SaschaFranck

Would you do me a favour and record a small video snipplet?

Tap a tempo, check whether the delay tempo is the same as what you tapped.

Well, it's clearly broken. Those telling me it's not on their Helixes may feel free to post a video of it working.

Well, I'm pretty happy with the Helix. But I'm obviously not happy with an update breaking an essential feature. Seriously, with a bug like that, this shouldn't have been released.

True, the optimized boot time is absolutely astounding. Too bad there's the tap tempo issue - let's hope for a quick fix.

Ok, I usually don't like saying so, but I have around 2 decades of audio software betatesting on my belt. So, I do know there's plenty of chances for software to be released while there's still some bugs (a lot easier to sort them out inside a closed, hardwarebased ecosystem such as the Helix, though, as you have to deal with way less variables). Fine. But then there's "showstoppers". Bugs that you won't allow to get into the wild. IMHO, the messed up tap tempo functionality absolutely qualifies as a showstopper (in fact, for me it would be if I was playing live - which I only ain't because of C19, otherwise I'd instantly roll back to 2.82). So, how comes 2.9 is released as is, though? Either Line 6 doesn't care. I doubt that. Or they haven't aquired proper betatesting personnel (no idea about those, but I do at least sort of doubt it, too). Or there's simply not enough testers. IMO that's the most likely scenario. I mean, in this thread alone there's several people having tap tempo issues - how comes none of the testers were running into these issues? Because apparently there's not enough of them to cover all likely scenarios.

Come on, it has already been kinda officially acknowledged, how are they doing that in case none of their testing units suffered from it?

Well, sure - but that's why you test carefully before release.

How could such an obvious thing such as the tap tempo madness slip through in testing?

I tried with shoes, the tap tempo switch isn't capacitive anyway, it always worked just fine when connected to a computer and all delays are affected, hence including those with sufficiently long delay times. Edit: Was wrong, the tap tempo switch is capacitive (never noticed before). Yet, as I tried with shoes, it should be no issue.

So, could anyone record a video of tap tempo really working reliably? With the globals set to "transparent" and "per preset", it does work *somehow* but defenitely not as reliable as before. I'd also like to see how it works in "authentic" mode for others - over here, this is completely messed up.

As said, I tried with all the settings.

Tried both (actually all three) options, no differences. That was me. It's better in transparent mode but still fishy. In authentic mode it's defenitely broken (at 1/4 sync, delay tempo is always faster than the tapped tempo), in transparent mode things mostly seem to work but the average tempo calculation from the last for taps (which is what the Helix is doing) is not working properly all the time. No idea why it would be working for some folks, given it's the same hardware we're dealing with. Perhaps it's any kind of random, unrelated setting affecting the tap tempo behaviour. Whatever it might be, this needs an urgent fix.

Has been mentioned in the bug report thread already: Tap Tempo for delays is completely broken. Major showstopper for myself. How do I revert to 2.82 the easiest way? And if this is broken indeed (wouldn't happen to know what could be user error, always worked as supposed), how could it be overlooked during testing? Edit: Only seems to be broken in "authentic" mode, when set to "transparent", things seem to be fine. I'd take a bet it was fine in either mode under 2.82.

Uhm, it's correct. Tap Tempo is COMPLETELY broken with 2.9, regardless of which delay I try with. That is downright horrible! How could this be overlooked?

Which delay exactly are you refering to? There's Transistor Tape and Tape Echo (legacy).

Flawless update here as well (macOS High Sierra, Mac Pro 5.1). IR recognition by waveform seems to work nicely - just that when I moved one for test purposes, the IR block selected one with another name, which actually *is* the same file, just that I had renamed it. Maybe future FW revisions should check for both the waveform and the filename (I sometimes test some of my own creations and only rename them from "Test_2020_04_13" to something more meaningful later on). Anyhow, an incredible improvement in my book already. Didn't measure before the update, but boot up time seems to be even less than half of what it took with 2.82, so that's really welcomed, especially when re-plugging something during soundcheck (not that there'll be any soundchecks for an unforeseeable amount of time due to that *S)@"§$% Covid thing, but still...). Haven't checked anything else yet, guess it's time for me to get used to Command Center, really like the idea of an even more customized footswitch layout. Oh, there's new toys, too. Might as well check them... Cheers and thanks!

That is precisely how things would/should work. Fwiw, I kinda "hacked" one possible way to realize global blocks (if of interest, I could elaborate), just that it doesn't exactly work (which isn't the fault of my hack, btw). I'm only mentioning this because I'm absolutely positive that this kinda hack could be internalized without much trouble.

