Snapshot conversion surprise

[zooey]

Yesterday I did my first conversion of a preset with a bunch of stomps to be half stomps and half snapshots. The snapshots are overdrive levels, and the stomps are fx that can be applied to any of them (chorus, delay, etc.). Here's what I did:

- Named the first 4 snapshots appropriately, for clarity

- With all overdrive stomps off, saved the preset with the first snapshot (Clean) selected

- Recalled the second snapshot (OD 1), which so far wasn't any different, clicked the first of my overdrive stomp buttons to turn on the blocks and apply any parameters for that level of drive, then saved the preset, defining snapshot #2

- Repeated that step for the other two overdrive levels and snapshots

 

At that point, I expected that each snapshot would have the right things bypassed, but not the right parameter settings. I planned to go through every block, find any parameters controlled by footswitches, note which switch controlled it and the two settings for it, then set that parameter to snapshot control, and manually set the parameter to the on value in the snapshot corresponding to that stomp switch, and to the off value in the other three snaps.

 

I started to do that, but discovered that after enabling snapshot control on a parameter, *all four snapshots had the correct values for that snapshot already*. How is that possible? I thought you had to select Snapshots as the controller for a parameter to get Helix to remember different settings per snapshot for it. When I noticed that, I short-circuited my conversion process by just setting every switch-controlled parameter to Snapshots, and that's all. There appeared to be no need to adjust the parameter's settings for each snapshot. Simpler and quicker, but unexpected, and I don't get it.

 

Logically, that seems to say that Helix actually remembers the state of every parameter for every snapshot, whether Snapshots is selected as the controller for it or not. Can anyone confirm or deny that that's true? Is it then the case that enabling Snapshot control allows that parameter to be controlled by those settings, but the state of every parameter as of when it was saved is already part of every snapshot, whether it's being used or not?

 

It occurred to me later that I should have done the experiment of NOT setting all those parameters to Snapshot control, to further understand what was happening, but I didn't actually do that, I just accepted the results I had, since they were what I wanted. (Really, I wouldn't want to leave things that way anyway, that mix of switch and snap control would be way too unclear, and I didn't need or want those switches involved. By choosing Snapshot control, I'd already disconnected all parameter control from the switches, so I just unhooked them all from bypassing anything, and the switch labels disappeared, as expected, since they no longer did anything.)

 

So functionally, I got what I wanted, more easily than expected, but I feel less like I understand how snapshots work in detail than I did before I started.

[phil_m]

The Helix doesn't remember every parameter automatically. What was happening in your case was you already had parameters set up to be controlled by footswitches, and any parameter controlled by any controller (not just a snapshot controller) can have a specific value saved with a snapshot.

[zooey]

Ah, thank you! So outside of cleaning things up, the reason to switch a parameter to snapshot control is so *manual* changes you make to it get remembered in each snapshot. Right?

[phil_m]

Ah, thank you! So outside of cleaning things up, the reason to switch a parameter to snapshot control is so *manual* changes you make to it get remembered in each snapshot. Right?

 

Not really... If you want to keep those parameters assigned to a footswitch, you still can, and you can still have the footswitch toggle between min and max values. And you can still manually set a specific value for that parameter in each snapshot. The way I think of it is that every controller is really a snapshot controller. It's just that the footswitches and expression pedals give you a way override the values saved in the snapshots (the values tied to the expression pedals will only be recalled with the snapshot if you have the pedal position parameter(s) in Global Settings > EXP Pedals set to "per snapshot").

 

So really, if you have a stomp mode layout that you really like, you can still have it behave the same way even with snapshots. You could keep all your controller assignments and still go back into stomp and control everything on the fly if you wanted. The one thing is that any parameters you have assigned to controllers count against the 64 controller limit.

[zooey]

In my case, snapshots make more sense than individual stomps for different overdrives, so I don't have to shut one stomp off to turn another one on, it's all part of the snapshots.  Yes you could use them in combination, but that's not what I usually do, in this case at least.

 

And I'm right that to remember separate settings for a parameter that doesn't have a footswitch or pedal controller assigned, that's when you MUST set its controller to Snapshots, yes?

[phil_m]

And I'm right that to remember separate settings for a parameter that doesn't have a footswitch or pedal controller assigned, that's when you MUST set its controller to Snapshots, yes?

 

Yes.

[MonkeyXT]

This discusses aspects which I recently commented on as well; I'm going to investigate this more by doing a new Snapshot experiment / conversion much as zooey has done - and thanks for posting your observations, as it's shedding more light on something I've already encountered

.

For my sit-ins with my long-time friend, I use Helix set with a 'super-patch' which has me standing on the platform of a very Vince Gill inspired clean sound, then gives me a couple of levels of clean boosting, a mid-dirt sound, and a (thus-far un-used in this context) high-gain sound, plus some spices for context-specific uses (a nice gentle phaser for Waylon stuff, chorus... and a switch which turns my delay into a 'rockabilly' type of delay sound, etc.

'Super-patch' because I run it in 10-stomp mode as a 'pedalboard.'

It's made up of direct bypass switching combined with a few controller stomps or combinations of the above - it works marvellously well - I've now gig-tested 3 times as of this past weekend and it covers a lot of ground for me.

 

I'm going to copy it again and then do a test-conversion to a Snapshot version, but I do expect to have some 'growing pains' on this, as I've run into to conflicts that seem to arise with certain controller switches working within the Snapshot environment (meaning; changing from SS1 to one of the 7 others) - I had an issue I reported elsewhere on the forum recently wherein my controller stomps would control the bypass of an effect block properly, but the parameter controls I had assigned to the input gate were ignoring the first switch strike, then kicking in - thus creating an out-of-sync issue with the state of the controller stomp and effect block vs. the gate parameters.

My goal will be to find a Snapshot-oriented approach to side-step this unexpected behaviour and wind up with a combined Snapshot & Stomp hybrid that serves the same purposes as well (and probably better, as it will negate certain multiple switch steps - no more than 2 to date, but that's one more than I'd prefer =]).

 

I'll make a point of updating my findings here once I've done this experiment.