Search the Community

Well, it depends what you want to do, but my home setup is a pair of active KRK Rokit powered studio monitors and the ubiquitous DT770 Pros. Audio clips via the PC, which also runs Helix Edit. Everything goes through a mini-mixer so I can play along to recordings, backing tracks and whatever I'm trying to learn. It works perfectly for me, the mini-mixer was the key that pulled everything together...

I would imagine the A6T sound great. Nonetheless, there's no substitute for the room effect that will undoubtedly interact with any FOH system. If you are looking for a closed back set of headphones the BD DT770 Pro are excellent. I have a pair of the 250 Ohm version I use with the Helix Floor and they sound great. They do have their own sound that does take a bit of getting used to -- as do any monitors or headphones. Another pair of very high quality closed back headphones which debuted at the 2019 Winter NAMM show are the Neumann NDH 20. These are now shipping and they simply blew me away when I used them at NAMM. They are not inexpensive at $499 USD, yet they are less than I anticipated. If you are considering open back headphones, consider the excellent Sennheiser HD650. These are also available from MassDrop, designated the HD6xx, for a significantly reduced price.

BeyerDynamic DT770 cables are also replaceable. Albeit not as easily as the plug in method as are with the HD650/HD600.

I have to amend my previous post from early last year. Having subsequently added a pair of Sennheiser HD650 (open back) last summer to my headphones roster, I have been using these far more often and distinctly prefer them to the BeyerDynamic DT770. I find the HD650 far less fatiguing sonically and more comfortable than the DT700. Both are exceptional, howere, I give the edge to the Sennehiser. At the recent Winter NAMM Show, the brand new Neumann NDH20 (closed back) absolutely blew me away!

As I recollect, Line 6's Eric Klein aka Digital Igloo posted recently that the HX Stomp's headphone subsystem does not have the full power of the Helix units. I have a pair of open back Sennheiser HD650 (since this summer) and enjoy using them. I have found them quite comfortable to wear for long sessions. I also have several closed back units from Sony (MDR-V6) and BeyerDynamic (DT770 250Ω) and enjoy them as well. Each of the above works well with my Helix Floor. I have a HX Stomp on order and can report back once it arrives.

I think you're asking a lot trying to nail all the typical performance characteristics you're used to after just a few days with the unit, particularly given the fact that you've never really been deeply involved in digital modeling until now. There are a couple of things that may help in your approach. I know they helped me a lot when making the transition. I get the sense we may have fairly similar backgrounds in that I've been playing live and working in studios for several decades so we may share certain common experiences. First, the Helix or any modeler for that matter, is far more like working in a studio environment than in a live environment. As you probably know the live sound you achieve in a studio through a guitar amp, is not commonly what shows up in the recording. A lot of the general ambience characteristics go away once you mic and capture the guitar on a recording. So rather than targeting the live ambient sound approach it's easier if you approach it like you're producing the finished recorded sound live, because that's essentially what the modeling approach is. You're constructing a finished production signal chain that will produce consistent sound on a recording as well as live rather than the process of converting the live sound to a recorded sound. That being the case cabinets/IRs and mic'ing are much more important in producing the finished sound you're after. You'll hear a lot of talk about EQ high and low cuts, which can and are sometimes very important. But that also can produce a much more synthetic sound than having the right cabinet combination and mic'ing combination to begin with. There are many cases in which I don't need to apply any cuts if I get the right combination of cabs and mic setups. When I do need cuts they're very often very slight. Only rarely do I need to apply high cuts below 10Khz in my patches for example, and most of my EQ notches tend to be in common EQ areas around 500Hz, 4.2KHz, or 8.0KHz as they have been in studio recordings over many decades. Your time getting familiar with the different combinations of speakers and mic'ing arrangements will pay off ten fold over simple EQ manipulation in my opinion. My experience tells me you can achieve all of these things with either stock Helix cabs or with IR's. I personally prefer IR's because of their convenience and the availability of some fairly common pre-baked mic'ing setups available in most collections. Another important consideration is that the Helix can only sound as good as your output device allows it to be. I use Yamaha HS7 speakers and DT770 80 ohm headphones for my studio work and Yamaha DXR12 or QSC CP8 powered speakers for live work. In the area of speakers it's the same as it's always been as far back as I can remember. You get what you pay for. Lastly patience and knowledge are the BIGGEST part of getting what you want out of the Helix or any modeler. I'd HIGHLY recommend spending some time looking at any of Jason Sadites YouTube videos on dialing in amps as he very good at going over the key elements of getting very polished and professional sounds out of a wide range of the Helix amp models.

