I'm writing a song that uses a square or saw tooth tremelo effect synced to the beat with a 100% intensity for the primary rhythm element. I've found that though you can sync the tempo to the track, you can't control the start of the tremelo cycle with the DAW to sync it up with other elements. This means that each time you start the track, the phase of the cycle may not be what you expect.
That makes it very difficult to sync up properly...
For example, I've set up a sine wave generator, then an instance of Helix Native with a single Modulation > Mono > Tremelo:
I've then set up my DAW to enable the effect at a particular spot in the "song" so that the effect would theoretically start the cycle the same each time. Then, I rendered the same section of song 3 times and added them to the project.
As you can see, the first bar is the solid block sine wave, and then the tremelo effect is kicked on. You'll notice that the phase of each cycle is quite different, even though they all are turned on at the exact same time. (Three may have been me accidentally leaving one unmuted before the next render)
Next, I attempted to bypass the Helix plugin entirely, rather than just the tremelo effect block. The same behavior is exhibited. The start time of the cycle is entirely unpredictable, and appears to simply be running non-stop after you load the plugin into memory or something.
As suspected, this is true for other Modulation effects as well. Here's the same test using a whole not with the Script Mod Phase effect:
Helix Native needs to honor the Host Sync's start event (assuming that actually exists) to reset it's LFO for Modulation effects. Otherwise, results are unpredictable and potentially unusable during rendering. :(
I haven't tested the Helix Floor pedal to see if the bypass/enable of a trem effect resets the LFO, but I wouldn't be surprised if it had the same basic problem...