New Looping Function 2.6 ?

[JLondon]

I was so excited to see the change to the previous Helix looping function (which, in my opinion, was pretty much useless on an otherwise almost perfect machine).  So why would Line 6 come out with a new update changing how a major function works and not provide a simple instruction update to their manual?  The available Helix manual is a dinosaur.  I've searched the forum and YouTube videos with no results.  The brief description of the looper function change that was included in the update download page only makes sense to someone who already knows how to use it.  I have, and am actually able to navigate, a Boss 300 looping station for Pete's sake - so how is it that everybody is apparently having no problem figuring out the Helix looping function change except me?  If there's anyone out there that I haven't ticked off with my useless ranting, I sure would appreciate some help/direction.  Anyone interested in making a video demonstrating new and clever ways of making use of this function?

[phil_m]

Instructions are in the release notes:

 

 

Using the 1 Switch Looper:

1. Add a Looper > 1 Switch Looper block to your preset and assign it to a stomp footswitch.(Adding a 1 Switch Looper to HX Effects from Stomp view automatically assigns it to the selected footswitch.)
2. Press the 1 Switch Looper switch. The LED lights red, indicating the loop is recording.
3. Press the 1 Switch Looper switch again. The LED lights green, indicating the loop is playing back.
4. Press the 1 Switch Looper switch again. The LED lights amber, indicating the loop is in overdub mode. Subsequent presses of the switch toggle between play and overdub mode.
5. While the 1 Switch Looper is in play or overdub mode, press and hold the switch for 1 second.The most recent recording is undone. Holding the switch again will redo the recording. On Helix, Helix Rack/Control, and HX Effects, “UNDO” or “REDO” briefly appears on the scribble strip. On Helix LT, “UNDO” or “REDO” briefly appears in Performance view.
6. Quickly double-press the 1 Switch Looper switch.Playback/recording stops and the LED lights white, indicating a loop is in memory.
7. While Looper playback/recording is stopped, press and hold the switch. The recording is deleted and the LED lights dim white.

[datacommando]

26 minutes ago, phil_m said:

Instructions are in the release notes:

 

 

Using the 1 Switch Looper:

1. Add a Looper > 1 Switch Looper block to your preset and assign it to a stomp footswitch.(Adding a 1 Switch Looper to HX Effects from Stomp view automatically assigns it to the selected footswitch.)
2. Press the 1 Switch Looper switch. The LED lights red, indicating the loop is recording.
3. Press the 1 Switch Looper switch again. The LED lights green, indicating the loop is playing back.
4. Press the 1 Switch Looper switch again. The LED lights amber, indicating the loop is in overdub mode. Subsequent presses of the switch toggle between play and overdub mode.
5. While the 1 Switch Looper is in play or overdub mode, press and hold the switch for 1 second.The most recent recording is undone. Holding the switch again will redo the recording. On Helix, Helix Rack/Control, and HX Effects, “UNDO” or “REDO” briefly appears on the scribble strip. On Helix LT, “UNDO” or “REDO” briefly appears in Performance view.
6. Quickly double-press the 1 Switch Looper switch.Playback/recording stops and the LED lights white, indicating a loop is in memory.
7. While Looper playback/recording is stopped, press and hold the switch. The recording is deleted and the LED lights dim white.

 

Hi Phil,

I have just read through all the update notes regarding the 1 switch looper, and there doesn't appear to be any mention of being able to engage the half speed function.

Furthermore, there is no mention of using the reverse play function. 

Surely some oversight from the coders at Line 6!

 

[phil_m]

14 minutes ago, datacommando said:

 

Hi Phil,

I have just read through all the update notes regarding the 1 switch looper, and there doesn't appear to be any mention of being able to engage the half speed function.

Furthermore, there is no mention of using the reverse play function. 

Surely some oversight from the coders at Line 6!

 

 

Those functions aren’t available with the 1-Switch Looper. There’s only so much you can do with one footswitch.

