Exporting IRs and retaining its location

[geetar_geek79]

Is there a trick I don't know about when exporting IRs so that when I import them back they will retain their preset location?  I just lost their original location when I did an import.  Ironically, the IRs in the new location sound better than what I originally had there.  LOL.

[DarrellM5]

Although most of us are pretty sure Line 6 will come up with a better system eventually, a lot of us are just renaming the IRs with numbers in front (for example 076 Mesa Recto 2x12).  Then when you import them back in, they'll stay in the right order.

[rvroberts]

As DarrellM5 said above - but I thought your comment was very interesting - you can get too precious about IRs - its just plugging your amp into a different speaker box after all, and most of the boxes people have bothered to make IRs of are pretty good sounding boxes - So a bit of random factor can be good for some discovery - you might have made a different decision on a different day anyhow!

Love that - random input! opens the mind.

[duncann]

I've tried the numbering scheme (001, 002, etc.) in the past with different versions and have always gotten unpredictable results. Haven't tried this scheme lately though.

 

The way I do it is by keeping a folder with just the IRs I want to be in Helix. Then in the Helix app, I select the import button at the top of the listing. On the dialog that pops up I navigate to the folder the IRs are kept in, select the first in the list, shift-select the last in the list, and that's it. The order they will be in, predictably, is alphabetical, either ascending or descending.

[silverhead]

I've tried the numbering scheme (001, 002, etc.) in the past with different versions and have always gotten unpredictable results. Haven't tried this scheme lately though.

 

The way I do it is by keeping a folder with just the IRs I want to be in Helix. Then in the Helix app, I select the import button at the top of the listing. On the dialog that pops up I navigate to the folder the IRs are kept in, select the first in the list, shift-select the last in the list, and that's it. The order they will be in, predictably, is alphabetical, either ascending or descending.

What do you do when you add an IR to the set/folder? Presumably it's name places it somewhere other than the end of the alphabetical list. Do you then have to edit each preset that references an IR that is now further down the imported new alphabetical list?

[duncann]

What do you do when you add an IR to the set/folder? Presumably it's name places it somewhere other than the end of the alphabetical list. Do you then have to edit each preset that references an IR that is now further down the imported new alphabetical list?

 

I use very few IRs, and rarely add anything, so it's not too much of a problem if I do add to the list. But, now that you mention it, I should think about it. It would be a trivial thing to rename the IRs with a numbered prefix, and continue to import them the way I have been - using the import button, not drag and drop. So when I add more IRs to the list, it would just tack them on to the end.

[duncann]

What do you do when you add an IR to the set/folder? Presumably it's name places it somewhere other than the end of the alphabetical list. Do you then have to edit each preset that references an IR that is now further down the imported new alphabetical list?

 

Lucky for me you mentioned this. I decided to take a look and somewhere along the way I made a mistake because of this. One of my lead tones was using a couple of incorrect IRs. Oops.

 

I tried using the filename numbering scheme after this discovery, and while it sort of works, I was getting some files where the number prefix was being dumped, and others weren't. I finally found out that IRs with a Title metadata tag were the ones with the prefix being dumped. Also, the file manager I was using, xyplorer, seems to mess the order up, when dragging and dropping. On Windows 10, the built in file explorer doesn't seem to have this problem.

 

To have all the numbered prefixes dumped upon import, so as to have longer, more descriptive names, I used a metadata program (such as TagScan) to copy the filename (without the numbered prefix) to the Title metadata tag. Then I batch renamed the files to have a numbered prefix, 001 to xxx, in the order I wanted them. So now on import I have predictable names (with no wasted characters on prefix numbers), predictable order, and slot-preset connection retained. And when I want to add more IRs later on, nothing will get messed up as long as I tack them on the end of the list.

 

Maybe this info will help others, I don't know. But Line 6 should really figure something out for this that's much simpler, and automated.

[bsd512]

I wrote a separate program to do it.  I have a directory where all my IRs go that I load into the Helix - alphabetical order and load them in that way in bulk.

 

When I add or remove IRs from that directory, I export the directory listing where the order is their slot numbers and save in a file.  I then export my presets.  Then I add/remove IRs from the IR staging directory and export the new list.

 

Given the old list and order and the new list and order, I wrote a program that opens each of my previously saved presets and automatically updates the IR slot number in the preset JSON file and saves those out back out.

 

Then I re-import the new IR list along with the updated presets.  Everything stays in sync and I don't have to change a bunch of presets when my IR order changes within the Helix.

 

Works great.  But still looking forward to a bonafide L6 solution.  And more IR space. :)

[silverhead]

...

 

Maybe this info will help others, I don't know. But Line 6 should really figure something out for this that's much simpler, and automated.

 

I know it's in the plans but I don't think it's imminent. We'll have to get along with our ad hoc manual system until then.

[geetar_geek79]

prefixing seems to be a common workaround so i'll try that. but yeah, I never would have thought of using a 1x12 cab with a 4x12 and a heavy amp until this incident...

 

 

IR roulette is fun.

[requietus666]

WAV files have meta tags, and this is what comes into play, because, from what I have found, Helix floor (and Native, too) reads meta tags first and filenames afterwards.

 

For example, if You import your regular IR "abcd.wav" from redwirez or whatever, you place it on 76 position. Then you export this IR to hard drive, and suddenly Helix inserts meta tags into filename (abcd into title tag), thus, if you rename your exported IR to "76abcd.wav", the meta tags will still show IR name "abcd" as it was on Helix device when exporting. It's not a major inconvenience but at first I was surprised because IR bundles come without meta tags.

 

For many years now I use http://www.mp3tag.de/en, so I simply remove tags from IR which have been exported from Helix to keep consistency. One little wasted step.