Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility Jump to content

Very disappointed.


lespaul79
 Share

Recommended Posts

...I just found this picture of my very early recording studio...

 

Paulnabrone.jpg

 

Laugh out loud! "Stonehenge where the demons dwell". Was the initial design for this studio done on a napkin? And my apologies for participating in the topic hijack but this stuff is just impossible to resist.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not sure it's really a hijacking. After all, the point of the thread is about a very specific perceived lacking feature. It's determined to be a common thing among most if not all similar devices. Hence it's a matter of current state-of-the-art. This led to a bit of a tangent about former state-of-the-art devices. In a decade or two Helix too will be looked at in a nostalgic remember-when kind of way. FX spillover discussions will be as archaic as bouncing tracks on tape.

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not sure it's really a hijacking. After all, the point of the thread is about a very specific perceived lacking feature. It's determined to be a common thing among most if not all similar devices. Hence it's a matter of current state-of-the-art. This led to a bit of a tangent about former state-of-the-art devices. In a decade or two Helix too will be looked at in a nostalgic remember-when kind of way. FX spillover discussions will be as archaic as bouncing tracks on tape.

 

+1 Absolutely echos my sentiments on the subject although I hope the wait is less than a decade or two (but still perhaps a wee bit of hijacking, just want to make sure the originator of this topic knows we intend no disrespect).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's all good guys!!! I know where the topic was going. Back in the day when there weren't that many choices and the good ol' boys had to make do with what they had playing live.

 

Ok. So my first initial opinion was probably too soon. Now having more time with it, I was able to work some things out to make it work. Hopefully they will still address the switch canceling ability in an update. Other then this issues, the amp switching and effect quality is outstanding!!! Now I want to get a FRFR monitor to be able to use the amp models.

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

New owner/user here - spillover definitely not a big deal for me, plenty of work-arounds if that's a critical feature.  However...my Digit*ch GSP2101 from 1999(?) or so has spillover from one patch to another...so it's possible...still not a big issue, definitely not a deal killer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Spill over doesn't matter to me one bit, as I am a studio musician. But thats just me...

That being said, I can definitely see how this would be a problem for LIVE situations. I hope Line 6 comes up with a fix, or at least a usable work around for all you LIVE musicians. 

 

I would assume there are probably more who play with this LIVE than use it for studio work.  

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Even if there is spill over feature, it might not work with all patches as it depend on the amount of amps/effects loaded. However, I can totally sees that if one patch only uses 1 path switching to another patch that   also uses 1 path only. In this way, it never loads up more than 2 paths or use more than 2 processors.

 

Why not try to fit 2 patches into one patch.... this is like Apollo 13 problem... use the least amount of electricity with a correct combination of on/off

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, I GIVE UP..... UNCLE... I returned my first helix due to things wrong on it, gave it a second chance. Bought my second. Everything seemed great or pretty good at home.. Then.... I took it out live, what a sonic night mare. Every patch to bassy or something. it was like the bass player was cranked and he wasn't even playing. Tried different guitars. Xlr out vs 1/4 out with direct boxes etc. I had to turn the bass down on everything to the point the patch sounded bad.. Low cuts didn't help either at helix or board. I had bought patches my own patches and different ir's but still the same outcome. Plus I had this weird latency problem between the monitor I was running via 1/4 outs and what came out the mains. Tried three times to get this to work live and no way Jose! I'm not bashing just letting you know that it might be great in your house and thru your headset, but a possible sonic nightmare out on stage, IMO. CAN YOU SAY FIREHAWK 1500.. Well need less to say no more helix, I'm :-(

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, I GIVE UP..... UNCLE... I returned my first helix due to things wrong on it, gave it a second chance. Bought my second. Everything seemed great or pretty good at home.. Then.... I took it out live, what a sonic night mare. Every patch to bassy or something. it was like the bass player was cranked and he wasn't even playing. Tried different guitars. Xlr out vs 1/4 out with direct boxes etc. I had to turn the bass down on everything to the point the patch sounded bad.. Low cuts didn't help either at helix or board. I had bought patches my own patches and different ir's but still the same outcome. Plus I had this weird latency problem between the monitor I was running via 1/4 outs and what came out the mains. Tried three times to get this to work live and no way Jose! I'm not bashing just letting you know that it might be great in your house and thru your headset, but a possible sonic nightmare out on stage, IMO. CAN YOU SAY FIREHAWK 1500.. Well need less to say no more helix, I'm :-(

