SaschaFranck

Also, are we talking about the right or left channel guitars? Or both?

Are you sure it's a Les Paul?

Gotta say that with an update as big as 2.8, it'd be time for a brandnew manual... However, creepsheep, there's a german Helix users group on Facebook. You might want to consider becoming a member there.

Another recommendation for turning down any kind of software monitoring for now. You might want to use it for a bit of trickery at one point in time, but for now I'd rather keep it off until you're familiar with things a bit more.

Disclaimer: This is purely my own, subjective view of things. Mids are your friends. I also noticed that they're lacking in quite some of the factory and Customtone patches. They're as well not too prominent on most Helix cabs and IRs that you will find. I would try to dial in some on patch level and get familiar with the mid band of the global EQ as well, for last minute fine tunings. I have mine sitting there with a center frequency of 415Hz and a rather broad Q-value of 4-5, I adjust the level to taste. In addition I do a low cut at 60Hz because with the broad and comparatively low mid boost things may start to get flubby. Note: I don't often need to use this, but in case I had to compete with such a rather massive sounding setup as that of your colleague, I probably would. Then, not sure how you dial in your patches, but you should do the final retouching at gig/rehrarsal level. There's the Fletcher Munson effect we can't escape from. When listening to stuff at low volumes (or adjusting amp tones) we tend to dial in more treble and lows, simply because our ears don't perceive them as well anymore. But as a result, when you crank your amp up, things may start to sound shrill and/or boomy. You may know the loudness button on home HiFi systems. You're using it at lower listening volumes and it's raising lows and highs. IMO it's absolutely crucial to be aware of that and prepare for the situation when you need the opposite of the loudness button (hence my global EQ settings). And really, ask your bandmates for a favour and have them just jam around for a bit while you adjust your sound. I would as well at least try to not place your FRFR monitor on an amp stand, it might need a bit more "substance" of the floor to back up lower frequencies and it might even need some reflections to sound proper. In case it's a wedge style monitor, these things are made to be placed on the floor. Always good to experiment with both options, though. Personally, on boomier stages, I tend to place mine on a plastic "stuff"case I usually have with me, but in case the stage isn't resonating much, it always goes straight to the floor. In addition, others than a typical guitar cab, at least wedges are not made to sit behind you. They're made to go straight into your face. Perhaps the second most irritating thing when switching from traditional cabs to FRFR monitors. Had to get used to that myself, too, but now I wouldn't want to miss it anymore as it just gives me more control over my sound than I ever had before. In case things aren't loud enough for your bandmates, try to route a parallel out to the PA system and just turn it up a bit.

Fwiw, here's two attached that I posted already in another thread (there's plenty more of them, but I'm currently resorting things a bit to adjust to a somewhat changed workflow). These are created at gig volume and they probably don't work as well at lower volumes, they're pretty midrangy, but I use them a lot. Gen_01.wav Gen_01_bright.wav

It's all fine, I already fooled around with the Tilt EQ (nice addition, btw), but as said before, the less blocks you have to deal with, the better. I think an improved EQ section (at least giving us a few more slopes to chose from) in the cab/IR blocks would be very welcomed by many folks. Yeah well, good old Fletcher-Munson may have an impact here, too. Our ears simply tend to like more bass and treble at lower volumes (and occasionally in a mix as well, when the guitar isn't the main instrument - well, at least that's true for some trebles...) and when you turn things up you'll notice that everything becomes shrill and/or boomy - without cutting through. Btw, one of the reasons why I always recommend to get familiar with global EQs (I usually prefer them on my monitor only and leave it to the FOH folks to possibly fix things on the PA). Doesn't work all the time but pretty often it does (mine right now sits waiting with a rather broad mid boost, so I can avoid dealing with both trebles and basses and just turn the mids up a bit). I even carried a little mixer or a seperate EQ with me all the time before going Helix to have some global fixing options available.

