Anyone using for vocal effects?

[Thurston9]

I tried running my mic into the Helix before the mixer and remember it adding quite a bit of noise, using no effects, just a straight pass-through test.  I probably missed something but didn't spend much time at all trying to troubleshoot.

 

Anyone using helix for guitar and vocal processing with success?

[silverhead]

I posted my experience on this here:

http://line6.com/support/topic/25157-using-the-hd500x-for-vocal-effects-processingenhancement/

 

While it talks about the POD HD my comments also apply to Helix. The situation in Helix would be a slight improvement because you can Copy Block between presets in Helix, which you can't do on the POD. Still it gets cumbersome as soon as you have more than a few presets in which you want to keep the vocal processing the same while changing the guitar processing. You're fine until you decide you want to tweak the 'constant' vocal.

[Thurston9]

I'll check the link but understand what you're saying.  

[soundog]

I tried using the Helix as a "mixer" with DSP, but gave up. That's not a fault of the Helix, as thats not its intended use. In my case, I wanted to use 4 inputs (vocal, guitar, sax, and harp) and be able to mix them, and apply effects to each. The problem is (as silverhead alludes to) is that you cant maintain your current mix levels when you change presets. It would be nice if the Helix had a setting that would allow you to "pass" parameters between presets or to maintain constant "mix" levels, but that's asking for a corner case feature beyond its intended use.

 

Its hard to get to a "one device fits all" solution. I tried the other route" using a TC Helicon device that had guitar and vocal processing. The vocal processing was awesome, but the guitar processing sucked. And it only provided two separate channels.

 

The best results I had were when I created a separate Helix path (4) for each instrument (each with its own physical input and output and effects blocks), and then sent the outputs to a small mixer for basic level setting. If your only doing two paths/channels, that should be achievable. Regarding noise, I never encountered any, and feel that the mic pre on the Helix is pretty darned good if you have the levels correct.

[Thurston9]

I tried using the Helix as a "mixer" with DSP, but gave up. That's not a fault of the Helix, as thats not its intended use. In my case, I wanted to use 4 inputs (vocal, guitar, sax, and harp) and be able to mix them, and apply effects to each. The problem is (as silverhead alludes to) is that you cant maintain your current mix levels when you change presets. It would be nice if the Helix had a setting that would allow you to "pass" parameters between presets or to maintain constant "mix" levels, but that's asking for a corner case feature beyond its intended use.

 

Its hard to get to a "one device fits all" solution. I tried the other route" using a TC Helicon device that had guitar and vocal processing. The vocal processing was awesome, but the guitar processing sucked. And it only provided two separate channels.

 

The best results I had were when I created a separate Helix path (4) for each instrument (each with its own physical input and output and effects blocks), and then sent the outputs to a small mixer for basic level setting. If your only doing two paths/channels, that should be achievable. Regarding noise, I never encountered any, and feel that the mic pre on the Helix is pretty darned good if you have the levels correct.

Thanks, I would be mixing levels externally, so this does apply to how I would be using it.  

[talwilkins]

I am using the Helix to process my vocal sound.

I have the mice goin through it's own seperate path (path 1A) and the guitar is using 1B, 2A and 2B.

The vocal signal is going through the mice pre amp first and then goes through a few effects when I want it to (phaser and/or pitch shifter).

It works fine generally but I do have some feedback issues sometimes when using the effects.