Help please. USB recording awful

[CWILD_FR]

Hello All,

 

  I have been playing with Helix for about 6 weeks and so far cannot gert anythinh like the sounds heard on Youtube. I am playing  into a yamaha mixer XLR into ART-415 speakers. I have also tried playing into a DRRi directly with moderate results. I am not expecting to get exactly the same nuances but at least the major characteristics of the sounds should be achievable. SO having got frustrated I decided to try recording into Sonar and playing out through a Presonus Audio box ITwo - effectively skipping the Helix DACs. I have attached the result here. Awful. I am assuming some thing is not right - but not sure what. Any ideas to get me going appreciated.

 

 

CAKEWALK HELIX TEST.mp3

[klangmaler]

Do you know that your Helix can work like an interface / soundcard via USB?

Why then using the Presonus Audio box ITwo?

[lulu_m]

No this definitely doesn't sound right at all!

 

Try your ART -450 speakers direct to the outs (xlr or tsf) of your helix (you don't need your mixer to test).

Record using the helix asio driver (check your frequencies and bitrates on both the helix and asio panel sonar, 48khz, 32bit will do fine)

Record via your usb1/2 and play it back over the standard usb stereo out 1/2. Must be all ok that way. (I'm sorry as I don't have sonar, but cubase, so I can't give you too much asio and other routing details for your DAW, but this must work)

Also check if all your outs are set to 'line' in your helix globals.

 

Hope you'll get it sorted out.

[jroseberry]

Hello All,

 

  I have been playing with Helix for about 6 weeks and so far cannot gert anythinh like the sounds heard on Youtube. I am playing  into a yamaha mixer XLR into ART-415 speakers. I have also tried playing into a DRRi directly with moderate results. I am not expecting to get exactly the same nuances but at least the major characteristics of the sounds should be achievable. SO having got frustrated I decided to try recording into Sonar and playing out through a Presonus Audio box ITwo - effectively skipping the Helix DACs. I have attached the result here. Awful. I am assuming some thing is not right - but not sure what. Any ideas to get me going appreciated.

 

 

CAKEWALK HELIX TEST.mp3

 

Listened to the mp3... and I can hear clock related glitches.

If you merge two digital audio streams (each on separate clocks), the end result will be full of glitches.

 

If you're routing digitally out of the Helix (into the Presonus), you need to use a single clock-source.

Simplest way is to set the Presonus to receive clock from S/PDIF.

[mdmayfield]

The specific sound here is a periodic dropout. You can see it in the sound file - around 70-ish times per second, there's a dropout a short burst of near-silence. It looks like it's happening in the analog domain, or at least somewhere upstream of the ADC, because the dropouts are not perfect digital silence.

 

It could possibly be a driver or other software issue. Does other audio show that same defect when recorded through the AudioBox? And, if you plug the Helix into speakers and not into a computer, does it still sound choppy like that?

 

If you have both the Helix and the AudioBox connected to the computer with USB at the same time, try unplugging the USB cord from the Helix before recording its analog outputs into the AudioBox.

[mdmayfield]

After reading your description of the symptoms more closely, it sounds like you're saying the Helix always sounds like that, regardless of what it's connected to, and whether or not a computer is involved at all.

 

If so, there is definitely something very wrong with your particular Helix. I would suggest:

 

1) Firmware reflash

2) Experiment with changing the sampling rate in Global Settings

 

If those don't help, I believe you will need to take it in for repair or exchange. (In my non-official opinion - I don't work for Line 6.) 

[CWILD_FR]

Hello Guys,

 

  Back on line. Firstly , thanks for taking the time to reply; I appreciate it.

 

 So, based on the comments above and finally pulling my head out of it and thinking about it: I have taken the Audiobox iTwo out of the loop and connected up the Helix as the sole USB audio device. So I now have the following chain:

 

 PC -> Helix -> Yamaha (Line) -> Art-415

 

The result is that I have a nice sound for Youtube, iTunes and my backing tracks - really strong and clear. However, when I play the guitar through this set up via the Helix guitar input I have a low volume and it is fizzy. I have checked that the Global EQ is off and I have checked the out settings are Line for the XLR.

 

As a next step I will do a new Factory reset and then record through one of the standard presets. Just to be clear at this stage I am not trying to tune the sound to a particular artist or anything, I just think that I should be able to take one of the presets and play it such that I can recognise that the signal is clean and that to some extent it is representing what it is supposed to be; albeit that it needs to be tweaked for my guitar etc, to get an exact sound.

 

Beyond that I will take one of the Helix Channel or Glen Delaune Presets and record that - and then play it back. Here the difference should only be my guitar, I am comparing a digital media recorded direct from a Helix via USB to a Helix recorded direct from USB with the same settings and both  rendered over the same DACs, speakers etc. - they should be comparable.

 

I will post these recordings when I have finished. If this is not right then I will need to look for an idiocy on my part (always likely), or assume I have a defective unit.

 

 Again, thanks for the help,

 

   Chris

[CWILD_FR]

Hello again,

 

 

 So here is the latest recording which is much better than anything I have had so far. Main thing I have done is to boost the volume of the output from the Helix. Now I just need to see if this stay like this for the next few days. I will a recording of one of the Helix Channel presets or |Glen Delaune's and see what they gives. I also need to see if Helix allows me to set the volume of the material coming over the USB separately from the guitar.

 

Talk to you later

 

  Chris

US DOUBLE Nrm.mp3

[alpag]

That last clip sounded right to me.

Same as mine.

[ColonelForbin]

 So, based on the comments above, I have connected up the Helix as the sole USB audio device. 

 

Yes! That is the right thing to do; Helix as the soundcard, and if possible, connect the output from Helix directly to your speakers.

 

This will alleviate any concerns over things/hardware not playing well together.

What I have found is that the master volume on Helix does nothing to impact the recording signal level; you should have to boost channel levels too much to get decent recording signal.

 

Also, as others mentioned, check all your bit/sample rate, etc, make sure the recording software and Helix are all on the same rate/depth, IE, 24bit/48k, 32bit float/96k, etc.

 

I don't know enough about this to explain why, but my ProTools/Helix combination seems to prefer 32bit float over 'regular' 24 bit. With my HD500x as soundcard, ProTools always had issues getting started at first, it would load, then error saying the HD500x ASIO driver had changed, and force me to quit ProTools and relaunch it. Happened every single time with HD500x as soundcard.

 

Doesn't seem to occur with Helix. I did have to click a button in ProTools 11 to set the inputs and outputs to 'default' which loads up the 8 in / 8 out options (it was only showing up as a stereo in/out prior to clicking that button)

[Paolo_Maina]

I use sonar and helix connected through USB to a Toshiba notebook with w10 and i have absolutely no problem.

This is a song of mine.

https://soundcloud.com/pearly-gates-66/sunrise

All songs of my channel are made using Helix.