Setting up new Helix Floor for live use - best practice

[Genebaby]

I just got a Helix finally after having an XT Live and a HD500X (I orginally got a HD500 upon release but it was killed at a gig and the easiest replacement was a 500X).

 

I guess I didn't think about things as much with the XT Live, plus those were simpler times and the sounds I made at home on the PC, using the LOGITECH speakers!!! seemed to work just fine.  Back then one 1/4" out went to the PA and the other went to my powered stage monitor, so I just turned that up or down as I needed on the unit itself.  We did numerous gigs and it was fine.

 

When I got the HD500 I didnt like the sound in the PC at all so I began using the amp models only and lugging my TSL100 to gigs for the power amp and cab parts.  Then I decided I wanted to do the 4CM and I got a JVM and set that up and it was great but lately, for some reason, I began jonesing for the Helix.  Maybe just for new gear?

 

I've almost purchased headphone monitors, then studio monitors, in an effort to dial in sounds at home that will be usable at gigs through a large PA, larger than the one I used to use with the XTL, but also that style.  Any decent PA really, where I am only bringing the Helix and my guitars to gigs.

 

As luck, or bad luck, would have it, I've just split up with the rest of the band, and the PA I used to play with is going to live at my pace rather than our rehearsal space.  I plan to run the Helix through it, with the channel as default as possible, to dial in sounds.  It will be done in my small studio, but I can turn it up loud if needed, to check the sound at volume.

 

The system uses Mackie SRM450 speakers and a matching sub.  These are old school Mackie's.  When we weren't using them we were going to sell them but realised they were worth more to us and the new ones at the time seemed to be made cheaper/differently.  I know we had to actively cool them as they would turn off in summer when we got them.

 

I am wondering, should I do it with just one SRM450, both, or both with the sub?  Should I put the speakers low/on the ground to simulate how I hear the guitar through the cab, like it's a hi-fi cab system?

 

I was able to quickly make a patch that sounds great through the PC, but earlier this week I took the Helix to the break up meeting and quickly plugged it in.  To show them the new toy and to hear those patches quickly through the PA and it wasn't great compared to at home, so I will be starting from scratch and want to know best practice, within my range, before I start again.

 

Previously I would dial in my amp in this same room, getting to know the sound it made at a volume I would use at the gig where then it would have a mic put on to go to FOH, that was my responsibility.  Now I have a little bit further to go, I'm handing the sound guy the lead from the mic.

 

The band did play our last gig just two weeks ago and I was paying attention at soundcheck and remember that my amp didn't sound great when he was getting me to play and turning me up etc.  The audio when the band was playing, via the desk or through phones/cameras was great, so I am thinking there is a relationship there between what I think is a good sound, and what a band needs, so hopefully when I do use it live it's a sound that is workable.

 

We are a one guitar band, so it's just me, bass and drums.

[DunedinDragon]

Chances are what you are hearing as a difference between live and at home has to do with what's referred to as the Fletcher-Munson effect.  Human hearing is such that different frequencies are heard better as the volume increases.  Generally speaking I find you get the full effect across all frequencies around 90dbSPL.  That's really not that loud, but it's useful to know when dialing in your presets at home to get a good feel for how they'll perform and sound live.  Download a signal meter app for your phone and that will allow you to get your levels in the correct range.

 

You can dial in your sound at home plugged directly into the Mackie speaker if you want.  I'd suggest getting it up off the floor at about chest height to get a good distribution of sound.  The problem is that live you'll be going into a mixer which tends to expect you to send a Mic signal level, but your speaker expects a Line signal level generally.  The easiest way to deal with this is to configure your Helix to send a Line level signal out of your 1/4" outputs and use those to dial in your presets with your speaker's gain control set at 12 o'clock, or halfway at home.  You can configure your XLR outputs separately to send Mic Level and use those to go direct to the mixing board.  Since there's nothing to put a mic on, you simply take the normal mic cable the soundman provides and plug it directly into your XLR L/mono output and you're ready to go once you've been gain staged and volume checked.