[datacommando]

51 minutes ago, phil_m said:

 

Those functions aren’t available with the 1-Switch Looper. There’s only so much you can do with one footswitch.

 

True, so very true.

[sudiptasingh]

Pressing and holding to clear the loop plays the 1st second of audio. Is there a CC message that we can assign to another switch to clear the loop in memory? 

[jesuscares]

Thanks for bringing this up.The helix is definitely a great unit but I came to know that the looper isn't very practical for use.Assigning the looper is a mess as it turns off when you move to different patch that doesn't have a looper assigned.I also understand that there is a certain block to assign it on the patch ,if not it will turn off by itself!.Haven't figured that out yet.So does the 1 switch user have the same drawbacks ?

[phil_m]

36 minutes ago, jesuscares said:

Thanks for bringing this up.The helix is definitely a great unit but I came to know that the looper isn't very practical for use.Assigning the looper is a mess as it turns off when you move to different patch that doesn't have a looper assigned.I also understand that there is a certain block to assign it on the patch ,if not it will turn off by itself!.Haven't figured that out yet.So does the 1 switch user have the same drawbacks ?

 

In order for the looper to maintain playback from patch to patch, both patches have to have the same type of looper block (1 button or 6 button, mono or stereo), and the block has to be in the same processor path. It doesn't have to be in the same position, though. If you have it on Path 1(or 1A or 1B) in one preset, it just has to be on Path 1 (or 1A or 1B) in the next.

[jesuscares]

4 hours ago, phil_m said:

 

In order for the looper to maintain playback from patch to patch, both patches have to have the same type of looper block (1 button or 6 button, mono or stereo), and the block has to be in the same processor path. It doesn't have to be in the same position, though. If you have it on Path 1(or 1A or 1B) in one preset, it just has to be on Path 1 (or 1A or 1B) in the next.

Thanks for the response.I guess an external looper should be a lot easier to handle.Or I will connect the looper with send/return.I wish it came with a default looper in every patch like the HD500.

[phil_m]

5 hours ago, jesuscares said:

Thanks for the response.I guess an external looper should be a lot easier to handle.Or I will connect the looper with send/return.I wish it came with a default looper in every patch like the HD500.

 

I don’t get it... What’s so difficult about meeting those requirements?

 

If you put an external looper in one of the effects loop, you will have an audible gap in its playback when you change presets. You would need to connect an external looper after the Helix’s output if you want to be able to change presets and have the looper playback be seamless.

[jesuscares]

On 7/11/2018 at 8:53 AM, phil_m said:

 

I don’t get it... What’s so difficult about meeting those requirements?

 

If you put an external looper in one of the effects loop, you will have an audible gap in its playback when you change presets. You would need to connect an external looper after the Helix’s output if you want to be able to change presets and have the looper playback be seamless.

It's a lot of work assigning a looper in each effect. #1 There should be an available slot. # 2 The looper assignment on each patch should match the one on the next (or something like that) if not it gets cut off while moving from patch to patch.Not an easy work around for sure !

[codamedia]

2 hours ago, jesuscares said:

It's a lot of work assigning a looper in each effect. #1 There should be an available slot. # 2 The looper assignment on each patch should match the one on the next (or something like that) if not it gets cut off while moving from patch to patch.Not an easy work around for sure !

 

How much effort does that really take? If you use overdrive or delay on all your patches, don't you need open slots and don't you have to insert those as well on each patch? How long does it take to insert a looper? 5 seconds?

 

On 7/11/2018 at 2:47 AM, jesuscares said:

I wish it came with a default looper in every patch like the HD500.

 

I like that fact that resources (and switches) don't get "reserved" for something others may not use. It's left up to each and every one of us what we would like to insert into each patch... the ultimate of customization. 

 

Just my 2 cents... 

