SaschaFranck

What's the contour switch on the Headrush set to? It should be out, hence flat.

Every bit this! I do input volume modifications to alter the gain of pedals and amps with my guitar voume whereas I use the volume pedal for swells or to simply turn the overall volume down in some situations. Don't want swells to affect my amp/pedal gain and also don't want them to cut off delay/reverb trails. IMO best of all worlds. As far as affecting the sound of the delays/reverbs goes, I think that's only relevant for the ducking variations, everything else should stay just the same. Having said that, I would as well use the volume pedal behind any amp loops of the HX FX.

Been doing it like that for ages in the real analog world, as in using a clean amp with things such as MITB (Marshall In The Box) pedals mimicking an overdriven amp. Allowed me to create things just on my pedalboard instead of dealing with the 4CM and amp switches. Fwiw, the best amp I had for that was a Boogie MkIV (and yes, for around 4-5 years I completely "wasted" the other channels) - which also serves pretty well for that purpose in the Helix, especially as it has the 5-band graphic EQ built in, allowing for really nice fine tuning. For me, only ever using one single patch per gig (for good reasons), it's quite a decent concept anway, as the drives consume less CPU power than another amp, so I'm able to squeeze a bit more into that single patch.

Fwiw, I think the HX Stomp would be absolutely sufficient. In case I wasn't mainly a live player, I possibly would've gotten it myself, too. Ok, it obviously depends on what you're trying to do. If you want huge, dual amp patches with massive FX, then the Stomp will be underpowered. But in case you just want some solid guitar tones, it would pretty much check all boxes. When you listen to certain "typical" or even "iconic" guitar sounds, there's not much the Stomp wouldn't be able to do - apart from some things that the larger units wouldn't be able to do, either. It might even have a few advances. I mean, both the LT and Floor are large and heavy units, whereas the Stomp fits in a gigbag, so you can move it around in your house with ease and take it with you on travels, etc. I'm sure I'll buy a Stomp in addition one day, just for those reasons. When it comes to monitoring, as you plan to use it in bedroom scenarios, I would not advise to get a single, powerful FRFR monitor, as nice as these might be. Most of them can't exactly display their (undoubted) strengths at livingroom levels, IMO it'd be a waste of money - money that you should probably better invest into a pair of neat, small-ish monitor speakers. Which would also be suitable to listen to music to (in stereo, something a single monitor wouldn't supply). You might want to have a look at IK Multimedias iLoud monitors. They have a pretty good track record, are pretty small and IMO sound incredibly great for monitors of that size. In addition they come with Bluetooth, so you could easily route your smartphone audio into it as well. They're very decently priced, too - and it should be pretty easy to find a suitable space for them as their main intention is to serve as desktop, nearfield monitors. And believe me, they're far away from being toys. I would recommend getting a decent pair of headphones, too. In case you're on a budget, Superlux makes some very decent, affordable models (just got me some in addition to the other pairs I already own).

The most interesting question for me would be: Have you already maxed out what is possible with the Helix and 2.8? In my case, the answer is pretty much a clear "No way!" while on the other hand, I knew there would be some shortcomings resulting in me kinda maxing the Helix out before I even bought it. But then, I bought it nonetheless, so I rather concentrate on getting the most out of it rather than waiting for an update which may or may as well not contain things to adress some of the most obvious shortcomings (for me at least). And after all, I'm still having a true blast.

It seems to me that the Helix family things aren't exactly class compliant anyway. It has been said that the Helix would work as a class compliant device for older OSes without dedicated driver support, but that doesn't seem to be true as it simply doesn't even show up on my old Macbook running OSX 10.6.8 (which is working pretty fine with a number of other class compliant devices).

You're actually right - no, I can't do that, either. Seems I missed the "stop the looper" portion so far. As soon as I press stop and switch presets, the loopers memory is erased. Only if I keep it playing, it's usually not an issue. Sorry for the possible confusion.

Exactly. In fact, most of the time it works fine. And then *boom* -, all of a sudden it stops.

Yeah. It's all copies of one patch, just a different amp and pedal here and there.

Hairsplitting day: Sustainers should actually be called Decayers.

As said before, the looper behaviour is erratic. Sometimes it works just the way Line 6 describes in their response and sometimes it doesn't. Today, I've spent some time building patches and the looper worked fine all throughout, even when switching patches. Just a moment ago it didn't anymore. Same behaviour as decribed, after switching a patch, all the looper switches would not work anymore. That, pretty clearly, is a bug.

1) Are you using a Mac? In that case, you could create an "aggregate device", combining your existing interface with the Helix or perhaps just switch the input of PT (not the output), the latter is at least possible in Logic. Both methods aren't ideal in terms of overall performance, though, but they might serve you well nonetheless. 2) In case your interface has SPDIF, I'd use that, simply because it'll transfer the Helix sound without any possible loss due to ADDA conversion. Just make sure that the sample rates are used (you can adjust that in the Helix' global settings). Personally, I always just set the Helix as an interface in case I want to record things from it. Offers a bunch of additional options, such as parallely capturing multiple positions of the signal chain, which makes for easier re-amping.