 

What was the environment like in which you created your patches? Headphones by any chance?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nope I never use headphones. If this helps others. I had a mackie 350 v2 and others. I would also put then on a pole as if suspended FOH mains to get close. But, most patches would sound bassy boomy so I tried turning everything down to the point it would just sound not right. Mute point.... my helix is gone. Hope everyone does better!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That sounds like user error, honestly. My helix sounds just as good, actually better through a "real" PA than it does through my Mackie Thump monitors that I use at rehearsal. Sounds like your FOH guy was not doing his job, something got bumped, or something was wrong in the signal chain between your gear and the FOH.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting. I made patches on my mackie MR8's and my TS110A's, when I went into our pa. The sound was way too thin. Opposite outcome. Feb 26 we play at a place I remember being bass heavy, we'll see what it sounds like. Sorry about your experience. You can't say you didn't try.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, I GIVE UP..... UNCLE... I returned my first helix due to things wrong on it, gave it a second chance. Bought my second. Everything seemed great or pretty good at home.. Then.... I took it out live, what a sonic night mare. Every patch to bassy or something. it was like the bass player was cranked and he wasn't even playing. Tried different guitars. Xlr out vs 1/4 out with direct boxes etc. I had to turn the bass down on everything to the point the patch sounded bad.. Low cuts didn't help either at helix or board. I had bought patches my own patches and different ir's but still the same outcome. Plus I had this weird latency problem between the monitor I was running via 1/4 outs and what came out the mains. Tried three times to get this to work live and no way Jose! I'm not bashing just letting you know that it might be great in your house and thru your headset, but a possible sonic nightmare out on stage, IMO. CAN YOU SAY FIREHAWK 1500.. Well need less to say no more helix, I'm :-(

 

Did you try the global EQ? If it sounded good at home, you should be able to get it to sound good at the gig using global EQ. Different rooms require different EQing, plus the band is playing so you may need to tweak the midrange, plus Fletcher-Munson comes into play, plus you're standing in a different position relative to the speaker at the gig. All global-equable (except maybe the last one).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think they need to take the Helix guts and slam them into a nice amp with two 6L6GC's a handful of 12ax7's and have two 10" speakers like my Ampeg Gemini20 and have tilt back legs also. My Ampeg kicks proverbial butt and sounds fantastic, goes super loud and isn't ridiculously heavy like most tube driven 2x12's are.

 

Guys are sick of these 120 lb 2x12 tube monsters. They get all scuffed, wreck your leather seats, wreck your spine, you always need a monkey drummer nearby to help you carry them up a big flight of stairs :P...

 

Seriously though, make a killer 2x10 and 1x12 amp with the Helix innards and lots of cool functions like a Mesa studio caliber22 has and you've got yourself a winner. Not that something like that couldn't already be in the pipeline but I just wanted to throw a few suggestions out there.

  • Upvote 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I addressed this in another thread, but I think it's worth repeating.  Get TWO Helix units, spillover solved.  A few ways to do it, but essentially use one to "stage" the patch of the other one.  

 

The value added is that you have TWO helix on stage in case there is an issue, you could probably "live" with one.    If I start playing live again I will have a 2nd one ready to go anyway...  might as well make use of it.. and before anyone sais anything about cost...  it's no more than two guitars or an extra amp which ya kinda need if you're playing live anyway.

 

I thought about this lack-of-spillover and lag myself... I just haven't complained about because... .... If spillover is that important, I'll get two Helix units.... If I can't justify two Helix units... it just wasn't that important.   

 

A little more thinking on this and maybe the "2nd" helix unit be the Rack unit.   That would really give a LOT of options.  If the floor unit failed, I could have a FCB1010 or something as backup to switch the rack unit via midi to make it through.... some gigs it might be nice to only bring the floor unit and other times only the rack..   but if spillover is that important.... the cost is justified.   If not... it's just not that important...  

 

That's my solution.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It looks like the 'spill over' question will be solved! Rumours (on the helix facebook group) say that SCENES will be part of the next firmware update ;-) X fingers this'll be true :-) :-)

Nope, sorry—no scenes. The good news is that the next firmware update is probably early next week. Pretty much all bug fixes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nope, sorry—no scenes. The good news is that the next firmware update is probably early next week. Pretty much all bug fixes.