 

In my case I NEVER adjust any EQ for my Helix at the mixing board.  The Helix is more than capable of dialing those in.  I just gain stage it on the mixer and leave everything else flat for performances.

[Genebaby]

Thanks!  In my reading I have heard of that effect, I'll get an app for that and do my tests at 90db.  How far away should the phone be from the speaker to use that 90db level?

 

So just plug into the speaker?  I have set my XLR out to mic but would it be ok to set it back to line when I'm at home using the speaker and back to mic when I go to a gig?  Or just use the 1/4" outs as it's not a big deal/difference?

 

So ignore the sub, and even the desk?  I was going to go into the desk via the XLR, setting everything flat.  

 

I will A/B against my JVM, not for exact tones but the way it sounds and the feel.

[Genebaby]

Actually, looking at the speaker now it only has XLR inputs, so will need to set it to line at home I guess and back to mic for gigs.

[DunedinDragon]

I generally take readings on my app at around 10 feet.  I use an app called 'Sound Meter' which gives me a max and average reading and I use that at performances to get a feel for our overall volume just walking around the room.  Very handy.

 

Actually, in my rehearsal space I plug into the QSC TM30 mixer and then into my Yamaha DXR12 speakers left and right to get the best feel for the sound.  It's actually a big benefit if you can do that as it will be more representative of your live sound.  I just  plug into the mixer as I would at a performance with my XLR outs set to Mic level.  That way nothing changes between my rehearsal setup and my live setup on the Helix.  I can also gain stage all my presets more accurately so they're consistent through all of the songs.  This is particularly useful if we play through someone else's PA as I can be assured everything will be consistent.

 

In my band we don't have any amps on stage and go direct to the mixer relying on our stage monitors for our stage sound.  That makes it super simple to have a sound on stage that matches what the audience is hearing out front.  Bear in mind that A/B'ing against a 4CM setup will have some problems in that area since the amp will flavor the stage sound differently than what the audience actually hears.  If you Mic that amp then it's going to be harder still to actually hear what the audience hears because your stage sound is going to have the raw amp sound rather than the mic'd sound the audience hears.  It also makes it much harder to hear your instrument and voice mix on stage that matches what the audience hears out front.  This is the main reason we all go direct to the mixer and use only the floor monitors.  Not to mention it GREATLY simplifies our setup and tear down time.

[Genebaby]

Thanks, I setup the whole system earlier and I am going through it like at a gig and for some reason it sounds better than the other day when it was still setup at the old rehearsal space.  Still a bit different from the other sounds I got at home, but this is what I need to be hearing, a realistic output into a PA.  

 

I haven't heard my amp in any usual way live for many years as I used ear plugs and a screaming loud wedge monitor, and now use in-ear monitors, so I'm used to just hearing what I hear in there compared to what my amp is ever doing.  What I heard at the last gig was at soundcheck setting up my guitar sound, prior to putting in the earphones.  I wanted to hear this part this time, and yeah, it was interesting.

 

I got that app as well and I was running at 80db just mucking around, so a little bit more when I seriously get down to it.  I think I will wait until the other mixer comes along, I think it's better quality etc.  Until then I will play around, experiment with other amps using this setup, and then see how things are with the new mixer.

 

I think it's gonna be good!

[Genebaby]

I forgot to say, my setup at the moment doesn't like loud channel volumes.  Everything was way loud and distorted at any volume until I put the channel volume to about 4.5.

 

So I will test against the new mixer and then see what's what about dialling in tones and setting the volumes between them.  I have a program to measure in LUFS.  Today I hooked up the other XLR output into the mic input of my Focusright Scarlett, but I think I need to do one of those things at a time and put the XLR back into LINE when I use the Scarlett, not keep it in MIC?  Or is it ok because it's going into the MIC interface.

