SaschaFranck

I don't know about the devices you've used before, but none of the ones I owned were as bad as the Helix. See my pics above, the Vocalive is just doing a great job and it's far away from blinding you indoors. I'm never using the joystick at home, either. But I still need to use it at rehearsals and live. And well, it's a difference between an item to fail at one point in time (which most will do) and an item being designed in a way that it'll fail earlier as what would be necessary. A joystick such as the Helix one is a way more fragile thing than 4 arrow keys and a dual function dial. Such things should only be used in case the functionality would otherwise be compromised. But that's not the case.

Well, it's bad hardware design, absolutely no way around it. As said, even a cheap Zoom G3 doesn't run into problems. And the solution means I have to carry an extra device with me all the time. Defenitely not what should be required. Let alone Line 6 doesn't tell you (at least not officially).

Yeah, RAM is fine (I only have 16GB installed, but it's always been sufficient) and there's no anomalies in Activity Monitor at all visible (checked that a while ago already). I might try reinstalling HXN - but honestly, as it's running just fine and dandy once it's instanciated (and not using up much CPU juice, either - in fact, I always found it to be amazingly efficient), I wouldn't happen to have an idea why that would/could help. I may try nonetheless. I will need a new computer one day, but Apples current offerings aren't encouraging at all, to put it carefully. Anything I could afford would not give me much better performance with most of the things I'm doing. And fwiw, for the first time in over 20 years I am now considering to leave Logic behind (which I know pretty much inside out) because of that. Anyway, that's why I try to squeeze as much life as possible out of this machine.

They don't work well with phantom power, resulting in a degraded/distorted signal.

I'm perfectly aware of all that. Yet, the XLR out is of bad quality on each and every Helix. Same goes for the LED rings. And the joystick isn't a great design decision, either.

Uhm. First off: Thanks for doing that test. So, now I'm wondering what might be the issue on my machine. Or on the others I've seen it happening on (which admittedly were all similar 2010 Mac Pros). I'm wondering whether I could actively do something to improve the situation. The machine itself is pretty well maintained and I'm not experiencing any problems, so I'm really out of ideas...

Thanks, I think I even remember that. Additional shipping would make that completely inacceptable (it already is too expensive in my book as is). And yeah, I could just slap something like that together quite easily.

I don't care *that* much about the screen (even if it would likely be better in case it wasn't colored - the GT-1000 screen apparently offers easier visibility), but the LEDs could do a lot better. Helix here (picture even taken from a decent angle), look at switch 8, which is on: Vocalive here (picture taken from way further away at a less decent angle): A difference like night and day (ha - I said "day" as in daylight, I'm such a funny bloke...) First off: No, I'm not just collecting things from the net. I have said this here already, I know 7 Helix owners personally (myself included) and 4 units have seen a repair shop (mine included). That's not a good percentage at all. Further, as you've asked, the joystick is a design failure already. You need a joystick to move in other directions than just left/right, such as diagonally. The Helix joystick doesn't support that. For all other purposes, single arrow buttons work just as fine and are way less prone to wear out. The Helix joystick however allows for 7 directions to be moved in (left, right, up, down, knob press, knob turn right, knob turn left) which is the best receipe to losen something or make it wear out quickly. And to also losen soldering joints, which is one of the most often mentioned repairments (happened to one of the 7 folks I know as well). Other things are just cheap, such as the XLR outputs which can't cope with phantom power. Even my 100 bucks G3 doesn't have an issue with that. Same with the mic preamp (there's a thread right here where you can see it disassembled). Another thing that broke on one of the Helixes from a dude I know. All he did was switching phantom power on with a mic connected - *poof*. And yes, that's a pretty wellknown issue, too. My unit had a broken tap tempo LED, another wellknown issue. And the 4th unit of the ones I know in person had the headphone knob broken because it was getting too tight. Yet another known issue (and yet again, there's a thread right here). Fwiw, I absolutely like my Helix and hope to be able to use it for a long time to come, but that doesn't mean I fail to see its weak points. And there's several.

