Workflow option when reaching Stadium device preset limitation.

[silverhead]

 

Warning: This is a lengthy and future oriented post. Probably not for everyone. It’s aimed at users who use lots of presets, want to manage different band setups, want to share the Stadium device with other users, or… 

 

The handling of presets and setlists has fundamentally changed from Helix to Helix Stadium. You can no longer swap setlists in and out willy nilly because they contain only aliases to the actual presets that reside in the USER setlist, of which there is exactly one with a limit of 512 onboard presets at any time. Also, since setlists contain only aliases it is possible to accidentally end up with a setlist that is not synchronized with the onboard presets -  e.g. importing a setlist containing an alias to a preset that has since been deleted from the USER setlist. Or (worse) exporting a preset from a custom setlist view, thereby exporting the alias and perhaps unintentionally overwriting the actual preset in your computer folder. Further, we know that the Showcase feature is coming and that it will support preset and snapshot changes at any point in a Song. When you put all this together it becomes clear that the USER setlist, custom setlists, and Songs (including audio stored on the microSD card) are an integrated dataset that must remain synchronized. 
 

How do you manage this from a workflow perspective? How do you keep your dataset synchronized and work around the 512 preset limitation? Easy to say ‘just remove the limit’ but there will always be a limit and no matter what it is it will eventually be reached because…. Well, because we can. 
 

Now, 512 presets seems like a lot to me but I am a studio player, not a multi-band gigging musician.  If I find myself in a different situation someday and keeping things synchronized becomes complicated, the following is what I would do.

 

There is a set of functions called Helix Stadium Maintenance that is accessible using a special startup sequence as described in the final section of the online manual. Hold down the Home and Song buttons when starting up.

 

Among the maintenance functions is a Backup and Restore capability. The manual states that the Create Backup function saves the backup file to the inserted microSD card. That’s the key to maintaining different synchronized datasets, essentially different system images. You can use different microSD cards to store different system images, with each image being for a different purpose. For instance, you could have a different dedicated image/SD card for each band you belong to, or simply for overflow when you have exceed the 512 limit, or for different device users.

 

Here’s a suggested workflow to utilize this strategy:

 

At the end of each session you would need to:

- power down the Helix Stadium device

- restart it while holding down the Home and Song buttons. This will cause the device to start in the Helix Stadium Maintenance mode.

- insert your desired microSD card and Create Backup

- when complete, select the Shutdown option on the Maintenance screen

 

At the beginning of each session you would need to:

- restart the Helix Stadium device while holding down the Home and Song buttons. This will cause the device to start in the Helix Stadium Maintenance mode.

- insert your desired microSD card and Restore Backup, selecting the desired backup file

- select the Shutdown option on the Maintenance screen

- restart the device normally

 

This workflow would provide a means to work within the current limitation and ensure that you always have a system with a dataset that has synchronized onboard presets, custom setlists, IRs, Songs including audio files, and (bonus!) Global Settings.