[DunedinDragon]

I think it may be worth your time to understand the concept of gain staging versus volume settings.  Gain staging is all about controlling the level of the signal whether it be Line or Mic level signals so that it doesn't distort and has plenty of headroom whereas volume is what's applied AFTER something is gain staged.  If gain staged correctly you should have plenty of headroom to set your volume wherever you need it.  There are plenty of good YouTube videos on this subject.

[Genebaby]

Ok, I'll check into that, thanks!

[Genebaby]

I thought I'd post an update.  I've been having a lot of fun learning how to use the Helix in general, and setting it up for the live shows that I do, so it can do it all.

 

It turns out my old mixing desk MAY be a bit of a culprit in how things are sounding through my PA that I have here.  I am witholding judgement of the Mackie Speakers until I get a hold of the Soundcraft desk we also have, and I set that up with these speakers, and hopefully the sound will improve.

 

I say this with some hope as I had a jam with my new drummer and bassist, along with a singer audtion, at a rehearsal space.  Something I haven't done for a LOONG time as I find it more productive to rehearse at much lower volume.  I primarily wanted to check out my new band mates and their gear before we eventually play live.

 

I brought my old setup of a JVM and the HD500X in 4CM but also brought the Helix just to try it.

 

Well, I was surprised that it sounded GREAT through the Yamaha PA setup in that room.  A small desk and I think just 12"powered speakers.  Here I've got 15"speakers and a SUB!

 

It was reassuring to hear the Helix peform so well and I got by with the sounds/setup I already had, but now I have much more going on in terms of Snapshots and knowledge on how to use the Helix.  I ended up using only the Helix and that's all I'll be bringing with me this weekend when we try out some more singers.

 

This thing is great and actually quite easy to get a good sound out of it seems.

[DunedinDragon]

On 10/11/2023 at 3:17 AM, Genebaby said:

I thought I'd post an update.  I've been having a lot of fun learning how to use the Helix in general, and setting it up for the live shows that I do, so it can do it all.

 

It turns out my old mixing desk MAY be a bit of a culprit in how things are sounding through my PA that I have here.  I am witholding judgement of the Mackie Speakers until I get a hold of the Soundcraft desk we also have, and I set that up with these speakers, and hopefully the sound will improve.

 

I wouldn't hold a lot of hope on a different mixer making much of a difference with your Mackie speakers.  What you were likely hearing in the tryouts was the difference between Yamaha higher end speakers and Mackie budget speakers as mixing boards don't have a lot of impact on speaker performance generally other than maybe some improvements in preamps which is pretty slight.  In these days of DSP driven speaker designs there's a pretty marginal difference between a 12" and 15" speaker response so I wouldn't expect that to be much of a factor either.  The sub will be a difference maker in adding clarity to most of the instruments and vocals if it's setup correctly so that it isolates the very low frequencies from the main frequencies we mostly want to hear clearly.

[brue58ski]

Speakers, speakers, speakers. I remember back it the "day", I learned the weakest most inefficient link in a sound system, whatever it is, is the speakers. It's fairly easy to amplify an audio source pretty accurrately UNTIL you get to the speaker(s). Actually making a speaker enclosure that will reproduce every frequency and harmonic with exactly the same waveform as every instruments recording had originally going into the system is a juggling act. Therefore they have the largest influence on how your system/amp will sound and it can be big. It kills me when people complain about not getting the amp in the room sound through an FRFR when the speaker(s) and enclosure can be so completely different from whatever you're trying to sound like. Aside from the "it's modeling a mic'd amp, not just an amp" aspect, the speakers are the big problem. A guitar cab will not sound the same as an FRFR that has one to two different speakers and different enclosure. Just putting different speakers in the same cab will very likely make it  sound significantly different. And let's just throw in the Fletcher-Munson curve for more stuff to think about.

 

"How come I can't get my Fender amp sim to sound as authentic through a Marshall 4x12 as my Marshall amp sim does through the same thing using my modeler?".

 

Really? Sorry, just a little rant.

[PaulTBaker]

here's a snickers bar :)

[brue58ski]

Thank You.