Well, I actually think that the Helix is doing quite nicely as an audio interface, especially in case you're mainly recording guitars. The DI input is just excellent (most interfaces suffer from not too shiny high impedance inputs so you need extra stuff such as buffers, DI boxes or whatever) especially in conjunction with the impedance settings. Apart from a few smaller drawbacks, the routing options are great, too and I don't think it was ever easier to deal with re-amping (including the use of hardware amps). Add to this Helix Native and it's easily the most comfortable to deal with recording/re-amping package of the bunch. And especially because of all that it's even more of a dissapointment to see the drivers perform *that* bad. I mean, they're not even average, (and I wouldn't expect more that that). Fwiw, I don't know whether it'd take a larger rewrite. I mean, given that Core Audio does a pretty decent job with the Helix in class compliant mode, given that ASIO4All doesn't seem to work too bad, either, it shouldn't be all that tough for a decent development team to get close with a dedicated driver. It's been a while since I used ASIO4All, back then the results were quite mixed (sometimes just nice, sometimes plain horrible and crashy), but seeing that even some interface makers recommend it here and there, it seems to have made quite a leap forward.

Well, not really, it's merely kinda like stating the obvious. And well, while I'm not exactly becoming agressive (that'd takes a whole lot more...), I'm quite dissapointed to discover quite some areas where the Helix hardware is pretty much sub par. In addition, it becomes quite clear to me that the unit hasn't been tested under certain conditions - which is quite a shame, to be honest. In a nutshell, there's some really annoying issues which now can't be adressed anymore (the usless joystick, the XLR outs, the mic preamp, the headphone volume pot, the USB jack middle protection, etc.), and it would've only cost a few bucks more plus some real life condition testing to make the unit just excellent on all accounts - but instead it always causes me to be extra cautious or take other actions (such as now looking for a sun-shielding thingy). I think a certain amount of dissapointment is obvious. Anyway, sure, I have been running into similar problems in the past as well - but there's always been a decent solution. For instance, I have replaced the LEDs of some pedals in favour of brighter ones. And in case they were too bright on darker stages, I had little translucent stickers that I would simply put on. With the Helix there's no such option. And as said, TC's Vocalive is doing an excellent job in comparison (and it's defenitely not too bright in darker environments, perhaps it comes with an auto-dim sensor, but I doubt it). If it was after me, I would as well only have single color LEDs (as with the TC) but brighter ones. Whatever, if they could at least get the scrible strips to change to inverted when active, that'd help quite a bit already. And I'm still curious what people might be using under such lightning conditions. My Helix will make it into a case permanently in some weeks I guess, so I'd like to have something that I could install kinda permanently. Ideally, it would at least sort of shield it from stage lights, too, so any "lid" would have to "overlap" quite a bit.

If you really wanted to know about your final latency (which sometimes might at least be interesting to see, pretty often audio hardware isn't reporting its latency properly...), you could check it the manual way, using the RTL Utility from Oblique: https://oblique-audio.com/rtl-utility.php Not exactly necessary in this case, though, as the rather dramatic differences between ASIO4All and the Line 6 drivers pretty much proves my (or our, whatever...) point already. Seriously, Line 6 should be able to do better than what basically is a one person sparetime project (even if a little extended by now). And they should also be able to do better than what a basic driver model delivered by the operating system is offering (Core Audio) or at least use that as a reference.

So, what kinda latency values are you getting from that? Just curious (I consider buying a Windows convertible for live usage one day after Corona...)

