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Anyone tried the Iridium yet?


rzumwalt
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I've seen some reviews for the Strymon Iridium saying it might be an alternative for some players to the HX Stomp. I'd be curious if anyone has tried it and found any use for it in conjunction with the HX Stomp, HX Effects, or even Helix. If I were in the HX Stomp/Iridium market, I know I would choose the HX Stomp, but I could also see it being used sort of like "extra DSP" where you want two or three parallel amps that are too DSP intensive to use in the same preset. It's use  with HX Effects is obvious, but I feel like it is marketed toward physical pedalboard guys.

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Agreed. If I were to buy one it would be for practicing in my bedroom when I don't have access to my Helix or informal practice/jam at a bandmate's house and not wanting to lug my Helix (and everything I have hooked to it) with me, and just want to be able to plug in and play. After owning the Helix, it would feel extremely limiting. But I wonder whether running it in an effects loop as a parallel amp would have any obvious problems, like phasing, totally incompatible tone, unintended slapback effect, etc.

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1 hour ago, rzumwalt said:

I've seen some reviews for the Strymon Iridium saying it might be an alternative for some players to the HX Stomp. I'd be curious if anyone has tried it and found any use for it in conjunction with the HX Stomp, HX Effects, or even Helix. If I were in the HX Stomp/Iridium market, I know I would choose the HX Stomp, but I could also see it being used sort of like "extra DSP" where you want two or three parallel amps that are too DSP intensive to use in the same preset. It's use  with HX Effects is obvious, but I feel like it is marketed toward physical pedalboard guys.

 

Obviously you could pair it with the Stomp easily in some type of 4 cable approach so that the Stomp provided pre and post effects with the Iridium providing the amp modeling. 

 

In fact, there's a video on youtube comparing the two device's amp modelling that at least sets the groundwork for that setup, which I've linked below.

 

Now, in my opinion, that's a complete waste of money. The Iridium is massively expensive and unless you believe it brings some sort of premium amp sounds that the Stomp doesn't (which I don't) I can't imagine choosing to go that route. I'd rather have the Stomp be the core of everything, with some unique pedals apart from amp modelling to take some of the burden off of its DSP usage. If you already owned an HX Effects, I suppose the Iridium could be an excellent way to bring amp modelling into the mix. 

 

With all that said, at least in the way he has them setup in the video below, I did feel like the Iridium regularly sounded better. Yet, every time I tried to create the sounds I wanted to match his Iridium sounds I didn't feel like I had a problem doing so, so I'm not sure what stopped him. You of course might see it differently. 

 

 

 

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What you'd experience when running it in a Helix/HXFX/Stomp loop is roughly 3 times the latency. 2 times from the Line 6 unit in question and one time for the Iridium (I would think it'd come in at similar latency values). So instead of roughly around 2ms you'd deal with 6ms. And depending on the preset, it might as well become 8ms. Whether that's an issue would be something only you could decide. Otherwise I can't see any problems.

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All good insights. I've been telling a friend for a while to get an HX Stomp. He never would, but is suddenly interested in the Iridum. There are just some guys who need physical knobs I guess. For some people, everything I think makes the Helix platform superior, they think of as a detraction. It reminds me of those mobile phones they made maybe 10 years ago that were marketed to older people on the grounds that they didn't have a touchscreen or any apps and just had big number pad buttons and a few speed dial buttons your kids could pre-program for you. There would be an old guy saying, "I remember when you just used your phone to call people," and a lady using a walker saying, "now I can call my grandkids without all those confusing apps."

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Fwiw, I can perfectly understand that someone would prefer more knobs over less knobs. If possible, I would love to have as much physical knobs available as possible. I actually already have them (in form of a Behringer BCR2000 MIDI controller), it's just that the Helix won't work too well with them (for reasons already described in other threads).

And it's that very lack of physical knobs which would put me off the HX Stomp a bit (6 knobs with the Helix are ok but still not great).

I also own an Amplifirebox and the WYSIWYG approach is quite nice in my book. In fact, before purchasing my Helix, for a while I even thought about just buying another Amplifirebox.

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