My two cents: I have been using Helix Native for more than year with small USB interfaces at home with DT770 which I like and use both home and in studio. Now on Helix LT - what a difference! This thing has great AD and DA converters and/or (?) headphone amp. I feel it like it is comparable to hi class studio audio interfaces.

My latest go to phones have become the open back Sennheiser HD650 300 Ohm. They are exceedingly comfortable for extended periods. The sound source is ideally positioned in their natural and most comfortable fit position. They sound excellent. Regardless if I force them to fit higher or lower or further forward or back, the sound does not change. I find very minimal ear fatigue with the HD650. I have found that the Beyerdynamic DT770 250 Ohm are far more sensitive to having them positioned just right. A bit higher or lower or forward or rear changes the high end significantly. They are very clear and bright, but do lead to a bit more ear fatigue in a long session than the Sennheiser, and they have slightly less bottom end than the Sennheiser. The Sony MDR-V6 have been my go to standard for decades. I have several pairs and they cannot be beat for convenience, price, and a smooth sound. They are the only pair of these three that are able to be folded, so they are the most compact. I know them so well, that I can use them for nearly anything with very good results. YMMV.

I use Sennheiser HD600 300 Ohm and they've been the ones I've like the most. Helix has no problem driving 300 Ohm headphones so no need for a preamp. http://a.co/d/f16nOsW I also use Sony MDRv6's with my Stomp ($80) and they sound very good, too - lower ohms so the Stomp can drive them better. The Stomp's headphone amp is not as strong as the Helix so it had trouble driving the HD600's. Note - I've tried many headphones back-to-back - Sony MDR 7520, Sony MDR 7506, Sony MDRv6, Sennheiser HD600, DT770's, and the two I chose to keep were the Sennheiser HD600's and the cheap Sony MDRv6. If I was doing it again, I'd have to try the HD650's, too. Many people like the DT770's or any number of reputable headphones. I think it comes down to personal preference, comfort, whether you like open back or closed back, etc. After buying a few pairs that came highly recommended by others here, and not caring for them, I decided to buy a bunch, pick the one pair or two I liked the best, and send the rest back. (Thank you Amazon no-hassle return.) Each of the ones above have their strengths, though. Open back, closed back, more comfortable, not as comfortable, frequency range and flatness, etc. The Sony MDR 7520's are great for blocking out external sound - I used those when doing Kemper profiles with pretty loud amps and positioning the microphone and they do a great job of blockout out very loud amps while monitoring the mic through the 7520's. So actually, I guess I kept a few of them and use them for different purposes. A buddy of mine got the DT770's and likes those better than the HD600's. So really, it's hard to say which ones YOU will like the best. If you can buy from a place with a great turn policy, I recommend buying several, trying them all back-to-back, and choosing the ones you like the best for your purpose. For me, it's really hard to beat the prices of the MDRv6 and MDR 7506. I liked the sound of the MDRv6 on the Helix and Stomp very slightly better than the 7506's. I like the 7520's for their sound isolation, but thought the lower priced Sony's (v6 and 7506) sounded better to me for Helix and Stomp. I really didn't gel too well with the DT770's. And I've never tried the Senn HD650's.

It was Sennheiser 650 - DT770 or DT880 in my price range but read a lot of reviews they mention DT770 or DT880 are pretty hot on the highs especially the 880 hence my decision - let you know how it works out :)

Personally when I was confronted with this situation instead of using IEM's I went to using my DT770 headphones rather than invest a ton of money in high end IEMs. You may be able to get away with it, you may not. The situation I was in allowed me the flexibility to do so. They sounded perfect on stage as they do in the studio.