Yeah - as far as auditioning IRs goes, I'm doing the same. In fact, most often, I'm just recording some parts with no cab information (I have some projects dedicated to IR mangling and such, those have my most often used sounds prerecorded already), but for quick'n'dirty shootouts I'm using the looper. Along these lines, I also check software amp sims that way. I just record the DI signal (or use the looper) and fool around. But quite obviously, sometimes you really want to see whether it gets the dynamics right and what not - which is working best when playing things directly. And for that to not become a disturbing experience, IMO RTL should be around 10ms (ideally less, of course). 17ms is just too far away to even deliver an idea, especially in case you check for dynamics and such. As far as softsynths go, I don't own any keyboard with onboard synthesis anymore - and not exactly being a keyboard player, I never had any decent expanders or such, either. Fortunatly, as I'm a rather miserable keyboard player and as the output latency is "only" 9.4ms (*yuck*, even typing that almost hurts, it's unbelievably bad for an interface running at 64 samples buffersize), so I'm basically quantizing and editing anything anyway, which makes things kinda bearable. I do notice the additional latency a little bit when banging in some percussive stuff on my M-Audio Axiom's rubber pads using headphones, though, but again, I almost almost quantize things (and "humanize" them later on - weird times...). Fwiw, I find it quite weird that one even has to discuss about such things. I mean, nobody expects world class audio interface performance from a multi FX unit, but a device coming in at 1.5k bucks should as well not deliver what is by far the worst performance of all (even just remotely) comparable candidates. And I certainly didn't expect the Helix to perform *way* worse when using it with its very own dedicated drivers, compared to class compliant Core Audio operation.

So, I played my first daylight gigs last week (played a bunch of open airs last year already, but always only when it was getting darker already). No direct sunlight, even cloudy conditions. Yet, I was shocked about the LED brightness - or, uhm, darkness for the matter. I have absolutely no idea what they thought when designing this thing, but it's clearly not made for outside operation or any kind of brighter stage lightning. Obviously, I noticed the latter on several indoor gigs already, but it was at least sort of working. Outside it's not, at least not sufficiently. And fwiw, the main display is every bit as bad, the screibble strips coming in a close second. Now, I do usually know what I stepped on last, my switches are mostly layed out the same on most patches as well, but then, sometimes you just need some quick information. So, what is everybody doing on outside gigs, especially when dealing with direct sunlight (which I can only imagine to be horrible)? What kind of sun-shield constructions did you build yourself? Fwiw, as far as Line 6 is concerned, they could at least allow the scribble strips to become completely inverted (just what's happening with the snapshot numbers) once it's selected. That would help a lot already. The brighter label (when active) is barely visible under daylight, too. And as far as future hardware revisions go, they should just use decent stuff. The singer on last weeks gigs used a TC Vocalive 3 and the LEDs were clearly visible from the other side of the stage whereas I almost couldn't see the status of mine anymore when stepping aside by just a meter or 2. Has never been an issue with any other devices I used in the past, either. Whatever, in case someone has some great sun-shielding solutions, I'd be happy to learn about them!

Hm, haven't been running into stability issues myself - but then, I'm on a different operating system. Should of course not happen on either platform. Btw, have you tried Asio4All instead of the Line 6 driver? Especially with devices featuring rather poorly written drivers (which defenitely is the case here), this often improves the latency situation - sometimes at the expense of stability and some higher CPU hit, but sometimes everything is just better. I'm considering switching back to class compliant operation myself, but unfortunately that will cause some issues. As far as bringing the latency down at least for a little bit goes, this should be pretty well possible for Line 6, unless they've really used the cheapest audio chip in existance (not unlikely, as they're doing that with other hardware parts on the Helix, too - but let's hope a little, especially as it's ok in class compliant mode) or in case they just don't want to bother (which would be a shame).

Yeah well, as said, a seperate level for wet/dry would solve all these issues and be as easy to adjust.

