Editing 3rd party presets - options seem to disappear

[Mike1225]

Hi - new Helix user just got it a couple weeks ago. I was doing OK but downloading Michael Britt's pre-sets were a game changer and maybe the best $30 bucks I've ever spent on guitar stuff. Problem I'm having is when I try to edit them. Seems options disappear or are greyed out. For example, was thinking of adding a second amp on a "Marshall" pre-set so I could have a super clean scene. But when I went to select an amp all were grayed out and not available except for 2. In my own patches, all available as well as Y connectors which were gone from this patch. I also can't seem to cut and paste from one Michael Britt preset to another if, for example, I like the delay or reverb in one. 

 

Would appreciate any insights and suggestions. 

 

(Note: I tried to post this issue a couple days ago but never saw it. come up so apologies if repeat)

 

Thank you, Mike

[datacommando]

42 minutes ago, Mike1225 said:

Would appreciate any insights and suggestions.

Hi Mike1225,
 

Welcome to the world of digital modelling. 
 

Yep, greyed out amps or effect means you have hit the buffers, run out of steam, no more gas in the tank, and about a million other ways of saying you have maxed out the DSP in your hardware.

 

This can be a minefield for the unwary (new user) because this thing looks as it can do anything (mostly it can), but some amp model consume more processing power depending on how complex they are. Whenever you are building a preset each block will use a varying amount of processor resources and as they accumulate you may find that some effects are no longer available (greyed out)

 

One of the contributors to this forum has made a detailed study of the amount of DSP each amp/effect uses.

 

Here’s a link to a video were he explains the theory.

 

 

Hope this helps/makes sense.

 

Oh, yeah, those Michael Britt presets are a very good place to start create your own patches from.

 

[HonestOpinion]

On 8/3/2020 at 6:33 PM, datacommando said:

Hi Mike1225,
 

Welcome to the world of digital modelling. 
 

Yep, greyed out amps or effect means you have hit the buffers, run out of steam, no more gas in the tank, and about a million other ways of saying you have maxed out the DSP in your hardware.

 

This can be a minefield for the unwary (new user) because this thing looks as it can do anything (mostly it can), but some amp model consume more processing power depending on how complex they are. Whenever you are building a preset each block will use a varying amount of processor resources and as they accumulate you may find that some effects are no longer available (greyed out)

 

One of the contributors to this forum has made a detailed study of the amount of DSP each amp/effect uses.

 

Here’s a link to a video were he explains the theory.

 

 

Hope this helps/makes sense.

 

Oh, yeah, those Michael Britt presets are a very good place to start create your own patches from.

 

 

Great reference, thanks!  Looks like he has updated his webpage to also include the PodGo allocations. 

 

One very important note for anyone using this dynamic spreadsheet. The DSP percentages listed on this webpage are for a single DSP. The Helix for example has two so you can fill up both paths(1&2)  to 100%. In other words double what the percentages would indicate when you take both paths into account; the limit becomes 200%.  I did a quick test to confirm this and for example on the Helix you can put five stereo Ganymede reverb blocks(5 x Ganymede[17.67%] = 88.35% of total for a single DSP) on Path1 and another five on Path2 for a total according to this spreadsheet of 176.7%. That is due to the fact that it is calculating only for a single DSP. You could of course continue to fill up both paths until they are at or close to 200%.

 

Another thing worth noting is that although his video mentions that "there are no mono reverbs on the Helix".  That situation has been remedied in firmware versions subsequent to when he released his video. There are now mono HX reverbs. His updated web page reflects that fact.

 

His latest update to the DSP allocations is for the 2.91 firmware but if you scroll down all the way to the bottom of the page he has some links for allocations for some earlier firmware revisions(hopefully people are on the latest firmware revision though). This is actually worthy of comment because different firmware versions mean that the allocations can change due to more efficient code or other changes that affect DSP usage. I would think any future changes to DSP allocation in upcoming firmware releases would be to decrease the DSP used as increasing it would mean that presets from previous firmware revisions that were close to or at the 100% total path usage limit could go over the limit and no longer work or load properly.

 

Btw, for anyone wanting to check out the DSP web page directly it can be found here:   http://benvesco.com/store/helix-dsp-allocations/

 

[Mike1225]

Thank you both for the explanation.