IR Position

[tripnek]

When I create a preset with IRs, it would appear  the helix preset is referencing the “Position” or “Location” of that IR instead of the IR name. So if the IRs in my Helix get shuffled around or If I put my preset on a friends Helix (who has the same IR Bundle) then the IRs are not correct in the preset.

Is this a setting that can be changed somewhere in the Helix or is it a hardwired limitation of the Helix?

[SaschaFranck]

59 minutes ago, tripnek said:

Is this a setting that can be changed somewhere in the Helix or is it a hardwired limitation of the Helix?

 

It's one of *the* worst limitations/implementations of the Helix.

Because of that, once you move *any* preset or IR out of the Helix (be it for backups, sharing or whatever purposes), you *need* to manually take note which IR was used for each and every patch.

And no, it really doesn't get any worse.

 

Fortunately, firmware version 2.9 seems to be somewhat around the corner (which could as well mean it'd take another half a year, though) and the recent information says that the IR situation is at least somewhat aderessed as in patches now remembering the IR by name - we can only hope this will not break more things than it fixes.

But so far, manual houskeeping is your only option.

[silverhead]

Using the backup and restore feature in HX Edit eliminates the need for manual IR tracking. This feature backs up all IRs and restores them to the same location.

[rvroberts]

There is a simple fix for this.  You may notice a lot of IR names are too long anyhow and get truncated.

I (and a lot of other people) rename my IRs.  The important bit is a number at the start   Think computers - I number 001, 002, 003 etc.

the 00 part will be 091 for slot 91 and 110 for slot 110.  Computers put that list in correct order.

Importing that list will always stay in the correct order.

I keep any useful stuff in the name, so it's say 012marshall4x12GB   GB being green back. Could be 012Marsh4x12GB57 if you want to put in the mic.

Screen grab of list is a nice idea too - if a bit time consuming putting things in the correct spot.

As the Helix references the slot not the name, I don't think there will be any name recognition any time soon.

[SaschaFranck]

11 hours ago, silverhead said:

Using the backup and restore feature in HX Edit eliminates the need for manual IR tracking. This feature backs up all IRs and restores them to the same location.

 

And it doesn't help at all with individual patches because it's a full backup. Something I most often don't want to do.

[SaschaFranck]

9 hours ago, rvroberts said:

There is a simple fix for this.  You may notice a lot of IR names are too long anyhow and get truncated.

I (and a lot of other people) rename my IRs.  The important bit is a number at the start   Think computers - I number 001, 002, 003 etc.

the 00 part will be 091 for slot 91 and 110 for slot 110.  Computers put that list in correct order.

 

Sorry, but that is no fix but a workaround - and not a great one. I prefer to keep the original names of the IRs, so I can track where they were coming from.

The Helix should be able to deal with long filenames (the last time long filenames were an issue in computer land was with Win 95) and it should reference IRs by name, not by slot number. That would be the fix.

Besides, your proposed workaround doesn't exactly work anyway. Just export a few patches and IRs more than once. Ho to tell which IR starting with 071 a patch like "Great Lead" needs? Is it "071_combocab.wav" or "071_fullstack.wav"? So, you still need to manually write down all these informations, there's absolutely no way around it.

[silverhead]

2 hours ago, SaschaFranck said:

 

And it doesn't help at all with individual patches because it's a full backup. Something I most often don't want to do.

Neither rvroberts nor I are disputing your point, which is valid. We're simply offering the OP options. He can decide whether or not he likes them.

[SaschaFranck]

56 minutes ago, silverhead said:

Neither rvroberts nor I are disputing your point, which is valid. We're simply offering the OP options. He can decide whether or not he likes them.

 

But honestly, it doesn't help the OP as apparently all he wants is to slap a preset (or maybe a bunch of them) onto a friends Helix - I'd say it's very likely that this doesn't include transfering a complete backup.

Labeling your IRs with numbers doesn't help with this procedure, either, because the corresponding IR slot might be occupied already.

Seriously, no matter which kinda workarounds there might be, the only way to really make sure a single preset (or basically anything apart from a full backup, which, fwiw, will also mess with the target machines global settings and what not) is 1:1 reproduceable once it's exported and reimported is to manually take notes of the IR(s) used.

This is all I'm saying and in case you want to do such a thing, it's the single most relevant bit of information one should be aware of.

[silverhead]

Again, I agree with you. But perhaps we should let the OP decide for himself what he might find helpful. That's not up to you to say. 

 

I and rvroberts have offered him something. While his current question pertains to a very specific circumstance who's to say our suggestions won't be helpful in another context?