Ok, if this is how favourites work, I'm fine. Bring it on. And then proceed to global blocks (in all seriousness, I couldn't image any single improvement that'd be more relevant for my Helix use cases, I'd happily pay some decent upgrade fee for that - and no, that shouldn't give you ideas...).

User defaults are truly great. But what would be even better would be presets per block, turning up once you select a block. And what would be yet a lot better would be "multiple block presets", allowing you to save, say, a combination of a drive and amp block as one preset. And yes, I know that this would likely be extremely tough to realize due to the half modular layout of the Helix and its dynamic DSP allocation. Still, that would be fantastic. On a sidenote, a global block functionality could serve similar purposes...

In case you really want a boost (as in also boosting the gain/drive), quite obviously you're good to go with a compressor in front of the amp. I sometimes place them between a drive pedal and the amp, though, so the drive pedal's drive remains as dynamic as it is with the compressor only smashing the amp a little bit. Quite a valid thing to do in case you're after that "polish". Not exactly a traditional boost, though. I usually don't go for post-amp compression as I like to keep as much of the amp dynamics intact. But that's pretty much related to the fact that I'm mainly a live player, for such purposes it's often better to have pretty "raw" sounds. Back in my rack days I even had a dbx 160 post preamp, sounded great when playing alone - but uhm, the greatest sound improvement in a band context has been the moment when I actually switched it off. Yeah, you should check them out, apart from the Boost Comp, none of them has more than 2 parameters, which makes adjustements a breeze. Well, IRs are basically used instead of the cab models (they represent a certain "fixed" cab/mic combination). Some people find them to be more useful than the onboard cab models, myself included - but I highly recommend to stick with the internal cabs as long as you're happy because there's no deeper rabbit hole than the IR one (there's literally gazillions of them around and each week there's a new kid on the block, possibly causing you to rebuild all your precious presets and what not...). Personally, I gotta say that I only manage to deal with IRs because I'm kinda with them ever since they became a viable option for recording purposes (like around 10-12 years ago), plus I also created my own IRs (another rabbit hole you don't want to get into) because that's exactly what's satisfying my nerdy obsessions. I'm pretty sure that I could/would get away fine with the internal cabs in case I wouldn't have that longtime experience with IRs already. Anyway, I still recommend to check out amps without changing cabs - at least those within a certain tonal range. Fool around with the amp+cab blocks until there's something you like, have a look at the cab settings, then replace the amp+cab block with separate blocks for each. Sometimes (even rather often) just changing the cab will do a lot more than changing the amp (at least as long as the amps are somewhat comparable), so changing amps and cabs at once all the time might introduce too many parameters.

First off, regarding your idea of using a compressor as a solo boost (which is a pretty valid idea): Did you do it that way in the analog world before buying a Helix? If so, which compressor did you use? There might be one to get you close to the one you've used - but you should know what to look for. Or maybe you've just been reading about this boost method. In that case, try to find out what was used or recommended. Again, there might be an appropriate solution in the Helix. Fwiw, personally, I'm usually using the Deluxe Comp, might as well be because it's the first to pop up in the list (and btw, there's 7 more from the legacy collection...). Fwiw #2, I wish there was a clone of a Diamond Compressor - been using a Mooer clone (Yellow Comp) on my analog board for years and for my boosting needs it was just about perfect and super easy to adjust. Regarding general "procedures", what I was (and still am, even regularly) doing is to just go through the amp models (ok, I'm doing it with other blocks as well, but these are most crucial), using a single general purpose IR (I have some I've shot and mixed myself, could easily share them in case there's interest) and then just check out what the amp models can do, completely regardless of what a) their original intentions and b) their default settings were. I still remember that one of the most excellent jazzy-ish clean tones I've ever gotten from a real amp was through a Marshall JCM 800 combo. Given whatever Marshall's intentions might have been back in the days, it's unlikely they had jazz players in mind. And when it comes to the default settings of any of the Marshall type amps in the Helix, it's as unlikely their creators at Line 6 had that in mind, too. They're doing the very job quite fine in the Helix, though, so there's plenty of things to explore (make sure to check all parameters regarding the gain structure, mainly drive, master and sag, with some models they act extremely different and obviously they all interact with each other). Extra tip: Place a looper at the beginning of the signal chain and record something into it. Makes up for a way better editing experience as the looper is playing your guitar.

That'd be quite nice - but I could as well imagine this to lead to confusion.

1) Assign both delays. When both are on, bypass one of them using the bypass switch (next to the upper right of the display). The assigned switch will now flip flop between the two. 2) Not possible (I'd like such a "cycle" option, too).

See above, edited my post already.