Gain/Waveforms - Helix Floor as Interface

[timtheark]

I'm sure this has been asked before but I'm having trouble finding an answer I can wrap my head around. Hoping someone here can help me out.

 

I have prior experience recording guitar + bass through a Focusrite Scarlett solo. DAW = Logic Pro. The interface has a gain knob I would turn up or down until I had waveforms in my DAW that were large enough I could clearly see what I was playing, but leaving a safe distance to avoid clipping.

 

Now, I started playing the Chapman Stick and am setting up my Helix Floor as a recording interface. The Stick has a stereo output. In my Helix preset, I set my top chain's input to Return 1 and the bottom chain to Return 2 for the melody and bass sides of the instrument. Each chain has a Y split at the very beginning and these sub-chains (...correct terminology?) sending to USB 3/4 and USB 5/6 (so I am sending two separate clean signals to Logic), while the main chains with compressors, amps, etc output to the Multi out. 

 

In Logic, I have three tracks set up - one for USB 3/4 (clean melody), one for USB 5/6 (clean bass), and one for USB 1/2 (melody and bass together w/ all their amps and effects, etc). Monitoring in Logic of all 3 tracks is turned off, so as I am recording, I can only hear the "dirty" signal from the Helix unit itself via headphones plugged into the Helix unit. Hopefully this all makes sense so far? I'm including all this info in case the routing matters at all ...

 

Here's my problem - the clean waveforms are so small for the clean melody track that normalizing them doesn't even do anything. It just looks like a flat line. The bass recordings are also quite small but they can at least be normalized. I was looking into a way to pump up the gain, similar to what I would do with my Focusrite Scarlett solo when recording a guitar or bass, but then started reading about gain staging (which I'm only now familiarizing myself with) and started thinking maybe I should not have been touching that gain knob all along!

 

Anyway, I'm wondering how I should proceed from here? I can hear the recorded melody tracks, they are just quiet and I see a flat line for a wave form. I'm guessing I could add a gain pedal to the otherwise clean melody chain (-> USB 3/4) and turn that up to compensate ... but is that best practice? I want to understand why this is happening, if I have been doing something improperly up until now with the focusrite, and how I should set this up moving forward.

 

I appreciate any help!

[Schmalle]

You might want to set Send/Return level to Instrument (Global Settings - Ins/Outs).

If you cannot hear / see anything after normalizing there is no recorded signal aka silence.

Read the manual for USB audio since there are limitations to each USB audio track pair.

Also I'd suggest to record Bass and Melody with USB 3/4 left/right and split in Logic if possible.

[timtheark]

54 minutes ago, Schmalle said:

You might want to set Send/Return level to Instrument (Global Settings - Ins/Outs).

If you cannot hear / see anything after normalizing there is no recorded signal aka silence.

Read the manual for USB audio since there are limitations to each USB audio track pair.

Also I'd suggest to record Bass and Melody with USB 3/4 left/right and split in Logic if possible.

 

Appreciate the suggestions! Looks like they are already set to 'Instrument,' so that's not the culprit.

I do hear the clean recording, which is what is strange. It's recording to the correct track and I can hear it, it's just very quiet and the waveform is a flat line.

Perhaps this is something to remedy within Logic instead of with the Helix?

[timtheark]

As an update: I just switched my Stick to mono and went into the Helix's XLR input. Within the Helix's Global Settings, I am able to turn on phantom power (the Stick supports this but it isn't necessary) and then turn up the Mic input gain - this worked wonders! Just like how I'm used to recording w/ the Focusrite and its gain knob ... I'm guessing this input gain functionality is unique to a "mic" input and doesn't exist for "instrument" inputs, though? If we had two XLR inputs on the Helix Floor, I would be set - ooph.

[SaschaFranck]

I think a part of the problem is that the return inputs, regardless whether you set them to "instrument" or not, are pretty weak, regarding the level of the dry signal recorded through USB. Even the normal guitar input is pretty weak. I would suspect the reason for this to be that Line 6 wanted to make sure there's always enough headroom so you wouldn't run into digital clipping even when using the hottest pickups possible. As a solution for this, if you really need to use more than the XLR and instrument inputs (which should at least deliver a decent volume for the dry recorded signal), I would consider some sort of small buffer/preamp pedal that you would then slap in front of the returns.

 

However, what I'm wondering about is that you say there's a recorded signal that you can listen to (even if at very low levels) but that you can't normalize. I'm a (very longtime) Logic user as well and haven't experienced that ever in all these years.

 

Sidenote: There's that little button in Logic, allowing you to vertically zoom in waveforms, which is a decent helper when dealing with weak audio recording levels. I use that all the time when cutting DI guitars. When you click-hold onto it, it allows you to adjust the level of zoom, after that it'll turn blue and a single click will then change between the zoomed and not zoomed levels.