 

 I agree that the info you provided is very relevant. But there are other considerations and information that he should also be made aware of. He may share your opinion that there's nothing he can do. He may not.

[SaschaFranck]

Well, we may agree or not, but I just find it super-important to be completely aware of the mess that is the current Helix IR implementation. And it's even more important to be aware straight from the start, because the later it happens, the more mess you'll have to deal with.

[HonestOpinion]

Doubt this is limited to just the Helix but the current state of IR management is just terrible. , In the years since the Helix has been out IR management has received some minimal improvements in that at least a full backup will restore your IRs to the correct slots. Even this did not used to be possible.

 

Not the first to say it but we need to be able to store the IR with the preset when it is exported or backed up. Yes I know this will marginally increase the size of the backups/exports .  Store the IR either in the preset itself or in an attached folder with the IRs with pointers from the presets. The IR folder approach would reduce redundancy in the preset backups. Adding a feature to be able to designate whether a preset should have the IR stored with it or be "global" would be great too. That way if you wanted to change the IR in a slot it would be reflected in any preset using that slot that had the global flag.

 

Now on to the second major issue, truncation of IR names. Routinely my IR names get truncated and lose any meaningful description. This requires manual renaming of the IRs. Are you kidding? Device manufacturers and IR producers have to get on the same page and come up with an adequate naming length standard. That standard then needs to be self-enforced by IR creators to make sure the IR names are not too long. Device makers need to ensure that their hardware and software provide the agreed upon length in their displays and onscreen in their computer apps. Scroll the names if you need to but show the whole name. The current situation is ridiculous.

 

The character limit on IR names on for example the editor for the PowerCab+ is insanely short. It's more than eight but it reminds me of eight character filename limits from the bad old days or the devices I have owned, ooooold devices, which failed to provide a large enough namespace in their displays. I can't believe in 2020 it is still ok to hack a meaningful name in half.  I just ran into this trying to load up a bunch of IRs from Celestion (not exactly an off-brand IR maker). At this rate we're going to have manned interstellar travel before we gain the ability to see our IR's entire names.  Hope this gets addressed by the whole industry and soon. Amateur hour!

[SaschaFranck]

48 minutes ago, HonestOpinion said:

Not the first to say it but we need to be able to store the IR with the preset when it is exported or backed up. Yes I know this will marginally increase the size of the backups/exports .  Store the IR either in the preset itself or in an attached folder with the IRs with pointers from the presets. The IR folder approach would reduce redundancy in the preset backups. Adding a feature to be able to designate whether a preset should have the IR stored with it or be "global" would be great too. That way if you wanted to change the IR in a slot it would be reflected in any preset using that slot that had the global flag.

 

I already said so elsewhere, but all that was required to export and import presets along with the correct IRs was a file management as we know from software samplers (or sequencers in general).

When you export a patch, there should be options to save just the patch file, the patch file along with the used IR(s) or a consolidated file. Works exactly like that with, say, Native Instruments' Kontakt or Battery.

Then, when you import a patch, it should automatically find the right IR(s) - in case it's loaded into the Helix already (fwiw, there should be a checksum check in addition to a name check). In case it's not, HX Edit should ask you to locate the correct IR or perform a search (entire filesystem, just a drive, just a folder). Once the right IR is found, HX Edit should ask you which slot to import the IR to (or just use the first free one). In case all slots are filled up already, you should be asked whether you wanted to replace an IR. Ok, this might introduce some (correct patch) data loss. So let's see for further things proper IR management should allow for to adress this:

All IRs in use should be tagged as such. That way, you'd know which ones could be deleted easily. Should be a piece of cake to implement that (at least compared to some of the other coding marvels we see being done on modelers). But that still could be improved. When you select a loaded IR that is tagged as being in use, there should be an option to display a list of all patches the IR is used in. That way you'd know whether deleting the IR would affect important patches. It should further be possible to batch save all patches using a certain IR, so you could safely delete them (along with the IR).

 

Quote

Now on to the second major issue, truncation of IR names. Routinely my IR names get truncated and lose any meaningful description. This requires manual renaming of the IRs. Are you kidding? [snip...]

 

Amen to all that!

It's 2020 and I still have to deal with truncated file names? I could actually understand if reading them would become problematic on some displays (so they would possibly scroll and it'd take a while for us to see the full name) - but truncation? Really, that's just embarrassingly Win95-ish.

 

I would absolutely love to be able to free up large parts of my IR slots to temporarily explore larger chunks of IRs straight on the Helix, simply because it's just friggin' excellent to do that in pedal edit mode while playing. But it's impossible to go for that unless I do a full backup (which takes time and hence reduces fun instantly). And even if I decide to do so, what if I wanted to keep some of the fresh IRs? Take note of the fresh IRs I want to keep, backup all new patches using the fresh IRs individually, take note which patch uses which fresh IR, reload the backup, find slots for the fresh IRs, load the new patches, re-assign the fresh IRs to them. If it wasn't that sad, you'd think this was a comedy.