 

Indeed great news DI! Nice work :-)

(i can wait till the next fw update for a new 'scene/stage/snapshot, or whatever name you like' .., I'm a very patient man lol)

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, I GIVE UP..... UNCLE... I returned my first helix due to things wrong on it, gave it a second chance. Bought my second. Everything seemed great or pretty good at home.. Then.... I took it out live, what a sonic night mare. Every patch to bassy or something. it was like the bass player was cranked and he wasn't even playing. Tried different guitars. Xlr out vs 1/4 out with direct boxes etc. I had to turn the bass down on everything to the point the patch sounded bad.. Low cuts didn't help either at helix or board. I had bought patches my own patches and different ir's but still the same outcome. Plus I had this weird latency problem between the monitor I was running via 1/4 outs and what came out the mains. Tried three times to get this to work live and no way Jose! I'm not bashing just letting you know that it might be great in your house android from other thru your headset, but a possible sonic nightmare out on stage, IMO. CAN YOU SAY FIREHAWK 1500.. Well need less to say no more helix, I'm :-(

We have been using it live every week since we got in on the very first batch to arrive at Sweetwater. It sounds amazing each time. We have had compliments on tone from other visiting musicians and they want to know,where the amps are set up. Direct to the board. The sound guy has the channels set flat so the Helix handles everything. Sorry to hear about your issues. Without actually being there I don't even want to guess. I had some bass issues at home but it was speaker placement. Once I got a set of monitor stands it was great.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So if I want to switch patches within a song, say I'm playing a super clean, all treble funky chaka-chaka type thing and then in an instant I want to go into a crazy over-driven solo with delay and wah, there's going to be a lag time involved so I can't instantly switch to that for the solo and when it's over switch back to the funky clean treble sound/patch without a pause? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So if I want to switch patches within a song, say I'm playing a super clean, all treble funky chaka-chaka type thing and then in an instant I want to go into a crazy over-driven solo with delay and wah, there's going to be a lag time involved so I can't instantly switch to that for the solo and when it's over switch back to the funky clean treble sound/patch without a pause? 

The only way to do it instantly is to have all of that in a single patch and switch "channels" like the two-amp rigs in the 8th set-list.

 

I've played four shows now with Helix. The sounds are great. The connections are great (still waiting for the other foot to drop on the Phantom Power issue). But having to put my cleans and distortions in one patch for a song is HUGE PAIN IN THE lollipop compared to just switching presets. For one thing, I have to use a bunch of the footswitches to do all the effects on/off/changes I need to do, and I really don't like having to put effects on the bottom row of buttons. I am having to do as much tapdancing as I would with an amp and a multi-loop switcher, which is kinda lollipop considering I didn't have to do that with the HD500X. It's also limiting in the fact that I can't use the extensive multi-amp, effects-laden patches I build at home for recording purposes because it takes 15 years to switch between them and they don't fit in a single preset.

 

I don't know if its possible in this iteration, but please, please, please(!!!!!!) make sure the next gen can load a whole bank of presets into RAM or something for immediate switching. I have some sick dual-amp distortion patches that I can't really use live because I need to switch channels in just about every song we play. I have some sick crazy-effects clean channels that I can't use live, either....

 

And seriously? "Just buy two Helix"?!?! The whole point of buying a MFX is to have LESS stuff. Two Helix processors would be heavier and tale up more space than any pedal board I've ever owned, plus the different routing and cables needed to make it useful....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I do not think the technology or processing power exists anywhere to do what everyone wants with these extensive presets. I am sure Line 6 will get it reduced some as the tweak and refine things but I see this on many devices. We have a high end keyboard/workstation at church and it has the same issues between presets. It takes time to load and volume changes can be massive. it sounds amazing. We have learned to wait between songs very briefly and splits tones somehow if things are needed within a song. I know some people have claimed to make the HD series sound decent but we never did. I hated how it sounds but we were not allowed amps at church so for me comparing it to the Helix is unfair in some aspects as I do not think they are even close to the same animal. The Helix sounds much better. And as far as TC Electronics goes there is no modeling so it doesn't need the CPU. I am curious how AXFX users feel when the change presets? I saw Brit Floyd a few months ago and they used AXFX direct. I was told they had racks of them though so I don't know if they switched between units or if some were just backup. I only know of one big group currently using Kemper live

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So if I want to switch patches within a song, say I'm playing a super clean, all treble funky chaka-chaka type thing and then in an instant I want to go into a crazy over-driven solo with delay and wah, there's going to be a lag time involved so I can't instantly switch to that for the solo and when it's over switch back to the funky clean treble sound/patch without a pause? 

