talonmm Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 I'm just getting my feet wet with the Helix and I backed up my tones using the Helix export option. The export and back-up seem pretty straight-forward. As you know the Helix comes with two filled set lists and I modified about 40 of these tones and placed the new versions into the user-1 set list. I created a file, called bundle.hlb that is 243,601 bytes in size. Much to my surprise, this file is much smaller than the POD HD bundle files that are always 2,118,120 bytes in size, no matter how filled your setlists are. I imagine my bundle.hlb file size will grow as I add more tones in the helix set lists. Can someone please confirm that my bundle.hlb file size is probably fine and that it's small byte-size is normal because of the few tones I have in my helix? Last, I realize that the backup does not contain the IR's and that sounds like it will be challenging to back up IR's properly but that will be my next challenge. As always, thanks for any and all assistance and guidance on these matters! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zooey Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 Be aware the a bundle contains all setlists, including the factory ones. In particular, a bundle is NOT a good choice for backup before an upgrade, because you're probably going to want to keep the updated factory setlists. For that reason, and just for flexibility, I personally don't use bundles at all, only individual setlist exports. I know of no great advantage to bundles. Re IRs,as I think you know, presets contain only the IR slot number you selected, not the actual IR, or its name. That's true of bundles and setlist exports too. Be aware that Helix also often renames IRs when importing them. For those reasons, it's important to organize and back up your IRs separately. I've been experimenting with using BulkRnameUtility to add a 2-digit sequential Helix slot number at the start of each IR name, in the file system on my computer, before importing them, and loading them into the slot corresponding to that number. That way, I know which files are where, and can re-import them quickly just by sorting the directory by name and dragging them onto the Helix app. Downsides of that approach: - Reorganizing or replacing IRs is a bit of a chore. I'm not a heavy IR user (yet), just exploring, with a few (awesome) exceptions, and AFAIK there's no better choice, so I just live w that. - Sometimes Helix strips that prefix off on import. Only IRs I've seen that with are all of the (very useful) ones from rosecoe5. There's been some talk that that might be because Helix uses the Title field from the .wav file if it has one. I can't confirm that, because on Windows 7, I don't see a Title field at all, while rosecoe5 does on Windows 10. Not clear how to deal with that if you're on Windows 7. On 10, assuming that theory is right, you could go through each one and set its title to be the same as its filename. I don't know of a tool to set title metadata in bulk like you can the filename. Don't do nothing about organizing an backing up your IRs. There will probably come a day, when you next upgrade at least, where you'll really wish you had made a plan. It's heartbreaking to lose presets you care about like that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterHamm Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 Yeah, I don't save Bundles at all anymore. Not useful really. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
talonmm Posted July 16, 2016 Author Share Posted July 16, 2016 On the pod system, backing up bundles were the way to go, all of your tones were inside the single bundle file. On the helix sounds like I need to export each set list as it's own file and that will contain all my modified tones in the set list? thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silverhead Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 Yes - all tones in the setlist are contained in the setlist file. The POD HD series bundle backups had the same issue as the Helix bundle. If the firmware update contained changes or additions to the factory setlists you could not use them and still restore your backed up presets. Restoring the saved bundle will overwrite the new factory presets. And restoring the factory presets will wipe out all other setlists. Bundles were never the way to go in my opinion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
duncann Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 In addition to using setlists and individual presets as a backup scheme, rather than bundles, it's probably also a good idea to label these backups with the firmware version they belong to. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spikey Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 Thanks for the "bundle" info. Im hoping that L6 designs the usage (slots) for IR's with their own numbering system at some point, where all we have to do is a simple save, and it names that IR and then saves it as a part of the preset. Yea it would make the save bigger but the alternative is what we have now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MonkeyXT Posted July 16, 2016 Share Posted July 16, 2016 (I'd suggest using a 3-digit prefix on your IRs to allow for 001 - 128; that's what I'm doing) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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