HX One MIDI Tempo Issue

[jonese70x7]

I have been using a Line 6 M5 along with a Boss ES-8 for patch selection and MIDI sync for several months with no issues. The setup has been rock solid. I recently decided to upgrade to the HX One to gain a little space on my pedalboard, and get some better effects. I figured it would just be a drop in replacement for my M5. Not quite. I’ve noticed a couple of issues and wondering if anyone has seen these. I have upgraded the HX One firmware to the latest (3.81.00).

 

1. Support for MIDI time sync is horrible. The higher the BPM, the worse it gets. The tempo for delay effects keeps jumping around, though the MIDI clock is not changing. At lower tempos, the delay time seems stable at first but then every few seconds it will jump. If Tempo Pitch is set to “Authentic”, you can hear the delay smearing to different values. You can even see it happening on the LED flash. At higher BPM setting, the delay time jumps all over the place. It’s totally unusable. Using the tap button or footswitch jack (and turning off Rx Clock in “Settings") seems to work fine. So my ES-8 saved the day by configuring it to set the tempo via the control output into the HX One footswitch input instead of via the MIDI clock.

 

After discovering this I googled and reddited about it and found that there are known issues with the MIDI time sync, but I’m not sure I’ve heard a description that captures how bad I am seeing it with this particular unit. Totally unusable. As I mentioned the M5 was rock solid in this respect.

 

Apparently number 2 one is a known issue.  See this thread.

 

2. Occasionally, Knobs 1-3 just stop working. After switching between 2 patches on the ES-8 that both reference the same HX One preset, the HX One Knobs 1-3 stop working. If I change to a different preset on the HX One, either by turning the EFFECT knob on the HX One, or selecting a patch on the ES-8 that references a different HX One preset, the knobs start working again. I’m not sure I’m explaining this very well but if anyone feels like trying to reproduce the scenario that would be very interesting.