Yeah, really. I mean, adjusting the input levels of whatever channels is pretty much the very first thing FOH folks should do once there's any signals running into the console. Even more important with digital consoles, which are what's used most often these days as there's nothing worse than a clipping digital in. First chapter of any live mixing engineers 101. Possibly a good advice to send them mic level through the XLRs, though (fwiw, I'm doing it like that as well) and only switch to line level in case it's explicitely asked for.

The only good thing (well....) being that I always just use one patch per gig, so I can always adjust the output of that patch for a suitable level.

Fwiw, I highly recommend looking for some IRs you like. In case there's some fizz that would require extra EQing, use a DAW and manipulate the IR accordingly (I'd happily describe how). In case it's a certain cab of the Helix, you could as well capture an IR of it, the easiest way being to use Helix Native. You could even use Helix Native to capture the entire enchillada of multiple cabs and EQs in a patch in one single IR. Do that for a few combinations you like and be done for a long time.

All this shows that there's leveling issues with the Helix. It's quite easy to get lost there. I thought it'd be a good idea to have my patches leveled roughly at the same volume as the factory ones. Fine - but then, when using the Helix as a USB interface, all patches aren't loud enough to keep up, so I need to adjust the USB Trim - which really shouldn't be required. In addition, as far as the XLR output de-coupled from the volume knob goes, why isn't there an output level option somewhere in a menu? The differences between mic and line level sometimes are just too huge to be comfortable to deal with. And while I totally agree that all FOH folks should be able to adjust that in a matter of seconds, on quick change overs it might still become an issue. It's also quite strange that there's no leveling option for the DI feed in interface mode (USB 7/8). I have the input pad switched on and the level recorded with guitars delivering average output is extremely low, hence you're wasting dynamic bandwidth (not that it's a really bad issue but it's pretty much against all "digital recording 101"s). There's absolutely no need for tons of dBs of headroom when recording things. I always need to massively zoom in whenever I need to do some fine cuts on DI recordings. There should really be options to (visually!) monitor and adjust levels more or less freely at all the important positions in the signal chain.

I do as well think that the reverbs could have some more "depth" (in lack of a better description), but for live I'm perfectly fine with them and for recordings there's more than enough alternatives in my arsenal. Guess I would welcome some great polyphonic pitch shifting in the Helix, don't know how likely that is to happen, though. Also, I'd rather have it the experimental way, such as in the EHX HOG2 or POG, which I think are incredible devices.

We should possibly just agree to disagree. IMO they don't hold a candle against the quality of Strymon and the likes. It's working ok-ishly on some stuff, but I don't think it's ready for prime time.

You can take any bet that the dry signal is shifted before it runs into the reverb. Shifting a reverb usually results in complety audio wreckage, even with HQ algorithms. Really, all these shimmer verbs (or whatever they're called) are nothing but the combination of a pitch shifter and a reverb in one unit. Try it for yourself, place a +12 pitch shifter on a parallel path and slap a 100% wet reverb behind. There's your shimmer verb (or octo verb, or whatever you may call it).

Well, I just tried (and many times before). No cigar. I'd happily stay corrected, though. And well, if you play a chord and that chord is pitched up an octiave, this is called polyphonic pitch shifting. As opposed to, say, a typical octaver, which is in fact only able to deal with monophonic inputs.

Maybe I didn't chose the proper words. What I meant was that there was some polyphonic input (aka chords). The Axe FX does a rather nice job on pitching those whereas the Helix simply doesn't. You can check that with each and every block that includes larger pitch shiftings. Chords simply aren't pitched very well. And well, in my world this is usually referred to as polyphonic pitch shift, whereas the shifter creating multiple voices on its own would be called harmonic pitch shifting - at least that's how I distinguish between the two. Fwiw, harmonic shifts work quite ok with monophonic inputs in case you're playing is exact. But polyphonic input shifting simply isn't what the Helix can do well.

You could as well try the Plateaux or Octo (legacy section) verbs - but you won't have any success to even get close when playing chords. The polyphonic pitch shifting qualities of the Helix simply aren't even close to the Axe FX ballpark.

No. On the initial recording, "Undo" has no function.

This isn't my experience. I can't even tell what my experience is because as soon as you start switching presets, the looper behaviour starts to become erratic. IOW, there's non-reliably-reproduceable yet often reoccuring issues. When creating presets, I always slap a looper into the very first position of the pedal chain. Now, when I record something, I can usally switch to other presets using the same layout just fine. The loop will stay intact, regardless whether I stopped it before switching presets or not. But then, this isn't a "just works" thing, hence me using the word "usually". I also had it that the loop was just gone. Which, btw, is contrary to what the manual says. And I also had it that when switching presets with the loop playing, the loopers switches simply became dysfunctional, there was no way to stop the loop others than switching to a patch with no looper (or at another position) or deleting the looper block. As said, none of these are reproduceable in a reliable fashion but they happen. And oh well, in case someone at Line 6 is reading this, pretty please add a cancel button to the looper. Should you've played some nonsense while recording, you instantly know that you'd rather not even once listen to it. But with the Helix looper there's no way around it, which instantly renders the looper a showstopper in any live context.

One of my very few wishes regarding additional FX and what not would be a diamond compressor clone. I have the Mooer clone and for what I need it for (usually adding some "meat" to lead sounds) it's by far the easiest to dial in compressor I ever used. Otherwise, I would like to see more of the current models featuring an additional tone control. Would save me from inserting an extra EQ.