SaschaFranck

I think a part of the problem is that the return inputs, regardless whether you set them to "instrument" or not, are pretty weak, regarding the level of the dry signal recorded through USB. Even the normal guitar input is pretty weak. I would suspect the reason for this to be that Line 6 wanted to make sure there's always enough headroom so you wouldn't run into digital clipping even when using the hottest pickups possible. As a solution for this, if you really need to use more than the XLR and instrument inputs (which should at least deliver a decent volume for the dry recorded signal), I would consider some sort of small buffer/preamp pedal that you would then slap in front of the returns. However, what I'm wondering about is that you say there's a recorded signal that you can listen to (even if at very low levels) but that you can't normalize. I'm a (very longtime) Logic user as well and haven't experienced that ever in all these years. Sidenote: There's that little button in Logic, allowing you to vertically zoom in waveforms, which is a decent helper when dealing with weak audio recording levels. I use that all the time when cutting DI guitars. When you click-hold onto it, it allows you to adjust the level of zoom, after that it'll turn blue and a single click will then change between the zoomed and not zoomed levels.

This is more or less correct. "Edit Mode" was basically made for editing with your feet, so usually (unless you're playing with bare feet - which, btw, is sort of like a can of worms - I usually set touch sensivity off in case I'm playing barefoot for a longer period of time) it'd make little sense to keep the touch sensivity active in that mode. Ok, as far as "more or less correct" goes, the touch sensitive buttons also serve other purposes. You can for example select a block and bring up its bypass assignment by simply touching a switch for a little longer. Or you can exchange two switch assignments by touching the two simultaneously. Both of these options are actually incredibly useful and of tremendous help when getting patches "performance ready". I guess all that stuff is explained in the video above, too (didn't watch it yet).

I thought the intention was pretty clear...

Yes. From the moment your signal hits the Helix, it's a buffered, low impedance signal all throughout. And fwiw, I think you could go for pretty cheap cables because of that. I did some tests with patch cables in the past, comparing super expensive ones to pretty much the cheapest available, once the signal was buffered, I couldn't tell a difference anymore. Maybe there will be a greater difference when using longer cable runs, but as soon as you're using more or less decent quality, you should be just fine.

I don't think this is possible. On a sidenote: I think when using a MIDI CC, you would have more options. Which is quite the irony. With the internal pedal, the entire pedal range is always used. Btw, I wholeheartedly support the wish for more advanced pedal curves. What we have right now often isn't sufficient.

It's quite a lot of compression he dialed in though. From 1:04 to 1:08 you can hear the sound without compression, after that it's activated (Red Squeeze) and stays on for this passage of the video. Stays active at least until 2:13.

Even easier when you use Helix Native. And for quick and dirty sort-of-reamping: Slap a looper into the first slot of the signal chain, straight after the input. Record something and tweak to your hearts content while the looper will take over the guitar noodling duties.

Not sure whether that's all there is to it, but he's using quite some noticeable compression here.

Fwiw: I think you'd gain a lot in case you don't try to literally copy whatever sounds. Once you forget about that you will find yourself presented with something almost invaluable: Freedom of choice. In all my "career" (whatever that might be...), I have never even once tried to copy anything 1:1, at least not soundwise. Enabled me to get along just fine with a plethora of equipment that simply couldn't do the copycat job. And as said, it allowed me to chose whatever I felt like. But then, each to their own.

Well, I wouldn't happen to know in which scenarios it happens the way you're describing things, but in, say, a DAW (which isn't the worst comparison IMO), as Schmalle already mentioned, it's not even remotely as you say. In case the CPU isn't able to process things in time, you will not experience higher latencies but audio dropouts and the likes - which, at least sometimes, do indeed sound a tad similar to clipping (well, we could possibly agree to call it a "heavily degraded sound experience" or such).

Did you consider taking the advice/help from my first answer in this thread?

Don't want to spoil the party or split hairs, but for historical correctness, Roland released their GP-8 in 1987, more than 10 years before the Lexicon. And apart from the abysmal editing and the lack of reverb, it wasn't even bad (I owned one). As far as using drive pedals with a clean(-ish) amp goes, I think it's quite crucial to find the right cab for the job. My favourites here often seem to be the 4x10 with a 160 Ribbon and the 4x12 Greenback 25 with quite some different mics, depending on the purpose. IMO the most relevant thing being to sort of tame the highs a bit, for me that's what makes or breaks dirt pedal capability.

