Live sound

[JVills]

I have Helix line 6 and purchased a power amp pro. I have spent quite a few weeks tweaking. I have played it live and the louder it gets the more tinny the sound. I have read lots of reviews saying its as good as a tube amp in the room but try as i might I cant achieve the full sound. I have all but given up and last gig resorted to taking my tube amp. I am using the power amp settings and bypassing the cabs on the Helix etc. Just a little lost where to go next. Is there someone who can help advise  what i am doing wrong. Its quite an investment in gear and I would love to gig with it without the tinny sound.

[phil_m]

6 hours ago, JVills said:

I have played it live and the louder it gets the more tinny the sound.

 

This is literally what the Fletcher Munson effect is. At softer volume, your ears are more sensitive to the mid-range, and the highs and lows tend to fall into the background. At high volume, the mid-range falls backs, and the highs and lows become more prominent. This is why tones dialed in at volumes lower than what you're gigging with often sound harsh and boomy when you turn them up. The best thing to do is to dial in tones at gig volumes. If you can't do that, you can at least dial back the highs and lows in your tones and focus on getting a nice mid-range.

[aaronlyon]

I've been playing my Helix live for a year now. Being a skeptical tube head, I started slowly, just using the Helix as FX pedals in front of my tube guitar amp, as a replacement for my old pedal board, so no big adjustment. All good.

 

Then I added an Amp model (but no cabinet model) to the end of the FX chain, and plugged into a 200w solid state power amp, into a 1x12 open-backed cabinet. Great! Nearly identical results, but so flexible because I can change amps on the Helix. I did notice the Helix is VERY full range, and I had to add the global EQ low pass at around 7-8KHz to soften the highs.

 

As a third step, I split the path in Helix, sending one output to my powered cab, as above, and a second output (this time with cabinet and speaker model) to the house PA and my IEMs. Awesome! Now I barely need an amp on stage, just for a little sound reinforcement for the band. And as a security blanket, I suppose. 

 

[JVills]

That's great thanks to you both for the advice. I have never heard of the Fletcher Munson effect before so just googled that. It is interesting reading and putting things into a clearer perspective. I have some lovely tones set up at low volume and really love the helix gear so quite excited to get this covered. What is the most efficient/ clean way to reduce the high and low tones please? "A global EQ low pass at around 7-8KHz to soften the highs" was suggested above. Would it be as simple as adding an equaliser effect at the start of the chain and adjust the frequency with that or is there something else I should be doing. Could I also ask aaronlyon, why you put the cab at the end of the chain. I usually have mine set up somewhere in the middle. Does this amp placement have a bigger impact when paying at volume or through front of house. I will play around with this later when back home from work but would be interesting to hear about that. Thanks in advance.

[DunedinDragon]

First, I want to emphasize something about the whole global EQ thing.  If you read the manual you'll note that Line 6 warns about using global EQ only for making corrections in the acoustics of the room and there's a very important reason for that.  But I want to put a couple of things in perspective for you first.

 

A key value of the Helix or any modeler is its ability to completely transform your sound from song to song, different genres, or in the middle of a song.  This is something new to people who have used traditional amps.  Typically you have an amp and it stays within a certain range of tone all the time.  Pedals can help transform the tone, but it will always have the base tone of the amp at it's core.  That's not the case with the Helix.  You can move from a heavy rock sound with a Marshall amp, to a very clean bluesy sound with a Roland JC120, to a more country or americana sound using a Fender twin, to a crunchy Pete Townshend sound with a Hi-Watt.  However using high cuts will vary depending on the amp model used, the cabinet used, and the mic or microphone mix used.  So using global EQ gets in the way of doing that correctly because it applies across whatever amp, cab, or mic is being used.  That's why it's important to keep such things within the patch itself so it can change, if necessary, right along with your base tone.

 

Another key difference in moving from a traditional amp to a modeler is that the paradigm being used on a modeler is one more closely associated with that of a recording studio than a live performance.  You've probably read stories about how famous groups with famous records record one track with a certain setup of amps and cabinets and a completely different setup for the next song.  That's more in line with how a Helix signal chain works than traditional live setups where you simply plug in and play the same rig all night.  You don't change your amp or your cabinet or your mic'ing approach from one song to the next, but in the Helix you can which is extraordinarily powerful in achieving a wide range of tones even within a genre or style.  That doesn't mean you HAVE to make those changes, but you can if you need to.

However, just like in a studio the more you understand how all of these things affect your tone, the more control you have over your tone.  Things like Fletcher Munson are always in play whether you play a traditional amp or a modeler.  They're more prominent on a modeler because you're listening to your sound through a particular mic placed in a particular location on your cabinet.  You'll hear the same things on a traditional amp and cabinet if you place your ear in the same place you would a mic on your speaker cabinet.  And if you're playing live through a PA, THAT is what your audience is hearing, which is NOT what you hear standing next to your amp on stage.

That's why the first step in getting your tone right is being sensitive to what cabinet or mix of cabinets you're using, what mic or mix of mics you're using, and the placement and mix of those mics.  Using a Shure SM-57 with a distance of 1" is a much harsher sound than using a Royer R121 ribbon mic at a 6" distance.  Combining those two mics can give you a middle ground between harsh and dark.  That's where you start when getting your tone where you want it.  Any additional corrections using EQ can be done after that using a parametric or graphic eq to fine tune the sound.

 

With all of that in mind I'd refer you to Jason Sadites exceptional series of videos on YouTube to see how he applies all of these elements to dial in a variety of tones.

[aaronlyon]

Nice post ^^^

 

I made the decision to use global EQ to soften the highs only after four or five gigs, where I kept asking our engineer to cut the highs in the mix and in my ears. Before Helix, I preferred the sound of a SM57 well off-axis. In Helix, you could also achieve this effect by adjusting the EQ in the cabinet model itself--but I found I wanted the highs softened on both the direct-to-house and the on-stage monitor sends.

 

Anyway, lots of esoteric tweaking, based on experience, and actual live performance. Bottom line is, I'm chasing the tone I had BEFORE I got the Helix, using "vintage" gear (mostly amps I built myself). Once I was successful, I branched out, using more of the Helix's features, in more creative ways. I even got a Variax, that I have yet to use live.

 

I had a friend who played a lot of Stevie Ray on some old Line 6 Spyder combo--sounded great at bedroom volume. But then we had him sit in with a live band, and his amp sounded TERRIBLE--thin, brittle and painful. His sound probably would have recorded well, but did not work next to a drummer and amplified bassist. 

 

So, start simple, and then...wait, I already said that...