cumminsn

This one caught my eye,as I recently moved to my first paid DAW in 16 years(Studio One 6 Pro),and from the get-go have been having severe audio distortion on playback,even with the simplest single stereo audio track with no plugins,with the Helix as my USB interface.It works fine with my other DAW(SONAR) and Wavelab,and Studio One works without issue using my Focusrite USB Interface.So some sort of interworking issue between Helix ASIO and Studio One. PreSonus support sent me straight to Line6 without any attempt to investigate,so while I'm on my fifth day of waiting for Line6 Support to look at the ticket,I may try the above suggestion as a workaround.

Thanks for your valuable time Waymda,that lot should keep me quiet for a day or two while PreSonus take a look at my MSINFO32 file. Always very hard to troubleshoot this type of random issue,especially as I have two other applications using the Helix ASIO driver without any problem. I'll report back with any progress or result,as hopefully other users may benefit. Cheers! Neil

Hi Waymda, Very detailed assistance,above and beyond,so big thank you. Just to complete the picture,could you please advise what your settings are in the Processing tab,ie Dropout Protection value,Process Block Size,Process Precision and if you're adjusting these to utilise the Green Z to invoke Low Latency monitoring? I typically use 44.1 kHz 24 bit,so may experiment with 48 kHz and see what happens,still some very strange behaviour happening.Latest finding was creation of a single stereo track song and imported an existing audio file recorded at 44.1/24 and this worked fine again and again at 2048 samples...until carrying out a Track Transform,the playback of which was then distorted.The even stranger part was then rolling this back to Realtime and the distortion disappeared again. The behaviour is quite random so really no idea what's going on,seems we have the exact same build on the Helix and Helix Edit,and the same level of driver,so that makes the troubleshooting more tricky.As mentioned,no issue at all with my Scarlett so definitely some interworking problem with either the Helix itself or the Driver. PreSonus have responded to the support request,so diagnosis ongoing. Many Thanks for your timely help. Neil UK.

Concur with all the above comments,remove any 3rd party AV if possible,stay offline as much as you can and when recording,tracking,mixing etc disable your Windows Firewalls and Defender temporarily if you're confident enough to venture into Registry Key manipulation. Lots of good guides to DAW optimisation in addition to the one suggested by PierM out there,also check out Steinberg and PreSonus websites for their takes on this subject.

Thanks for the reply Codamedia,the Scarlett is already plugged in... Correct in para 2 as well,as the 3.50 firmware rollout with the v 1.97 USB driver caused us Cakewalk users to hang,so the workaround was reinstalling v 1.96,until the recent update to v 1.97.0.2. So for now,it's back to tracking guitar through Cakewalk and upskilling in Studio One for the mixes. Much Obliged! Neil

Hi Forum, This is a somewhat back to front assistance request,as the Line6 Support team would probably(with some justification)point me to Presonus,whom I'm still waiting to respond having raised a ticket two days ago. Recently purchased my first paid DAW since 2006,having used SONAR and CbB since then.The choice was 50/50 between Studio One 6 Pro and Cubase 12 Pro,so decision was to go with S1 Pro. Having set up the app and connected it to my Helix ASIO driver,a simple one track audio project created as a test gave immediate severe playback distortion,even at a buffer size of 2048 samples.Various other projects with pure audio,VST instruments and a combination of both also behave the same way. The solution to the problem per project is to open the audio settings window and temporarily change the Device Block Size to a lower value,apply this,then revert to 2048 again,which then gives undistorted playback.This has to be done each time I move between projects. The issue doesn't occur when connected to my Focusrite Scarlett interface,so evidently some interworking problem between the Line6 ASIO driver and S1 6 appears to exist. My DAW machine is quite high spec and there is no CPU or RAM challenge,plus the Helix works without issue on Cakewalk. While waiting for Presonus to respond...are there any forum users who use a combination of Studio One 6 Pro and a Helix,who have either encountered the issue described or have any suggestions as to troubleshooting or mitigation,as it has currently rendered an expensive purchase problematic to use. I have reinstalled the latest Line 6 v1.97.0.2 USB driver without any improvement. OS is Windows 10 20H2. Many Thanks, Neil. UK

Thanks for the prompt response rd2rk,simple answer at the moment is not very much! My DAW machine is reasonable spec,but far from the build level that many contributors on here can speak of,and latency is one of the reasons why I chose to invest in the Helix,after not getting satisfactory results from other otherwise very well featured Amplitube 5 though a basic Focusrite AI. Although,the option is there of course to DI the guitar via USB7 and re-amp. Thanks again! Neil C.

Hi Forum, I'm interested in getting LT users views on running the output(either 1/4" or XLR)into another USB interface,possibly of higher specification,before taking the output from this to studio monitors and into DAW of choice. The LT isn't fitted with any SPDIF capability,so the key question I guess is the additional A>D then D>A conversion that takes place,and what the pros and cons are from anyone who actually uses this method. No specification data is available in the current Helix User Guide in respect of the performance data for the audio stage of the Helix,as would be seen in products such as Focusrite,Audient,UAD etc in terms of D<>A conversion performance,sensitivity,noise floor etc,so in the interim a support ticket has been raised to see if they would be prepared to supply the technical data. My setup is fairly simple and only use the LT for DI guitar into my DAW,feeding studio monitors and acting as my main audio interface,I have no other outboard gear or requirement for microphone inputs,so the question really is aimed at understanding if any benefits could be gained from running through a high specification interface. Many Thanks, Neil.

Late reply...sorry...just the v1.96 driver fixed this,with the new 3.5 build and HX Edit at 3.5 now working fine. I guess we await a v1.98 driver soon. For any fellow Cakewalk users(and I need to read up on this if it affects interaction with the Line6 ASIO driver)...the next Cakewalk update 2022.11 doesn't set MMCSS as default,so it needs to be manually selected in the Preferences section.Slightly off-topic but just in case things go out of whack again. Once again,many thanks to everyone who helped here,I now look forward to some Peavey Invective and new cabs.

v1.96 driver has fixed the issue,here at least.Thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread,much appreciated. Neil UK

Is v1.96 available on the downloads page,I don’t have this backed up anywhere?

...Line6 Support have managed to reproduce this issue and further investigations are ongoing.

Thanks for the response,answer to the first two questions is yes,Cakewalk have also recommended a full delete and rebuild,which I'm holding back from for now given that it works fine with two other ASIO drivers,and three other applications that can see the Line6 ASIO driver also work normally,namely EZDrummer3/Bass/Keys,under both v3.5 and 3.15 Helix build. Evidently something very esoteric going on here,the Helix itself works normally with the new build,in my case it just won't function in the role it was puchased for,ie as a DI guitar source and audio interface,so a quite expensive White Elephant for now at least.

Hi Forum, At least two of us have reported the same scenario,ie Cakewalk hangs with what appears to be an ASIO comms problem when connecting to any project or trying to create a new one.Reversion to previously functioning v3.15 also doesn't clear the issue,neither does reloading of the v1.97 Driver file or a move forward again to v3.5. Strange thing is that other tools that use the Line6 ASIO driver are working normally,and Cakewalk also works normally with other ASIO drivers,so something very specific to Cakewalk's interaction with the Line6 ASIO driver seems to have happened with the new firmware,and also regressively impacting the previous build. All the ASIO settings in Cakewalk are as before and work fine using other ASIO drivers. Support so far have just suggested going back to v3.15,which doesn't fix the issue,Cakewalk support have referred us to Line6 as they don't test 3rd party hardware,so stuck in a loop now. Any suggestions? Many Thanks, Neil.