Yeah, I did that as well, took IRs of several presence values. Note: I possibly could've gotten a more neutral response at lower presence values, but it's never been completely neutral, the cab IRs taken with the Boogie power amp always sounded quite different from those taken with a solid state amp (obviously using the same mic placement and signal chain). Apart from frequency coloration I suspect the dynamics to be responsible, too. Yes, I know they're not represented in IRs (as they're only capturing linear processes), but as a result of the tube power amp doing its dynamic thing, while sending the sweep through it, some of the sweeps frequencies might become more compressed than others, hence resulting in a "pre-colored" sweep which will then find its way into the final IR. At least that's the only rational explanation I would have for what happened, even when using the most neutral presence value. And fwiw, because of my suspection, I also (at least more or less) measured the compression of some tube power amps - they're really all compressing the signal, at least to a certain extent, even at very low volumes when power amp saturation should not be happening. The least compressing amp seemed to be my red-knobbed "The Twin" (and btw, yes, I replaced the speakers which instantly turned it from a horribly shrill monster into one of the best pedal platform amps ever - if it only wasn't *that* heavy, I'd probably still be using it here and there), which pretty much proved my findings from playing through it. I'm sure there's less compressing tube power amps than the ones I fooled around with, but once being used in a guitar amp, I wouldn't bet on them to be really close to neutral. After all, their coloration (in one way or the other) is the very reason people are still using them.

Suspicious in what way? It's really just the output of my interface back then, straight into the Boogies return, the speaker out running into a DI box (through to cab), from there back to the interface. Using the Impulse Response Utility coming with Logic. I did several captures of several things that way, always worked a treat.

Yeah, I actually did, but not analytically, just listened. Sweep. I noticed cab IRs to not be accurate when using diracs, so I took all IRs with sweeps. Too bad, because otherwise the entire procedure could be dramatically shortened (no deconvolution required). Maybe I did something wrong - or maybe the solid state amp wasn't too accurate (not unlikely, borrowed the first one I could). But the IRs turned out to be quite useable as a tweaking base. Much more than those I captured through guitar poweramps (which I obviously did at first, having no straight access to a solid state poweramp).

There's been a cab connected.

True, but still, there's some coloration funkiness going on. I created some IRs from just my Mark IVs power amp section (I explicitely wanted to capture the frequency coloration), which is quite known for being rather neutral when using 6L6s in full power mode, and yet the coloration is very noticeable. I'll attach it (presence control is at noon), so you can listen for yourself. Almost like a tilt EQ in favour of the high end. In fact, the Twin (a redknob "The Twin" model) sounded more neutral (didn't grab an IR). B_PA_FP_P05.wav

Fwiw, if you use those a lot, it's not making me wonder the Helix cabs sound quite different in comparison, simply because yours contain power amp coloration, which, depending on the kind of poweramp, can be quite a thing. Pretty much the reason all dedicated IR vendors use linear solid state power amps for IR captures. I borrowed myself such a thing as well and the differences were quite noticeable, compared to, say, using a Twin poweramp for capturing (I compared the two versions, the Twin added quite some high mids).

Well, it's not harder than fooling around with real cabs and mic placements. In fact, it's way easier, everything's phase aligned already (important for dual cab stuff). With IRs, unless you're using one of the big collections, you're pretty much at the mercy of the vendor. Fwiw, I started using IRs for guitar recording duties around 2008, have around 50k IRs on my drives (the Redwirez Big Box being an extremely well sorted collection), have captured my own, know how to mangle and re-save them, etc. I have as well organized all the IRs as Space Designer presets (Logics IR loader), which makes scrolling through them a breeze (works via my keyboards up/down/L/R arrows, most comfortable solution when dealing with IRs inside a computer). And yet, I find the Helix offerings pretty great. IMO, what you really need to explore is the different mics, IMO many of the default mics (when you call up a cab) aren't ideal (or their position isn't). As said, for me the major downside is the EQ section of the cab block. They could at least offer some different slope options, such as -6dB, -12dB, -18dB, -24dB - from all I know (I could actually measure it...) the cuts in the cab block are -6dB, which pretty often results in "cuts into the flesh" rather than just eliminating unwanted boom or harshness. For mono operation, you could just insert a mono gain block. Won't allow for panning, though, so I would agree with you (even if I never use dual cab blocks myself, maybe because I was mainly on IRs until recently).

Fwiw, after using IRs almost exclusively ever since I bought the Helix, recently I finally started to explore the onboard cabs quite a bit more carefully. Gotta say that they're very good for most things I need - and quite obviously, they're incredibly more flexible. Unfortunately, the EQ on the cab section isn't done too well, so I have to slap an extra EQ block in, but that's true for the IR block as well (just that in that case I can at least pre-EQ my IRs). I wish the IR/cab block had an EQ section similar to that in Atomic products, which is really efficient and flexible, yet easy to handle.

If you want, post: - a snipplet of your sound right now, so we have an idea about what might be wrong (words only go this far...) - a link to someone playing with a sound you'd like to achieve - a snipplet of your guitar playing, recording only the DI portion (provided by Helix' USB outs 7/8) - a patch that you're not happy with yet That way, people could have a go at your patch. I should actually put that into some text document. No idea how often I've posted that or something similar already. For whatever reasons, nobody ever takes that offer...