From all I remember, the general latency of the Helix family is indeed around 2ms (should take the time to measure it myself, but it seemed correct to me). However, someone from the Line 6 team somewhere said it could as well be a tad higher on certain patches - but IMO it should never really get in the way. However, if you really feel a noticeable latency (unless you are Donald Fagen who is supposed to hear timing offsets of just some samples, no idea whether that's true or just an urban myth), do you by any chance have some questionable IRs in use? I noticed some of the free ones floating around to be trimmed rather poorly - and even just 1024 samples at 48kHz give you plenty of room for additional latency (21.3333333...ms to be exact). If that's not the case, you might as well be Mr. "In The Pocket" (which isn't a bad thing at all). Or it's something else which goes wrong.

And fwiw #2, that method works for combining multiple IRs and EQs just as well.

Fwiw, if you find yourself using an IR (or cab) and EQ setting often and also use HX Native, it's extremely easy to combine these into one single IR. In case you're interested, I'll describe the procedure.

Fwiw, here's a little brighter version of that IR, just did that to have some choice (I have a whole lot more IRs of my own but need to resort them, now that I'm not as limited as with the Amplifirebox anymore). Gen_01_bright.wav And well, these may not sound too fancy at lower volumes. I created them at gig volume for live tasks. For recordings, I often tweak things a bit different.

Thanks, I'm aware of that thread (even if I'm not "allowed" at TGP anymore - but let's rather not discuss that). Thing is, I do know my way around things with EQs, but I'd rather not have to use them. Fwiw, IMO Atomics IR block offers more musical cuts and it also has an additional resonance parameter for the high cut (allowing you to dial in a little peak directly below cutoff frequency) which is pretty neat and almost dramatically enhances the options for such an otherwise simple block. I wish Line 6 would, well, "borrrow" that feature (plus more options for the cuts slopes). Whatever, I'm quite happy with my IRs. Attached is one I'm using pretty much all the time - it's rather midrangy but I like it like that. Served me well on a whole plethora of gigs already and works equally well for cleans and driven sounds (at least for my taste). Fwiw, it's 100% mine (or now yours as well, in case you like it), I shot the base IRs myself from my cabs and then tweaked things. Gen_01.wav

Unfortunately, I think the cab blocks high cut is way too mellow. Seems I always need to add an EQ instead as the cab block high cut easily starts to affect the "meat" territory of the frequency spectrum, something I usually don't want. Ideally, Line 6 would add different slopes, such as 6, 12, 18 and 24dB per octave (which is quite common on many EQs). As long as they don't, I rather stick with my IRs that I preshaped to adress the issue (because the cuts in the IR block suffer from the same problem).

What in the world does it even remotely have to do with being self righteous when I don't have any interest in using others patches? I have never used any presets of any guitar MFX units and it worked out fine with me. Why would I change that just because there's a place where I could grab some patches? Apart from that, my main axe isn't exactly "run of the mill" so many patches won't translate properly.

Well, I have of course checked out Customtone. But so far I have absolutely no need for other peoples creations - and I don't think this will change a lot.

Interesting points about altruism - and yes, quite obviously, the big question would be whether there's some ulterior motives behind any action (even if it would just be to gain "good kharma" or something). Personally, I think there's at least some situations in my life when there's nothing else but an "intrisic motivation" - usually that's got to do with my kids (9 and 4 year old boys, fwiw). Would like to continue this discussion with you folks, but I'm afraid my english isn't exactly sufficient. And well, this is about fizz - so I rather try to come up with some unfizzy patches.

No idea whether it's impossible. To me it seems that some people haven't even tried whereas others have just lost it. Anyway, probably not the ideal place to discuss such things, especially given that my english is quite limited outside of certain technical areas.

Would it be a bad thing to at least try to believe in altruism?

Sure - but seriously, do you think Two Rock (to stick with that) would happily built a JM signature model if he was all into modeling? And then there's of course the looks. If you can afford touring with what would make each and every collectors mouth water, I guess you just do that.

Defenitely. But honestly, what would our statements look like in case we were sponsored by all the big guns in the analog business? "Hey, sorry Two Rock, I don't need your signature model anymore, modeling is every bit up to it!" Unlikely...