 

[phil_m]

IIRC, being able to disable the Looper block was one of the most requested, if not the most requested, Ideascale item for the HD line.

[soundog]

That's pretty darned good for a 1-switch looper, and useful for a doing a lot of simple live performance looping. I'm impressed. Still, it would be nice to have an optional two-button looper (or even three). Then the user could do most anything available in fancy dedicated loopers (other than, say, dual loop stuff). For example, a double tap to stop the loop is a bit awkward in the 1-switch looper; a second switch would enable immediate stopping with one tap.

 

 

[ppoceiro]

Hi!

Anyone having trouble when changing snapshots or presets and overdubbing with the 6-button looper after the 2.6 update?

I'm not a looper user but wanted to test both loopers.

I don't think the old looper is behaving like it should. If I try to overdub after changing snapshots it looses the loop recorded before.

Also the new looper appears to have some delay after entering the record mode. I couldn't get my loops to sync. Maybe this is just my lack of experience or maybe not.

Cheers

[phil_m]

9 minutes ago, ppoceiro said:

Hi!

Anyone having trouble when changing snapshots or presets and overdubbing with the 6-button looper after the 2.6 update?

I'm not a looper user but wanted to test both loopers.

I don't think the old looper is behaving like it should. If I try to overdub after changing snapshots it looses the loop recorded before.

Also the new looper appears to have some delay after entering the record mode. I couldn't get my loops to sync. Maybe this is just my lack of experience or maybe not.

Cheers

 

Someone else mentioned this, and I tried to replicate it, and I couldn't. Meaning the looper was working the way I'd expect it to. I'm not sure what you mean by not getting your loops to sync.

[ppoceiro]

3 minutes ago, phil_m said:

 

Someone else mentioned this, and I tried to replicate it, and I couldn't. Meaning the looper was working the way I'd expect it to. I'm not sure what you mean by not getting your loops to sync.

Hi.

You're talking about the new looper?

I tried it once. Didn't tried it again. It felt like after hitting the footswitch the looper add a small amount of silence in the beginning of the loop.

Maybe it was me cause I'm not that experienced with loopers. I just commented on some other guy's post about this because he was complaining about not being able to keep the loops synced and I also felt the new looper was somewhat glitchy. 

About the bug on the 6-button looper is it something the L6 wizards are aware or should I open a ticket?

Where you able to replicate this bug?

[phil_m]

3 minutes ago, ppoceiro said:

Hi.

You're talking about the new looper?

I tried it once. Didn't tried it again. It felt like after hitting the footswitch the looper add a small amount of silence in the beginning of the loop.

Maybe it was me cause I'm not that experienced with loopers. I just commented on some other guy's post about this because he was complaining about not being able to keep the loops synced and I also felt the new looper was somewhat glitchy. 

About the bug on the 6-button looper is it something the L6 wizards are aware or should I open a ticket?

Where you able to replicate this bug?

 

I'm talking about the 6-button looper... I couldn't replicate the supposed bug.

 

But if it's something you're able to replicate, yes, you should open up a ticket.

[ppoceiro]

Ok. I'll try it again and open a ticket if it doesn't work like it used to.

The sync issue was only with the new looper.

The steps I remember doing were press the record footswitch and record a loop, press play when finished, press mode and select another snapshot, enter looper again and press record as if you were overdubbing. At this point the loop recorded previously stops playing. It's like you're beginning the process all over again. 

I'm not 100% sure that this was the procedure but almost.

I'll try to do it again when I can. 

Cheers

[gjhardwick]

On ‎8‎/‎16‎/‎2018 at 3:02 AM, soundog said:

That's pretty darned good for a 1-switch looper, and useful for a doing a lot of simple live performance looping. I'm impressed. Still, it would be nice to have an optional two-button looper (or even three). Then the user could do most anything available in fancy dedicated loopers (other than, say, dual loop stuff). For example, a double tap to stop the loop is a bit awkward in the 1-switch looper; a second switch would enable immediate stopping with one tap.