Hi All, Not sure what to do, but everything sounds muffled to me on the Helix LT. Factory Presets, purchased presets (fremen), from scratch presets, etc. I am playing a Paul Reed Smith DGT and a Fender Standard Strat primarily, but have tested 5 or so other guitars of different sorts (hollowbody, mini humbuckers, noiseless vintage single coils, etc.) Speaker wise, I am using primarily a PowerCab, but have also played through an Alto 310, JBL LSR305 Studio Monitors, 4CM with a Boss Katana, and BeyerDynamic DT770 PRO headphones. All sound muffled. Should a stock amp+cab be at least somewhat usable right out of the box? I am not expecting a gig / recording usable tone, but even a brand new patch with an A+C block sounds like someone threw all the pillows in my house on my amp / speakers... Hopefully I can remember everything I have tried: Global EQ is deactivated Guitar Tone knob is turned up Amp Block has adequate master an channel volumes Guitar Pad is off in Global Settings Helix > PC is set to use Line Level Followed advise in Chad Boston's setup video Thanks!!!

just received my DT770-80 listening some first takes music and Helix demos from the web (Fremen, Glenn Delaune.....) so far so pretty good, even if the headphone amp of mys office computers soundcard probably isn't great. :) Will see how it does on the real machine this evening.

i dig this thread again cause i just ordered a new pair of headphones: The Beyerdynamic DT770pro 80 Ohms. I ordered this because of all the recommendations here (and elsewhere) and because i loved my old HD990 (now broken) for its natural sound (listening music, not guitar) and his comfort for my head/ears. Reading across all the headphone threads, the Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro and the Sennheiser HD600/HD650 seem to be the most called when the target is to get a sound close to good studio monitors. I would like to have cans where i can practice at night with about the same sound and without creating different patches for speakers and headphones. My 7" studio monitors are pretty linear (+/- 1.2 dB on axis 50-20.000 Hz measured )and my 12" power monitors can be adjusted to taste cause they have free programmable DSPs onboard. Now i found some sources for the frequency response of the DT77 Pro. Even if different sources show some small differences, they all show a dip at about 3.500 Hz of about 6 dB and a broad peak at about 8500 Hz + 6 dB. The Sennheiser HD600 seems to be more linear. +/- 6 dB from 200 to 9000 Hz seem not unimportant to me. The last can i used was a old AKG K66 wich sounds awfull producing a lot of fizz (distorted guitar) wich is'nt completly to eliminate by EQs. So yes - i'm afraid of fizz. Unfortually, this cheap K66 is to old to find measurements to compare and to identify the critical frequency range. Regarding the response of the DT770, it does'nt seem really linear to me and i suppose that the peak @ 9000 Hz could add unwanted fizz. Please tell me, that i'm wrong :)

I'll chime in, since this information is always useful to me: I'm using the B-D DT-990 at 250 Ohms (purchased for $95 from Amazon during a sale), and they're by far my favorite headphones. They're open-back, I really like the wider soundstage. I usually route the audio output through a mixer, and then plug my headphones into that, mainly because it makes it easier for me to control volume through the mixer. It works well directly, too. The higher impedance (250 ohms) is a bit of a problem without a headphone amp: If I'm using it with a recording device or cell phone, I usually need to max out the volume to get it to sound moderately loud (I usually listen at low volumes). I'm sure that adding a headphone amp would help with the sound, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. If I could do it over again, I think I'd go for the 80ohm ones (just for convenience). There's lots of talk about this on headphone enthusiast sites. Here's a good starting point: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/guide-sonic-differences-between-dt770-dt990-models-more.513393/. Also, if you're looking for a good deal on these, I suggest looking at http://slickdeals.net. I think they have a listing for some on sale right now. I hope this helps!

Don’t forget the 80ohm! I use the DT770 Pro 80ohm with Helix and am quite happy with them.

Do a search on this (Helix) group for DT770. Lots of discussion.

Well...by my standards your tone in the link sounds pretty harsh and piercing through a pair of Yamaha HS7 studio monitors. Pretty much the same through a pair of Beyerdynamic DT770 80ohm headsets. So if it sounds like too much or even adequate mid range to you it's apparently an artifact of what you're monitoring through because you've corrected out mids WAY too much. If I were to try and simulate the harshness in that tone on my gear I'd probably have to use an IR with something like an SM57 positioned right at the cap edge, as well as probably slice out some mids on either the amp or a parametric EQ.