 

Fwiw, just some days ago I imported a bunch of IRs and found some of them extremely nice. So I went crazy creating patches with them. Let's say like around 30. Now I want to throw the unused ones out but don't exactly remember which ones I didn't use (ignoring my own advice that I give to everybody asking me about these things, how clever...). In addition, I placed those IRs somewhere in the middle of the IR slots - but I'd prefer the 2-3 ones I'd actually like to keep be moved up to my first 30 slots (which I decided to reserve for "keep these on the unit all the time until there's a solution for the IR dilemma" duties), so I would have to re-assign them anyway. As a result, I will now have to try to remember all the patches I created ever since the IR import, write down the IRs used, delete the new IRs or move the ones used up and then re-assign them in the patches using them.

And that was just dealing with a mere 10 (!) IRs. Now try to imagine what I would end up with in case I started to select IRs from the RedWirez Big Pack that way (which comes in with around 20k IRs). I'd likely spend the rest of my life taking patch-IR-relationship notes.

[BrianPeter]

On 2/14/2020 at 3:58 PM, silverhead said:

Using the backup and restore feature in HX Edit eliminates the need for manual IR tracking. This feature backs up all IRs and restores them to the same location.

Doesn't really help if you dump in 128 IR's (max limit currently), futz around for a couple of weeks setting up patches that ultimately end up using say a dozen or so of them, and then want to house-clean and get rid of the unused ones to make space to try out another IR pack.  You have no way of knowing which of the original 128 you actually used, and no practical way of consolidating them into slots 1-12 as "keepers".

 

As mentioned by others here, IR management on the Helix is brutal, and really IMO, the only half-baked feature that seems to have gotten no thought on how it would actually be a useful implementation during development.  Everything else about the Helix is user-friendly and makes sense.  IR management doesn't.

 

Cheers

[silverhead]

All true. Again, I'm not disputing any of that. Simply pointing out that there is one situation in which you don't need to manually track IRs.

[gunpointmetal]

Could the IR management be better? Absolutely. Does complaining about it currently help solve the problem at hand? Absolutely not. There are several useable workarounds for the original issue, so maybe save the IR implementation debate for a thread that's actually about that.

Side Note: if you need to be constantly shuffling around 128 IRs, when do you play guitar? I've been auditioning them vai USB and Reaper using the looper and only dropping the ones I want to use on the device. So far I think I've used maybe 60 slots, and I still feel like I'm spending too much time futzing with it most of the time.

[brue58ski]

One of the reasons I don't use IR's a lot is because of the difficulty of keeping the IR associations. It is a pain. Yes, the work around mentioned does work around it, but is so inefficient I just don't bother with it. Many of the other suggestions in this thread would be great. Looking forward to seeing what solutions they come up with.

[SaschaFranck]

6 hours ago, gunpointmetal said:

Side Note: if you need to be constantly shuffling around 128 IRs, when do you play guitar? I've been auditioning them vai USB and Reaper using the looper and only dropping the ones I want to use on the device. So far I think I've used maybe 60 slots, and I still feel like I'm spending too much time futzing with it most of the time.

 

It takes almost no time to audition 128 IRs, where's the problem?

[gunpointmetal]

12 minutes ago, SaschaFranck said:

 

It takes almost no time to audition 128 IRs, where's the problem?

If you can tell if you want to use an IR in a couple of seconds, more power to you, I guess. If you only spend ~10 seconds with each one, that's still like 20 minutes just to get through them, then if you're needing to cycle through ALL 128 slots several times because you got some new IRs... I don't know, seems like a lot of time to me when my playing time is already limited. I'm the odd-man out in modeling land most of the time, though, because I have limited needs in regards to patches (original bands, maybe 3-4 presets per band), I sound 99% the same no matter what I dial up, and I already have a clear idea of what gear gets me to the tones I'm after, so I've never felt the need to collect IRs just to check them out.  

[SaschaFranck]

2 hours ago, gunpointmetal said:

If you can tell if you want to use an IR in a couple of seconds, more power to you, I guess. If you only spend ~10 seconds with each one, that's still like 20 minutes just to get through them, then if you're needing to cycle through ALL 128 slots several times because you got some new IRs... I don't know, seems like a lot of time to me when my playing time is already limited. I'm the odd-man out in modeling land most of the time, though, because I have limited needs in regards to patches (original bands, maybe 3-4 presets per band), I sound 99% the same no matter what I dial up, and I already have a clear idea of what gear gets me to the tones I'm after, so I've never felt the need to collect IRs just to check them out.  