Fwiw, just compared a Helix patch using the Grammatico Jump and its cab with Amplitube 4s "Amercan Tube Clean 1" (just amp and cab as well) and they're using roughly the same amount of CPU juice.

First off: I don't use Studio One, but compared to other amp sims, I can't exactly say that Helix is using noticeably more CPU horsepower. I can run pretty much every patch created for the hardware on an aging Mac Pro (from 2010, 2x2.66GHz CPU) at 32 samples buffersize (using a Zoom UAC-2 interface, measured roundtrip latency of 4.5ms). This is on a "live" (record enabled) track in Logic, playback tracks are even less of an issue - I think Studio One does it the same as Logic by raising the buffers internally in case a track isn't needed for realtime tasks. However - and that's why I'm replying here -, what might help a bit is to distribute some CPU load. I have a bunch of patches dedicated to recording where I'm only using the elementary things from HX Native, namely the amp and stompbox stuff with the occasional modulation added. I usually don't even use any cab simulation because it's a lot easier to select them via Logics Space Designer (which also seems to be more CPU efficient). Regarding delays and reverbs, I have a bunch of them running on busses anyway, so all I need to do is to turn up the sends of the Helix track. Again, that seems to save quite some CPU cycles (very often FX bundled with the host are pretty well optimized in terms of CPU useage). I could probably run an entire guitar orchestra with plenty of juice left on this old-ish computer.

Ok, let me get into the possible legal aspects of one possible method I was suggesting (exporting patches and IRs simultaneously) for one more time. First thing to remember is that you already *can* export IRs from the Helix. And quite obviously, you can as well export patches already. So, given all "raw" technical aspects, nothing new would be introduced. Would a method such as proposed by yours truly make illegal file sharing easier, though? Perhaps, yes. But oh, hold on! For this very illegal file sharing to work, you would have to have the patch/IR in question on your computer already! Boom! Why would anyone with whatever criminal intentions in his mind load the patch into the Helix and re-export it to accomplish his evil plans? I give you that there might be some esoteric scenarios when this would seem halfway plausible, such as carrying your Helix to another location with another HX Edit equipped computer. But then, you could go for your bad moral intentions with the current implementation already. And now, let's take this a step further. With that new proposed IR management, the very first noticeable improvement wouldn't be an easier export of patches and IRs (which, as said several times, is possible already) but it would be an easier import procedure of those in the first place. Even in my comparatively short time with the Helix I have already stumbled across several postings here and there where people were complaining about not getting a certain patch to work - the problem being IRs not assigned properly. As a result, people may think "Uhm, everybody's praising these Fremen patches so much, I don't get it, they sound horrible to my ears" - no wonder, because they have, say, just played through a patch with a thin-ish resonant acoustic IR instead of a thick, juicy cab IR. Due to the convoluted way the Helix treats the relationship between patches and IRs. In the end, professional patch and IR makers may feel less inclined to create patches for the Helix because of that. They would have to carefully explain how to make the IRs coming with the patch work as intended each time (which is getting even more complicated once there's multiple IRs in use for one patch). And Helix newcomers (especially those new to modeling and IRs as well) would possibly still not get it right (as said, I have seen that more than once - I'm sure you folks have as well...). And those that still create patches with IRs included may as well experience less sales because - well - there's reports of patch XYZ not sounding properly. Bottomline: The way I think IR management should work could perhaps even lead to more sales of patches with IRs included as the patch maker wouldn't have to wade through whatever support inquiries anymore (aka "The patch I purchased from you sounds like an icepick in the forehead!") and the folks purchasing patches would have a lovely "just works" experience. Defenitely a win-win situation.

Yeah, FW and HX Edit are up to date. Did a full reset 2 days ago. I could post the patch for you folks to crosscheck.

Pretty weird bug here (nothing mission critical, though). Here's path 2, almost fully loaded, you can notice the greyed out entries in the block selection menu: Now let's add a volume block: All of a sudden, nothing's greyed out anymore. And now, when I actually try to add an amp behind the volume block, there's this error message: