SaschaFranck

But what if you switch the preferences to "bank"? Each press on the up or down switch would then give you patches to chose from (admittedly just 4) without switching banks (for which you'd have to press up/down again).

Defenitely (especially in case they'd be using less CPU resources, which should be expectable). These are exactly what I'm using the legacy reverbs for, because the genuine HX ones aren't too useful for plain vanilla reverberage.

Using the up/down switches isn't sufficient?

You could possibly check for a license transfer from the previous owner. No idea how they're handling this at L6.

I think it should be possible to set all outputs to mono straight on the output "blocks". As far as the legacy FX all being stereo goes, well, they're legacy and L6 probably don't want to spend more time with them. I for one think it's quite nice they were added at all.

I'd simply add a mono gain block as the last one. That way you'll listen to the patch as it will run into the PA, regardless of how you connect the Helix. You can as well switch the compressor to mono.

Sure - fwiw, I'm using Helix Native as my "block bunker". Way easier to drag between instances, plus, you can just stack two instances serially, first one for the basics, second one for FX which you can then drag into the first instance to consolidate a patch. Allows for easier previewing, too.

Sure, but that is a *lot* more time consuming than having dedicated presets per block.

Yeah, before they introduced the stereo pan option in Logic, using the "dir mixer" plugin has been the common workaround.

Fwiw, some hosts allow you to switch between different panning modes for stereo tracks. Doesn't exactly make much of a difference (IOW, you can achieve the same results with either Balance or Stereo Pan - which is what they're called in Logic), but I agree, though, as you usually don't need to compensate things (with further leveling actions) and hence get quicker results. Generally, I personally prefer using stereo tracks because they're easier to handle - but of course there's some reasons (apart from the pan issue) to prefer two mono tracks (such as being able to tweak both channels separately, which is quite useful here and there).

Precisely. You need to remember to save after each and every relevant edit. Shouldn't be required. And, I kid you not, this is at least a part of the reasons why I will purchase a convertible/2-in-1 laptop somewhen next year. With that, I can have HX Edit with me everywhere and don't need to touch the joystick ever again. Well, maybe L6 comes up with a stripped down mobile editor in the meantime (wouldn't have to be a full editor, just allowing for block edits, skipping the basic layout editing and such). Would love that.

Upvoted.

Just messed up a patch - again, I should say. Hadn't booted the computer and was fooling around with the joystick. Accidentally turned it one notch - *BLAM*, all the settings of the previously loaded block gone. Apart from the joystick making no sense at all anyway, this is probably the most annoying shortcoming, especially as - due to the thing being *far* away from military grade or anything - there's less and less resistance when turning it around, it's simply wearing out. I absolutely can't understand why that design was chosen - I mean, it involves forces being applied in 7 different directions, which is what you would probably do to losen a rotten screw. For any hardware to stand this over a longer period of time, that very hardware needed to be super heavy duty. Which the joystick isn't. I should possibly open an Ideascale request for "no joystick in Helix V2 anymore". Anyway, just placed the idea for customized knobs on Ideascale: https://line6.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Customized-Knob-Parameters/970727-23508?submitted=1 This would possibly help to avoid using the joystick a whole lot.

Most excellent idea. For me, the multifunctional "joystick" (which it actually even isn't) happens to be the most critical thing on the Helix (and, pardon me, an almost proveably bad design decision serving pretty much no purpose). Hence, I welcome everything allowing me to use it less. And while we're at it, I wish one could enter a custom mode for the 6 knobs, allowing you to assign them to any parameter (or even multiple ones) in a patch. I will vote the idea up and post the other one as soon as I'm back home.

Going wireless has a potential to cause issues, too, simply because the shielding is rather weak compared to a solid cable connected to, say, a grounded amp. On other occasions, wireless might even help because you won't run into any ground loop issues or such. It can become a critical thing, though.

Seems to be TB2 - adapters/cables were pretty expensive for those, but I'm not entirely sure (TB1 adapters were horribly priced). However, it features USB 3 ports. IIRC, some folks were running into issues with those, but I don't exactly remember what the issues were and how they were solved. On paper, USB 3 ports should work just fine with USB 2 devices connected, so I wouldn't happen to know about anything else but to recommend looking for 1-2 more USB cables. Ideally, look for the shortest ones that would still be suitable. And you might want to look for some of known brands - but don't take my word on it, as it really could as well be a Catalina compatibility issue. Couldn't you just roll back to Mojave? I mean, there's not all that much kickass stuff Catalina brings to the table, unless you really want to use an iPad as a sidecar or control things through Siri.