Fwiw, yes, the "mix" parameter is sort of illogical to me as well. It does of course adjust the balance between dry and wet, but if it was a straight balance function, you'd expect the balance to be 50/50 at 50%. But as is, the dry signal stays at original volume until 50% on the new HX models but it takes around 70% with the legacy models until the dry signal drops in volume. Both of these methods, while possibly making practical sense at least for the HX models, aren't logical. A mix pot should either a) shift the balance between dry and wet or b) only mix in the wet signal (comparable to a send on a mixing console). As is, it's a mixture. Until 50% (or 70% on the legacy models) it works as a mixing console send, above it adjusts the balance. It's only because of this illogical behaviour that we need the level fader for compensation - personally, I'd defenitely prefer independent levels for both dry and wet on all models. That'd be consistent throughout all models and not confusing.

Hm, I'm using the legacy FX all the time (especially delays and reverbs) and didn't notice anything weird. But then, as Phil, I only owned an M13 in the past, so maybe I'm missing the full story. Anyhow, as far as levels are concerned, yes, some of the legacy models emulating vintage gear have pretty low FX signal volumes. Also, some of them (for instance the Tape Echo) allow you to chose between Dry Thru on and off. With that set to off, the dry signal is affected as well, but I don't hear the perceived level being affected much (at least not on the Tape Echo, which I'm just playing through).

Well, I'm on 10.4..8, which I found to be working pretty well (need a new GPU to update to Mojave and 10.5, will be doing that in 3 weeks when back from holidays). Anyway, we could try a little comparison of an otherwise empty project with, say, 30 Helix instances. I could prepare something so it's defenitely the same project. I could suspect things such as AVX instructions to be the culprit, that's something this 2010 cheesegrater Mac Pro doesn't support. Otherwise I wouldn't happen to know what's slowing things down that much - because as said, there's pretty much no other plugins (and I've got a plenty of them) acting so slow (apart from a few huge samplebased things, but that's to be expected).

See, that was easy...

I think you should leave it to me if and when I will bring up this topic. All too apparently, it's none of your business.

What's obsessive about measuring the Helix latency and posting/commenting the results here once? Right, absolutely nothing. And by your analogy, a Boss GT-10/100/1000, a Hotone Ampero and a Zoom G3 (plus many others) are Ferraris whereas the Helix is a KIA. Because all of them do *much* better in terms of latency. Not sure I'd be happy about such analogies if I were Line 6...

This is under Windows. Under OSX it's 16.9ms. And if you think it's ok for an interface to come with such bad figures - more power to you. Feel free to ignore my post. Doesn't make my concerns any less valid at all.

Well, you seem to have an opinion about pretty much everything as well - even including trying to treat me like a naughty child. Which speaks volumes about your character. In addition, not only do I have an opinion about the Helix' latency, it's a very well informed opinion (as pretty much all of my "opinions" are - in many cases, such as in this case, they're facts. But feel free to call it an opinion). If you don't want to read it, just don't bother. As easy as that.

First off: If you want me to congratulate you for knowing my name as per my passport: Congrats for your investigative efforts! Just so much: Nobody in real life calls me "Alexander" ever since my birth (there's reasons I had to be christened "Alexander" and there's also reasons why this is my name on Facebook, but I won't elaborate on these any further, if you are as clever as you obviously want to look like, you will find out yourself). But hey, feel free to pat yourself on the back each time you're calling me Alexander, you're doing great. Very great. Next: Line 6 is occasionally monitoring things here. And in case they don't want to respond, that's - well - "fine", or at least something I have to accept. But that doesn't keep me away from posting things here. After all, if anything, this is their official forum, not TGP or FB. Furthermore: No, I haven't made a big deal out of this particular topic before. You would probably do yourself a favour and read it up. I have made a sort of a big deal in a thread about latency in general (because it is a big deal in some situations), but it wasn't about the Helix' RTL latency per se because back then I was running it in class compliant mode. In other words: I didn't even know it was *that* bad back then. And as far as Ideascale goes: I'm absolutely sure that Ideascale is the very last place on earth for this to get attention by Line 6, simply because most people don't care.