 

No lag, you can very very easily switch between those two sounds (there are at least 2 or 3 ways I can think of) within one patch. EASY!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No lag, you can very very easily switch between those two sounds (there are at least 2 or 3 ways I can think of) within one patch. EASY!

 

Would you mind describing the ways?  I'm seriously considering the Helix but at $1500 and then possibly I need an L2t or something similar to go with it that's a lot of money, I could get a boutique amp and some pedals for not that much more and I don't want to be unhappy with this purchase.  gunpointmetal mentioned, "have all of that in a single patch and switch "channels" like the two-amp rigs in the 8th set-list" but since I don't have one I have an idea what that means but not 100% sure.  Currently I have an Amplifi 150 and it's good but not cutting it for what I want to do.  Basically I want to be able to play all the parts in any given song, say there's a chorus arpeggiated section, a crunchy rhythm section and a soaring sustainy lead part, I thought with the Helix I'd be able to switch between those three instantly.  If that's not the case then maybe it's not for me or I need to use it differently.  I'd like to see if I can get this done for around $3000 or thereabouts, the Helix & L2t would be like $2500 so that's at the low end of my budget but my feeling is I'd rather spend $3000 - $3500 and have it perfect than spend $2500 and still be lacking. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

.... I'd be able to switch between those three instantly. ....

 

Depends on what you mean by 'instantly'. No processing system (whether computer, phone, guitar multiFX device, ....) can swap RAM data instantly. It necessarily takes some number of milliseconds to transfer data from storage to RAM. The question is: is the data transfer time (the lag) noticeable? And that depends on who's doing the noticing.

 

In the case of Helix the delay is measured in milliseconds. If you need to change presets in mid-strum, from a preset with a lengthy heavy delay, there will be an audible dropout. But in most cases one can adapt thei playing style so that the brief dropout is not noticeable. For instance, when going from a clean rhythm in a chorus part to a lead solo you can usually pause a quarter beat before starting the lead part - more than long enough to switch presets with no audible dropout.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

just out of curiosity, how does David Gillmore manage to play a whole song without these issues of lag-time? It might be worthwhile to look at how his signal chain was put together,  which should be pretty easy to duplicate with a pedal 30+ years more advanced than what he was using.  I think we should be playing to our limitations, rather than being frustrated over technology that isn't available yet.

  • Upvote 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

just out of curiosity, how does David Gillmore manage to play a whole song without these issues of lag-time? It might be worthwhile to look at how his signal chain was put together, which should be pretty easy to duplicate with a pedal 30+ years more advanced than what he was using. I think we should be playing to our limitations, rather than being frustrated over technology that isn't available yet.

Have you seen Gilmours pedal board (s) ?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Would you mind describing the ways?  I'm seriously considering the Helix but at $1500 and then possibly I need an L2t or something similar to go with it that's a lot of money, I could get a boutique amp and some pedals for not that much more and I don't want to be unhappy with this purchase.  gunpointmetal mentioned, "have all of that in a single patch and switch "channels" like the two-amp rigs in the 8th set-list" but since I don't have one I have an idea what that means but not 100% sure.  Currently I have an Amplifi 150 and it's good but not cutting it for what I want to do.  Basically I want to be able to play all the parts in any given song, say there's a chorus arpeggiated section, a crunchy rhythm section and a soaring sustainy lead part, I thought with the Helix I'd be able to switch between those three instantly.  If that's not the case then maybe it's not for me or I need to use it differently.  I'd like to see if I can get this done for around $3000 or thereabouts, the Helix & L2t would be like $2500 so that's at the low end of my budget but my feeling is I'd rather spend $3000 - $3500 and have it perfect than spend $2500 and still be lacking. 

One way is to switch between two paths, but I don't like that, because I too often want the same FX on both.

 

So another way is to have two different settings on the amp, one at heel down on an EXP (or with a footswitch off) and the other with toe down (or footswitch on). Then you can add a drive pedal and kick it into high gear beyond that.

 

The patch I use in this video gives you an idea of how you can do 3 different tones in one patch. In this case, one of the tones is an acoustic driven by the piezo on my Crowdster, but it could just as easily be another amp tone, perhaps kept clean so that you can have a clean and dirty amp tone side by side.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...