I think this would have a potential to cause plenty of confusion. As is, sends and returns are limited to one function (well, more or less...) that can be clearly described. Same goes for the XLR outs. Now, it's not that you couldn't already abuse either, but that'd require some sort of far away from normal cable routing. With the send blocks being able to use the XLR outs as well, chances are that you might run into some pretty weird scenarios, causing extremely nasty feedback loops and such. However, what I would really like to see is more path splitting options. If we had 1/2 A/B/C/D paths, your issue could already be solved (and some of mine as well). From all I can see, these don't cause any noticeable CPU overhead, so it should be just doable, the only main issue likely being that the display wouldn't be large enough to show 8 paths vertically stacked.

I wouldn't have the slightest idea about how to identify a proper USB cable. Fortunately, I have a whole plethora of them hanging around (they came with printers, scanners and what not, all long forgotten but I kept the cables...) and once I find a suitable one, I just put a litle bit of tape around it. Fwiw, the Helix isn't the only device suffering from these issues, it's not exactly an unknown thing in the land of audio interfaces, but well, yes, the Helix is absolutely among the more pickier devices. What Mac are you using, btw? I assume it has a Thunderbolt connection - so you might want to try a TB->USB adapter. In case it's TB3 already, a plain USB-C to USB type B cable might do as the TB3 port serves as a USB-C port as well. For TB2 and 1 you will need a somewhat expensive adapter cable.

Had a preset become corrupted right in the middle of a rather important rehearsal two days ago. No idea what caused it because others than doing the usual operations (switching and adjusting the occasional parameter) I didn't do anything special. Had to do the 11/12 reset to even get the Helix back to work - but unfortunately that preset was lost, hence all the edits I did during the rehearsal went with it, too. Fortunately I'm always only using one preset per gig and I had a backup sitting on a different memory slot, but obviously that was without the edits. So far, this hasn't happened to me on gigs, but in case it does more than once (I always give my tools a second chance), the Helix will have to go in favour of something else, there's no way around it, as much as I dig the unit. For me, one of the reasons to use dedicated hardware (as opposed to, say, using a laptop) is additional stability. And so far, each and every of the units I ever owned and used have provided that additional stability, in around 30 years of using programmable devices not a single one has ever lost a preset because of a software error, so it's quite a sad thing that the device I love more than anything else I used ever before is exhibiting such issues. I do of course always have a backup solution with me - but the reason for doing so is because some hardware might break (which is what I could understand) not because the software is buggy and deleting my work, along with things freezing in entirely. Even more unfortunately, this seems to be a wellknown issue in Helix land. If you google for related things, there's plenty of hits for the Helix, but when you replace "Line 6 Helix" with "Boss GT-1000", there's no hits. Hm... So far I'm knocking on wood, and as said, I'm willing to allow the Helix for one "free shot" (which it hasn't taken yet, at least not on a gig). But reading all this up is quite discouraging.

I think continuing to use a DI box is your best bet as otherwise you would have to compromise your current routing. Having said that, it'd possibly be cool if the sends allowed you to use the XLR outs, too.

How many USB cables did you try? Unfortunately there's a whole lot of really bad ones around - and the Helix seems to be particularly picky about them as well.

This is an issue I have often observed when running critical signals (and true single coils defenitely produce a critical signal...) into something without much ground connection. Which would be true for the HX FX as the PSU isn't delivering any ground. It seems to me that without proper mass behind the ground connection, the guitar shielding suffers a bit as in becoming less effective. Hence the rather sensible single coil signal will pick up more of whatever interferences and such. With my old GT-10 I sometimes got away with a little trickery. I had an extra cable that was just connected to the ground signal of a power outlet and connected that to the GT-10s case. Helped quite a bit in some situations. No idea whether the same would work with the HX FX.

I'm not on Catalina, but sometimes it helps if you go to the security settings to allow for installing things from unknown sources. It's not unlikely that this will end in january, though (in case it works at all). After that, every developer has to talk to the godfathers at Apple and in case they don't like the software, they won't allow things to run. Dictatorship 2020. (I basically love OSX quite a bit but I'm seriously thinking of going Windows.)

Sure - but they could at least post some examples of that *one* sound - because I really happen to have no idea of what that would sound like. I mean, that thread is about options for bedroom level recording - and before I make a decision, I'd rather listen to some examples than just reading some esoteric blurb.