[timtheark]

2 hours ago, SaschaFranck said:

I think a part of the problem is that the return inputs, regardless whether you set them to "instrument" or not, are pretty weak, regarding the level of the dry signal recorded through USB. Even the normal guitar input is pretty weak. I would suspect the reason for this to be that Line 6 wanted to make sure there's always enough headroom so you wouldn't run into digital clipping even when using the hottest pickups possible. As a solution for this, if you really need to use more than the XLR and instrument inputs (which should at least deliver a decent volume for the dry recorded signal), I would consider some sort of small buffer/preamp pedal that you would then slap in front of the returns.

 

However, what I'm wondering about is that you say there's a recorded signal that you can listen to (even if at very low levels) but that you can't normalize. I'm a (very longtime) Logic user as well and haven't experienced that ever in all these years.

 

Sidenote: There's that little button in Logic, allowing you to vertically zoom in waveforms, which is a decent helper when dealing with weak audio recording levels. I use that all the time when cutting DI guitars. When you click-hold onto it, it allows you to adjust the level of zoom, after that it'll turn blue and a single click will then change between the zoomed and not zoomed levels.

 

I really appreciate your thoughts - I have begun to suspect that the signal would just be weaker for the Returns vs other inputs. I'm thinking I will likely use my split XLR cable and run one side into the Helix's XLR input (allowing me to turn on phantom power), and use a XLR->1/4'' converter to run the remaining side into the guitar input. Not the most elegant solution ... I suppose a preamp pedal like you suggested is also a good solve here.

 

Regarding the normalization issue - yes, it is very strange! Perhaps I am normalizing it incorrectly? I notice that if I crank the waveform zoom REAL hard, I do actually start to see some information. Nonetheless, with the region selected and within the Editor panel > Functions > Normalize Region Gain and set to "Individual Regions," "Peak" and -1.0db ... nothing at all happens to my melody-side take. I can hear it, I can see the tiniest amount of information when I zoom the waveform way in, but normalizing isn't resulting in any changes. 

 

 

Edited September 25, 2020 by timtheark
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[SaschaFranck]

6 hours ago, timtheark said:

Regarding the normalization issue - yes, it is very strange!

 

Well, after seeing your screenshot, it actually isn't strange.

In the editor, click onto "File" rather than "Track" in the title row. You can only normalize individual files, not an entire track.

[SaschaFranck]

Fwiw, that is a *very* weak recorded signal to be sure. I'd really think about other ways (as you've described yourself already) to tackle the issue. With recording levels as low as that, you may experience dynamic loss and possibly noise or whatsoever, regardless of using 24bit.

[timtheark]

8 hours ago, SaschaFranck said:

 

Well, after seeing your screenshot, it actually isn't strange.

In the editor, click onto "File" rather than "Track" in the title row. You can only normalize individual files, not an entire track.

 

Thanks again for the feedback. Strange ... selecting the other two regions on the other two tracks (screenshot above) and then Function > Normalize Region Gain both normalized them as I would expect. Only that first, clean melody track didn't respond to the same command.

I'm asking around on the Stickist.com forum to see what solves other Stick players may have. It seems there are a number of Helix owners over there. I appreciate your help!

[timtheark]

On 9/25/2020 at 5:04 AM, SaschaFranck said:

 

Well, after seeing your screenshot, it actually isn't strange.

In the editor, click onto "File" rather than "Track" in the title row. You can only normalize individual files, not an entire track.

 

An update: you're 100% correct ... if I normalize from the "File" title row, it works just fine! I've always done it from the "Track" title row and gone Functions > Normalize Region Gain and set to "Individual Regions," "Peak" and -1.0db (which still seems to work properly with the bass and mixed stereo tracks). Guess I've been normalizing incorrectly all this time.

[SaschaFranck]

38 minutes ago, timtheark said:

An update: you're 100% correct ... if I normalize from the "File" title row, it works just fine! I've always done it from the "Track" title row and gone Functions > Normalize Region Gain and set to "Individual Regions," "Peak" and -1.0db (which still seems to work properly with the bass and mixed stereo tracks). Guess I've been normalizing incorrectly all this time.

 

Hah - I never use that function myself (and no, it's no more "incorrectly" but just as valid as the other option, from all I can tell). Yet, it's pretty strange that it doesn't work on that one region. I just tried on various regions and it always worked.

 

Ok, that got me thinking and testing (writing this 5 minutes after writing the previous paragraph). Now: You seem to have stumbled over a really strange bug in Logic. I took one region and lowered the gain (destructively) by several dB, so it was very low leveled, yet still audible. And - lo and behold! - all of a sudden the normalizing function available the way you described *doesn't* work anymore! To me, this very clearly is a Logic bug. In case I find the time I may try to narrow down the "can't normalize anymore" threshold and report it to Apple. Seriously, that's a pretty strange bug as we're talking about something that should just work under all circumstances.

 

Anyway, you didn't do anything wrong, it's clearly not your fault at all.