I don't think you will be able to gather any really relevant information this way, for the same reason you're already mentioning, namely personal preferences. As far as mid gain tones go (I don't exactly use high gain, at least not as much gain as many people these days), so far my go-to amp has basically been the Line 6 2204 Mod. Pretty flexible, dynamics are fine, takes all sorts of drives well. My go-to drives are the Kinky Boost (wish it had dedicated output level...) to just get a bit "more", the Teemah because it's so easy to use and flexible enough to turn a rather low gain from the amp into something a little more high-gain-ish and the Top Secret OD which IMO is doing a better job for fuzzy tones than the fuzzes (especially as I keep my input impedance fixed at 1 M Ohm). For more gain from the amp itself, I like the Placater Dirty. Recently, I discovered the Derailed Ingrid (didn't tickle me at first), in combination with the 4x12 Greenback 25 (usually with the 57 Dynamic mic). While doing so, I re-discovered an old goodie that I aleready liked in my M13, the Tube Comp. Along with the Derailed Ingrid at lower gains, the resulting sound is pretty creamy, yet very dynamic. I really wish they'd do a modernized version of the Tube Comp, the output level is way too high and it could as well do with finer Threshold adjustments. But then, as said, everybody's mileage will vary and I'm not a high gain player anyway.

I'm doing it the opposite way, pretty much because even if I'm playing live for a living (well, not these days, argh....), the vast majority of my playing time is spent at home, listening at pretty conservative levels. So I want my sounds to be great in these situations, using the least EQ-ing possible. I am then using the global EQ to adjust things live. And I'm always only gradually dialing things in, so I don't overdo it. When I switch it on, the global EQ usually is flat, it just has a preconfigured mid-band which I may then dial in. Ah well, I may also engage some low cut, in case I fell for (2) of my previous post.

That's what I'm usually doing as well - but as I spend more time playing at home, I try to manage dealing with sounds the other way around. For me, the global EQ sometimes helps quite a bit with that. Needless to say, but all that was way less of an issue back until around a year ago when I had my own kinda project studio alike rehearsal room (had to move out there as the landlord needed it for something else), which was my main workspace (even doubled as my office), allowing me to turn up things as much as I liked 24/7. So once I was done creating sounds at ear friendly levels, when it was time to take them to a gig, I would always test them at proper levels before packing. Quite obviously the best way to deal with the issue. These days, I bring my "new" sounds (they're not really new but usually variations of older themes...) straight from home to stage, which is raising the issue again. Fortunately, I have quite some tried and trusted patches that I can use as a reference, but in case I'm going for something pretty different, Fletcher Munson sometimes feels like striking back. Once that damn Corona thing will be over (fingers crossed...), I will defenitely look for a new space allowing me to regularly turn levels up a bit more. Fwiw, for us guitar players, it's not only Fletcher Munson, IMO physical feedback plays an almost as important role, even in two areas: 1) The obvious kind of feedback from your cab/monitor into your guitar. Even without directly noticeable feedback, this will do something, usually enhancing sustain and possibly some overtones as well (the extreme being the typical audible "Santana"-esque feedback). The lack of sustain caused by feedback is likely responsible for us to dial in more gain (or compression on some clean sounds) at home friendly levels for compensations sake. 2) If you like the feel of moved air or whatever you may call it (and who doesn't, when banging some thick riffs?) but can't get it through actual air movement (plus perhaps some resonating floor), you may feel tempted to compensate by dialing in more low (or low mid) end. At least that's what I noticed for myself. And it's quite a different thing from Fletcher Munson.

While being backed up pretty well scientifically, the numbers regarding possible Fletcher Munson compensation are in no way universally valid, a lot of all this is still bound to individual, different perception. In our use case, it also seems to be largely depending on the kind of patches we're dealing with. So, while you might be able to come up with an IR that's working for a certain patch at a certain level (vs. the patch at another level without that IR), it might as well just not work for another patch or when varying any of the two levels we're comparing (loud level vs. lower level, one of them IR compensated). So you'd either need to make that the two situations (one of them IR-compensated) are always identical or come up with several IRs. I would suspect this to be pretty much impossible. What I do is to utilize the global EQ. I have a rather broad mid band prepared that I can boost to my likings whenever it seems necessary. Right now it sits at a center frequency of 755Hz, which is possibly somewhat too low to be kinda truly Fletcher Munson compliant, but it seems to work fine in case I even use it (fwiw, Q is set to 0.7). Btw, occasionally I use an additional low cut there as well - but usually it's off. Working values might be different from person to person, they're also pretty much depending on your monitors, overall levels, "average" kind of patches, etc. Anyway, things work fine for me that way and I absolutely don't feel like making more fuss about it. Fwiw, pretty often I even just don't use the global EQ. But I always check my homebuilt patches at gig-worthy levels.