This is a tough decision because there are so many variables. But just to give you the lay of the land. The thing that's most likely to sound similar to the FOH setup will be powered live PA speakers such as the L2M or Yamaha DBR/DXR. But your IEMs are likely going to sound closer to a good pair of headphones such as Beyerdynamic DT770 80 ohm or a set of studio speakers such as the Yamaha HS5 or HS7. But if you can get your patches to sound good on the powered PA type speakers, they're probably going to sound pretty decent in your IEMs. Bottom line you can probably do well with any of them, but it may give you more confidence to know what your FOH sound is regardless of what you are hearing in your IEMs. Just a thought.

I'm like you were a year ago just got a Helix for about a month now and running it through some Beyerdynamic DT770's 80ohm headphones I'm also spending more time tweaking testing presets and less time playing I can kill hours wasting time testing playing with the different setting with no clue what they mean just trial and error and for me I'm not having fun with it and in the end not getting the sound I'm looking for Anyways I'm considering buying some some of Delaunes or Fremens presets just wondering if after a year of using the Helix along with the DT770 you or anyone have any suggestions on how to get the most out of the DT770 headphones any particular setting that make a difference and maybe which presets actually sound good through it ?

Grabbed the Limited Edition DT770 Pro 80ohm's for like $150 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01ERLN180/ref=sspa_dk_detail_4?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B01ERLN180&pd_rd_wg=35ulC&pd_rd_r=4MMM0QMT3875WGRW45DB&pd_rd_w=Flraj&smid=A2RJQ91IHY4NS4

Chances are the transition to the Helix will feel pretty normal coming from the HD500 side of the house. The signal chain layout and different types of blocks will feel pretty normal although much more expanded and easier to navigate. That being the case, if you've been building your own presets you'll be comfortable doing so on the Helix as well. I will say there are some things that happen in the HD world that you WON'T want to bring with you. In particular the Global EQ. Although it's likely you'll need some form of high and low cuts on certain types of patches, you have plenty of ability to adjust that within the patch itself, and no adjustment is ever going to be consistent across different patches that use different amps, different cabinets, different mic configurations and so forth. If you want a really good place to start I'd HIGHLY recommend Jason Sadites series on building patches on YouTube. It's far and away the most comprehensive tutorial out there and will provide you with some of the best techniques for dialing in your patches on the Helix. In that regard you may want to think about whether you've got an ample home system to simulate what you'll be playing through at church. You mentioned headphones, but those can be somewhat tricky since many are meant for consumer use, not pro studio use. There are some good ones out there that are very popular with lots of Helix users such as the Beyerdynamic DT770 80 ohm as well as others. Otherwise you might want to consider getting some good studio monitors or, better yet, a FRFR powered speaker which will be the closest to the sound you'll be getting from the PA. I personally use a Yamaha DXR12 at home, but there are others that will do just as well. In terms of snapshots, they're very easy to use and understand...but also very easy to overuse as well. You need to spend some time and read about them and understand the limitations. Ultimately snapshots are limited to the DSP available in a single patch. If you have broad transitions that incorporate different amps or effects they can be useful. But whatever amps, cabs, effects, etc. are in the patch and are used in the different snapshots will count against the DSP limit within the patch whether they're turned on or not. Just something to remember.

According to this https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/DT770pro?gclid=Cj0KCQiAzrTUBRCnARIsAL0mqcxKoO-4QnZSDwxQCbZ-OF-ipu3Sp5wy034j9BXSnAkUTAaVrgHbmT4aAskUEALw_wcB and this https://www.google.com/shopping/product/4829405583550046830/specs?q=DT770&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjuy6DClrfZAhUb0IMKHd9YBQ0QuC8I9gE they are 250 ohms.

Another vote for the DT770 80 ohms. I have created every single patch I'm made on Helix with them, including all of the Helix video content I've done for my YouTube channel. Heck, I've gotten so used to them that I'll mix tracks with them. Our bedroom is directly below my studio in the house and I have the same "wife problem" as the OP ;) I don't have any issues with my patches translating well with various PA, monitoring, and/or FRFR. If the venue doesn't have good monitoring I have an Alto TS110A I can bring with me. All the patches I've made with the DT770's sound good across the spectrum. I plug straight into the the Helix headphone jack, and I keep the level up pretty high when I'm making patches. As close to gig level as possible. Which these days gig level isn't nearly as loud as it was when I was in my 20's thankfully!

I have a pair of Senny HD380 that are great...but also love the Beyerdyanmics DT770 (80ohm) cans I have. Either work fine with the Helix and not expensive