 

 

 

You program a spare footswitch on your HX to mute the 1-switch looper (by toggling the playback volume from 100% to 0%), which could act as a pseudo stop function

[soundog]

Good idea. Unless, of course, you need to start your recorded and stored loop from the beginning later in the song. But if the loop is just used once during a tune, a mute would work just fine.

[marshallsp]

HxFx 2.6, I'm still getting the problem regarding the one botton looper mentioned earlier.  When attempting to delete the loop I get a second of playback.  This is not gigable.  It randomly blurps out the first second of your well timed loop.  Could someone else confirm this please?  Or maybe I am setting it up wrong?

[phil_m]

9 hours ago, marshallsp said:

HxFx 2.6, I'm still getting the problem regarding the one botton looper mentioned earlier.  When attempting to delete the loop I get a second of playback.  This is not gigable.  It randomly blurps out the first second of your well timed loop.  Could someone else confirm this please?  Or maybe I am setting it up wrong?

 

That's just a limitation of the One Button Looper. The one-button TC Electronic Ditto behaves the same way. The workaround is two hold down the footswitch on the second tap when stopping the loop playback (assuming you know you're done with that loop).

[marshallsp]

Thank you Phil.  I'll give it a go when I get home.  

[reidjj]

I'm pretty new with the HX Effects box, so pardon me if this is a dumb question.  I'm able to create loops with the 1-switch looper - no problem, works well.  But what I haven't been able to do is SAVE the loop so that I can use it again at a later time.  I've tried using the normal save function but once I power off and power on again, the loop is gone.  Is this just the way it works, or am I just not getting it?  Thanks.

[silverhead]

That's the way it works. You can't save loops; you can hold one loop (plus overdubs) in memory at one time. As soon as you begin a new loop, or turn off the device, the loop is gone.

[reidjj]

Okay - thanks silverhead - that's too bad.  I guess I'll continue to use my Ditto for recurring loops until (hopefully) they add a save option.

[silverhead]

I doubt that we'll ever see a Save option for the Looper in any Line 6 Multi-FX device. These devices include a basic looper for practice and preset audition purposes. It's not intended to be, or compete with, a fully functional looper pedal such as the Line 6 JM4 Looper or a similar 3rd party product.

[jpolitzer]

Hello Line 6 Expert Team,

 

pls will be there possible in the future by new firmware put 2x or 3x "1 switch looper" in one patch? Helpfull for creating more track looping......

"Save" loops it´s not neccessary....:-)

[silverhead]

You could make this suggestion in Ideascale.

 

The biggest challenge, I suspect, would be memory. Each additional active loop would require additional memory. There's virtually no chance that new memory will be added in the design and manufacture of the device, so that memory would have to be stolen from existing memory. What features or capabilities (presumably currently using that memory) would you be willing to give up?

[jpolitzer]

Dear Silverhead,

 

thanks for your comment. Of course I understand. that there is for loop limited capacity 120 sec. (not sure, but doesn´t matter). There would be solution, that if you use second looper in patch, this capa could be only 1/2 and by third looper 1/3 etc….. Of course maximum possible loopers in one patch  - 3x or 4x ? Thats could be enough…….

[silverhead]

Yes - that could work. It's possible that a firmware update could manage existing looper memory to store up to 4x15 sec. stereo loops as opposed to 1x120 sec. mono loop (or any compatible number of mono/stereo combinations of loops) with each looper occupying an available FX block in the selected path.

 

Again - you could make a suggestion for this in Ideascale.

[jpolitzer]

Yes, just I´m waiting for answer after registration on Line6 Ideascale......