 

Well, my playing time isn't exactly limited. And I usually use pedal edit to quickly go through a bunch of new IRs, which allows me to instantly feel them under my fingertips. Most often this very quickly tells me whether I like an IR or don't.

And fwiw, I don't use tons of patches at all, either. I'm always only using one single patch per gig. Yet, I like checking out IRs because they're extremely great to deliver, say, a different point of view.

Fwiw #2: In addition to using IRs for plain cab sim duties, I really like to fool around with some more "esoteric" ones when recording. Ever used a spoon sample (or whatever might come to your mind) as an IR? Can be quite interesting.

 

Whatever, all that shouldn't matter because it's no excuse for the poor IR handling of the Helix platform. And seriously, after around 5 years it's about time this gets a decent update.

[BrianPeter]

On 2/19/2020 at 9:33 AM, gunpointmetal said:

Could the IR management be better? Absolutely. Does complaining about it currently help solve the problem at hand? Absolutely not.

???

 

I have to completely disagree with that.  If the system is fubar, how is complaining NOT going to help solve the problem???  If no one complains, then Line 6 is going to think it's good and never do anything about it.

 

Complaining is the only way to garner any attention.  And there has been a lot of constructive complaining here, not simply bitching about it.  There are a lot of users who have chimed in on various threads both here and at TGP with a range of great ideas on how to improve things... All we need is for Line 6 to implement some of these.

 

Cheers

[gunpointmetal]

7 minutes ago, BrianPeter said:

???

 

I have to completely disagree with that.  If the system is fubar, how is complaining NOT going to help solve the problem???  If no one complains, then Line 6 is going to think it's good and never do anything about it.

 

Complaining is the only way to garner any attention.  And there has been a lot of constructive complaining here, not simply bitching about it.  There are a lot of users who have chimed in on various threads both here and at TGP with a range of great ideas on how to improve things... All we need is for Line 6 to implement some of these.

 

Cheers

No, making a request on IdeaScale is how you get Line 6 to work on stuff. Or go complain on TGP. Complaining here is just shouting at the peanut gallery. 

[SaschaFranck]

10 hours ago, gunpointmetal said:

No, making a request on IdeaScale is how you get Line 6 to work on stuff. Or go complain on TGP. Complaining here is just shouting at the peanut gallery. 

 

Well, this is Line 6s official forum. People have complained about it on Ideascale. Nothing happened. I am not up to date about the TGP status quo and as I'm not welcomed there, I can't complain there. So I do it here, on their very official channels. If they care about things, they should look into their user forums in the first place. As easy as that.

[BrianPeter]

1 hour ago, gunpointmetal said:

No, making a request on IdeaScale is how you get Line 6 to work on stuff. Or go complain on TGP. Complaining here is just shouting at the peanut gallery. 

You're joking about IdeaScale, right?

 

I mean, it's programmed about as well as the IR management on the Helix...

 

There is no way to sort the ideas by number of votes.  You can come close, but the list is never correctly sorted no matter if you pick Popular or Hot.  Seems a simple thing to be able to sort a bunch of numbers, but no, that doesn't work.

 

its a black hole waste of time there IMO.

 

Cheers

[gunpointmetal]

L6 staff spends less time here than they do on TGP, and they'll just link you to ideascale if you have an idea. Complaining here is literally pointless. 

@SaschaFranck I'm not welcome at TGP any more either, lol. I told a certain speaker designer with no social skills that he needed to quit being an a$$ to everyone and woke up the next morning permabanned.

[SaschaFranck]

12 minutes ago, gunpointmetal said:

L6 staff spends less time here than they do on TGP, and they'll just link you to ideascale if you have an idea. Complaining here is literally pointless.

 

Well, it's their fault then. But that won't keep me away from mentioning things here.

In all honesty, while I think they're nice guys, they're a bit too much into PR. And you don't get much paid back from PR in your own forums. Hence they rather use TGP.

And I'm absolutely serious: It's their loss.

 

Quote

I'm not welcome at TGP any more either, lol. I told a certain speaker designer with no social skills that he needed to quit being an a$$ to everyone and woke up the next morning permabanned.

 

Hah - on a funny sidenote: That certain speaker designer is now banned from TGP as well. Back when I got banned there's been a drama proceeding that was beyond belief. The guy causing it still being there (even if he got banned multiple times before). Well, they can just keep going with literally the same discussions over and over again as long as they want. Again, it's their loss to ban people who actually add content to a forum (which is what forums are all about).