the 3.15 update, and I've been absolutely aware of what to and what not to do). Whatever, manually updating HX Edit as a first step might not harm, but I'm sure it's not usually responsible for some updates to fail, my bet would be something happening while downloading, checksumchecking or transfering the actual firmware. In case it was just a failure caused by HX Edit, the hardware would still run as usual.

Yeah, there might be room for improvements in Line 6's update methods, but then, at least there's the Updater to get you back up and running.

No. It's describing a method to get you back up and running in case of a bricked update. A method working in 95% of all cases. And well, perhaps you should just click on the link before coming up with assumptions about what it might be.

Maybe next time I should offer a personal visit. With me obviously paying the travel expenses, no less.

Did you go for an offline update of the firmware?

Fwiw, the Top Secret OD has always been one of my favourites for that kinda sound. Great mixture between overdrive and some more fuzzy, wooly goodness.

My guess would be that you simply can't have everything. For "true delay trails no matter what" to work, the source delay would have to remain active in the background. But in case it's parameters are altered, it only could do so in case a "hidden" instance would be loaded simultaneously. Which would result in quite some CPU cycles to get lost. So, to me this behaviour is just normal - and I don't think anything changed from previous versions. Btw, from all I know, the Boss GT-1000 does it the same. There's spillovers when changing patches but the delay/verb nature will be changed according to the settings in the target patch.

Check the description I've posted 2 posts above. Very likely it will help.

Quite obviously, editing with HX Edit is incredibly more comfortable, but as I'm mainly a live player, I often need to do some corrections on the unit itself, because I can't be bothered to bring a laptop with me all the time. And I just wish that those corrections could be done quicker. With the Floor it was more or less fine because I had all relevant things mapped to switches and there's been 6 parameters permanently exposed, the most relevant usually being among those first 6, but as I scaled down to a Stomp, things are now quite different, it simply isn't as easy to edit on itself as it could be.