[theartofnoise]

An amazing fix for all this would be this...Keep the 6button looper, which still leaves 2 buttons doing nothing....just let us use the empty buttons as their already assigned stomp changes! Hd 500 did this, somehow accidentally it seems. I really loved that. PLEASE LINE 6! You’re so close to having my perfect pedal

[BlueD]

On 7/7/2018 at 8:43 AM, phil_m said:

Instructions are in the release notes:

 

 

The lack of an updated manual considering how much new stuff is in the new firmwares is a pretty glaring oversight on Line6 behalf. It's not like anyone is going to die at their desk if a product manager takes a couple days to update the PDF version of the manual (even an Appendix would be better than what they currently provide).

 

I love their product but I get the sense that the PM team is not super on top of the details that make for a great customer experience.

[phil_m]

25 minutes ago, BlueD said:

 

The lack of an updated manual considering how much new stuff is in the new firmwares is a pretty glaring oversight on Line6 behalf. It's not like anyone is going to die at their desk if a product manager takes a couple days to update the PDF version of the manual (even an Appendix would be better than what they currently provide).

 

I love their product but I get the sense that the PM team is not super on top of the details that make for a great customer experience.

 

They're pretty interactive, all things considered... Eric (who was the Helix product manager and is now the Chief Architect for the Yamaha Guitar Group) is pretty active on Facebook, The Gear Page and other forums (not so much here just because the traffic here pales in comparison to many of those other sites).

 

The thing is, people generally don't read the manuals. I mean, there's a few that do, but most people it seems would rather ask the question on the Facebook group or somewhere else than look it up. Anyway, Line 6's policy is pretty to make a new manual when there's a new SKU released and then only update it for major number revisions. So there will a new one when the 3.0 update is released. The big hurdle is translating it into all the different languages. There's several dozen languages available for download.

[BlueD]

1 hour ago, phil_m said:

 

They're pretty interactive, all things considered... Eric (who was the Helix product manager and is now the Chief Architect for the Yamaha Guitar Group) is pretty active on Facebook, The Gear Page and other forums (not so much here just because the traffic here pales in comparison to many of those other sites).

 

The thing is, people generally don't read the manuals. I mean, there's a few that do, but most people it seems would rather ask the question on the Facebook group or somewhere else than look it up. Anyway, Line 6's policy is pretty to make a new manual when there's a new SKU released and then only update it for major number revisions. So there will a new one when the 3.0 update is released. The big hurdle is translating it into all the different languages. There's several dozen languages available for download.

 

Ok I hear you about the major versions only, but at least a cheatsheet would help. Release notes are not the right place (especially if it's the ONLY place) to put instructions for a new feature.

 

For comparison, Axe FX does it right: https://www.fractalaudio.com/downloads/manuals/axe-fx-3/Axe-Fx-III-Tone-Match-Manual.pdf

 

Single feature addendum to the manual. Not that hard to do.

[nickrobinson]

On 9/11/2018 at 3:14 PM, phil_m said:

 

 The workaround is two hold down the footswitch on the second tap when stopping the loop playback (assuming you know you're done with that loop).

 

Fantastic, you've saved me some stress that way, although it *is* annoying if you're emptying the loop between songs and people hear that burst (guess I could mute whilst doing that, )    I'd still like to see a dedicated "stop" on the 6 sw - have it as an alternate option for the "play once" button, since I can't think of many who use that? I like to snag a loop during a verse, then stop it immediately for alter use and the double tap requires serious concentration to end the loop in perfect time then stop it almost immediately afterwards, but I guess I'll pick up the skill. 

[nickrobinson]

I've written a page about the looping functions

http://looping.me.uk/hx-effects-looper-features/

[wotra]

Hi.

Just came around this post. I own the HX Stomp and missed the function to reverse-play the recording. I simply tried the cc-messages of the above post ( CC65 0-63: Forward; 64-127: )Reverse) and can say that it works. I have Firmware 2.82. Btw. I sent the cc-messages via command-line with the fantastic tool named "sendmidi" from a dutch guy. The command goes:

c:\sendmidi.exe dev line cc 65 65

Hope it helps.