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Snapshot change and weird sound ?


Punkyboy
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Of course I can’t hear exactly the sound you describe, but I can say that it’s not unusual to have strange sound artifacts when switching snapshots. One of the key benefits of snapshots is that there is no audio gap when switching. The downside of that is that a drastic change in the sound of the snapshots is instantaneous and audible. Seems to me that an instantaneous change from an acoustic guitar to a driven electric guitar might be drastic enough to result in an audible POP. Many users here have described other artifacts like warbling or phasing if different snapshots have different time settings on certain FX between snapshots.

 

If the POP is being caused by this situation there is really little you can do about it; Helix and Variax are accurately modeling pretty much the same sound that would happen in the analog world if it were possible to make such dramatic  instantaneous changes.

 

One thing you could do to test this is to set up two different presets rather than using snapshots. Have each preset match exactly the two snapshots. Then experiment with changing between the presets. My guess is that the POP will disappear, but of course you will hear a gap in the audio as the presets are switched in and out of the Helix working memory. The POP is what you hear when the switch is instantaneous due to the memory not being swapped.

 

 

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One possibility:

Switching an amp model on or off while Helix is in performance mode can often result in an audible pop.
This can happen if one snapshot switches the model off to provide a very clean tone.

Some presets shared (or sold) in the CustomTone area do that.


Can also happen when using two different amp models and assigning one model to snapshot X and another model to snapshot Y.

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There are probably a couple dozen ways to do this without creating a pop sound during snapshot change. Rather than shutting off an amp and turning one on, think volume instead and you will have a smooth transition. Some examples:

 

Use volume or gain blocks in front of the amps you wish to switch between.

distortion snapshot

input 1 =     pedal gain [0]  ---- brit plexi --- output

input 2 =     pedal gain [-120]  ---- jazz rivet --- output

 

clean snapshot

input 1 =     pedal gain [-120]  ---- brit plexi --- output

input 2 =     pedal gain [0]  ---- jazz rivet --- output

 

or change the output levels

distortion snapshot

input 1 =    brit plexi --- output [0]

input 2 =    jazz rivet --- output [-120]

 

clean snapshot

input 1 =    brit plexi --- output [-120]

input 2 =    jazz rivet --- output [0]

 

change a split

from 100% A to the the distorted amp

to 100& B to the clean amp

 

 

Hope this helps.

btw. I am away from my helix so the values may be wonky...

 

 

 

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, Punkyboy said:

Thank you all for explanation. I will try your suggestions

But can Line  6 not fix that issue ? Or they already ditch the device like they always do?

 

As explained above, this is the compromise between instantaneous radical changes and waiting a couple of ms for a different preset to load.

Sometimes we have to change our methods to accommodate reality. You could time your playing to reflect the time it takes for the preset to change.

That's what most people do. Sometimes an empty space (called a "rest"") can be a good thing!

Or you could buy a product that doesn't make a noise when the snapshot changes. What was that product called? I forget....it's not the AXEFX, I've read that there's sometimes a gap when changing SCENES that employ different amps, and it makes the same sort of random noises when there's radical changes.

 

If you knew in advance that L6 always "ditches" products, why did you buy it?

FWIW - FAS people have the same gripe. All tech has an "end of life", after which further improvements don't get made.

Development moves to the newer platform.

Since they've just consolidated the code so that changes can more easily be made across the entire Helix family, it'll be AT LEAST a couple of years before Helix experiences EOL.

And before you accuse me of being a Fanboi, I have a Powercab, which they DO seem to have abandoned after one update. I make loud noises about that at every opportunity, like right now! :-(

 

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The one thing that has caused strange sounds to me is drastical changes in gain setting/master/channel vol changes in amps with snapshots. When wanting clean/crunch/heavy sound from just one amp and switching between those sounds and gain settings within one amp in snapshots. Better turn on/off dist pedals/different amps in these instances which causes no audible pops/clicks.

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15 hours ago, Punkyboy said:

Thank you all for explanation. I will try your suggestions

But can Line  6 not fix that issue ? Or they already ditch the device like they always do?

 

 

There was a firmware update for Helix just a few months ago.  That would seem to strongly indicate Line 6 has not "ditched the device like they always do."  

Look for a thread called Helix Ideascale Community Submissions.  It will be near the top of the list.  I do not have the time needed to read the entire thread but if you do have the time you may discover someone has already asked for a fix to the problem you describe.  If it has not already been asked then you're free to ask for it yourself.

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I have had that popping sound in one of my presets with a regular electric guitar.  In my case it was the the acoustic sim on the HELIX itself that made the popping sound.  I opened a ticket and got a response with an attached fixed preset:

 

...  I can hear the sound glitch you reported. I think the AC-2 is one of those effects that needs to go near or at the very beginning in the signal chain.

 

Another thing that I've seen makes the popping sound worse in my case was the volume pedal that I used to cut the input volume.  It made the popping sound a lot worse. 

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While some explanations in this thread may help to tackle the issue, I noticed some sort of random behaviour here and there. Had a patch with two amps and rather little additional stuff and it popped pretty noticeably when switching the amps on/off alternatively using snapshots. Out of curiosity I changed their order (and nothing else) and the popping was completely gone.
There might be some technical explanations for that, such as some amps maybe taking a little longer to change their on/off status than others (which would possibly result in both amps being active for a very short amount of time), or there might be some small latency caused by processing order, whatever. All I know is that it sometimes happens.

Personally, I avoid this by using path layouts allowing me to place amps that are used alternatively in different paths. That way they're never running serially. Seems to work quite well, ever since I'm doing so, I haven't experienced any pops. Makes patch building a little more complexed, but on the upside, I can use the extra routing for other things, too (such as dedicating freely switchable drive blocks to just one amp, something I'm doing all the time).

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