soundog

I personally get bothered above 10 ms. Below 7 is great. 5? Yeah!! If you can get that mixer locally with a 30-day return, that would be ideal. I get bugged by the mail-order places that offer free shipping, then if you return an item you end up paying for the shipping both ways!! That's the primary reason I've been ordering more from Amazon Prime than Sweetwater (or similar).

I don't own either product, but here's my 10 cents: you might want to try those product's forums or websites for info on latency, unless you luck into finding someone who has used them here. I will say this .... I've been impressed with everything I've used that was made by Zoom. Its quality stuff. Behringer has been hit or miss for me (I like their X-Air and X-Touch line). I just checked out the Livetrack stuff on the Zoom website, and it looks quite impressive. I looked at user reviews on Sweetwater (always good to check) and they are positive. Also, if you getting a newer Mac, that, along with a newer USB interface, should give you less latency than you were used to.

So ..... there is a lot of flexibility! I suggest trying different things and seeing what works best for you. The main difference I saw was in recording levels: through USB the audio recording seemed too low (even though they are not), and with the Apollo I had more control of the recording level (which was only a problem when I was going in Helix; I had to dial the input down accordingly.) @datacommando - I was also concerned about the extra D/A and A/D (it seems like you would logically have some deterioration), but I could hear no difference, and also read some interesting info online that indicated you'd have to go back and forth with the signal many times before you could hear any audio changes.

From my experimenting (Helix Stomp USB out, or audio out through an Apollo Twin), I think the recording quality was equal. But you also have to look at your workflow, and convenience. For me, I also record with microphones (through the Apollo). And I use two sets of monitors coming out of the Apollo. I'm on a Mac running Logic Pro. At first I tried using an "Aggregate Device" but found it to be unreliable on my system. So now I run my Helix Stomp through the Apollo, and everything is working perfectly for my needs. I think if I was doing guitar only, I might use the USB for recording due to the reamping capability. But I also have Helix Native, so I now only use the Stomp's USB for MIDI control. PS.Berlin is a great city. I visited there about 5 years after the wall came down and loved visiting both the east and west sides and seeing the contrast at that time. Also spent a lot of time at Brandenburg Gate buying odd trinkets and souvenirs. I still have a bunch of cheap Soviet watches that are still working.

Too bad those tapes didn't have some early tune scratchings of Neil Young or Elliot Smith or ??. Or communications with the spirit world.

I have an old Webster-Chicago wire recorder that I refurbished. It still works, and seems like black magic. When I bought it, it came with a bunch of wire reels and there were recordings of a preacher's sermons on them. Kinda spooky....

Ha. All of my old 1/4" 8-track (for Fostek deck) and 4-track (Sony deck) are starting to flake. I've gotta digitize them before its too late! I'm not a fan of hiss, but I do like the saturation, compression, and eq of tape. Some of the DAW plug-in tape emulations are quite good, so I'm interested in hearing how the Helix Reel-to-Reel sounds.

Wait, you can do tape and vinyl? OK ... I want to model an album left out in the sun, and you have to tape a quarter over your stylus to play it. And the spindle hole was punched off center.

Expression pedals are supported by Native. What DAW and expression pedal are you using? Read this old thread:

A room full of Logic users. Ya can't go wrong!

Lots of good stuff here!! As a Euclidean rhythm fan, I'm especially excited about the delay. And can't wait to experiment with the analog tape stuff using Native on various tracks...

A huge benefit in switching to Mac is that you can use smaller and more modern fonts. ;-)

As usual, what you are listening through makes a huge difference. It won't do much good for me to try it because I don't have your guitar, pickups, or headphones. Those headphone probably go down into the sub range. If you're gonna monitor with them, I'd just cut the lows and be done with it. Experiment with cutting lows before the signal hits the amp, and also the cabinet/IR EQ.

Ah, good catch @datacommando. I'm a Stomp user, and assumed all the devices use the same USB in/outs. Guess not! Hopefully all this info should get the OP up and running....

Be sure to follow the section on "USB Audio" in the manual. In Logic, on a stereo audio track, enable USB 1/2 as input for recording wet Helix output (Path A) - and/or enable USB 5/6 for dry input (Helix in L/R), or use a mono audio track to just record mono USB 5 guitar input If those USB inputs aren't showing up in Logic, check Audio MIDI Setup and see if your Mac is connecting to Helix OK. Should be... For monitoring/output, there are other steps involved, but let's make sure you are getting input first.