Nos402 Posted January 4 Share Posted January 4 The one area I'm finding lacking so far is Preset management. In the OG Helix I had a setlist for each band and could easily offload or reload sets by band as necessary. My current method in Helix Stadium is that I group all User Presets by band, batch color them by band as well, and alphabetize within band groups. Then I can easily just save one band's presets to my PC to make room to load another band's presets if need be. I play and sub in a lot of projects and also lots of one-off shows, and make a preset per song so that the Helix is also my setlist, so they can build up fast. To that end, 3 things I think could vastly improve management. 1. Folders within the User Presets. Then I could have a folder per band. 2. since set lists are just "aliases" pointing to a user preset, being able to rename ONLY the alias would be super helpful. That way if I have 10 songs that just use my "Marshall Plexi" preset, I can rename them for each song while also have them all just pointing to the same preset. As it is now, I just have to have 10 redundant copies of the same preset if I want them to be named for 10 different songs. 3. If I save presets from the setlist to my PC, it only saves 0K "alias" and not the actual preset, which I can't see why I would ever want to do. It seems like it should save the actual preset to my PC. There very well may be better solutions as well, this is just what I've thought of while figuring out my workflow. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silverhead Posted January 4 Share Posted January 4 One option is to maintain separate microSD cards for different purposes (e.g. bands). Swapping presets in and out of the USER area can become problematic with setlists and Showcase. It’s possible to end up with incompatible versions of USER presets, Setlists, and Song data in the device. For instance, suppose you swap out USER presets named, for convenience here, A and B. If a setlist contains an alias to preset A and/or B it seems that setlist is now incompatible with the USER preset area. Also, if a Song contains flags that refer to preset A and/orB the Song data is also incompatible. Stadium system data including USER presets, setlists, and Songs form a tightly integrated dataset. Creating and restoring backups using different microSD cards maintains data integrity. Another thought that I haven’t experimented with so I’m speaking theoretically here…. What about using Songs and Playlists instead of setlists? I know you can create an Empty Song in Stadium using the app. Presumably you could add a flag at the Start of each Song that loads the desired USER preset. That way you could use different Song names in a Playlist without being forced into USER preset redundancy as you described above using setlists. The Songs would have no audio; they would just be used for preset management. Again, purely theoretical. I like your idea of renaming setlist elements while retaining the alias to the underlying USER preset’s name. Have you submitted this as a feature request? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nos402 Posted January 4 Author Share Posted January 4 On 1/4/2026 at 5:28 PM, silverhead said: One option is to maintain separate microSD cards for different purposes (e.g. bands). Swapping presets in and out of the USER area can become problematic with setlists and Showcase. It’s possible to end up with incompatible versions of USER presets, Setlists, and Song data in the device. For instance, suppose you swap out USER presets named, for convenience here, A and B. If a setlist contains an alias to preset A and/or B it seems that setlist is now incompatible with the USER preset area. Also, if a Song contains flags that refer to preset A and/orB the Song data is also incompatible. Stadium system data including USER presets, setlists, and Songs form a tightly integrated dataset. Creating and restoring backups using different microSD cards maintains data integrity. Another thought that I haven’t experimented with so I’m speaking theoretically here…. What about using Songs and Playlists instead of setlists? I know you can create an Empty Song in Stadium using the app. Presumably you could add a flag at the Start of each Song that loads the desired USER preset. That way you could use different Song names in a Playlist without being forced into USER preset redundancy as you described above using setlists. The Songs would have no audio; they would just be used for preset management. Again, purely theoretical. I like your idea of renaming setlist elements while retaining the alias to the underlying USER preset’s name. Have you submitted this as a feature request? I submitted all this to the product feedback. My set lists are per band as well. So I see what you're saying but I don't see it being a problem at least for my personal scenario. Especially as I won't be using showcase at all. the SD card thing just seems like a lot of hoops to jump through. I'm currently still of the opinion that the old Helix way of doing things was actually better, but I'm trying to adapt to the new way to make sure it's not just a case of "familiarity" vs. "new." It used to be so simple and easy to just swap in/out setlists which also included the presets. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silverhead Posted January 5 Share Posted January 5 I think we’re going to see improvements in how setlists are implemented in a future firmware update (but I have no basis for that expectation; purely speculation). The idea of using aliases with a single copy of a USER preset is a good one, imho, but the current implementation is a bit confusing to me. Like you, I also see no point in having a setlist file on my computer that has nothing but aliases. I also don’t understand the frequent appearance of a numbered suffix. e.g. (1) behind a USER preset’s name when importing setlists. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bbehrens Posted January 5 Share Posted January 5 Agreed with you all. I am still trying to figure out how the preset management is better now in the Stadium over the Helix. I assume that it would have something to do with Showcase and saving songs. But for now, it is just confusing to me. But what I DO understand is that I have half of the preset storage capacity on the Stadium as opposed to the Helix. I know that I might be able to use multiple SD cards. And 512 presets is still more than enough for any particular show. Still, I found myself swapping out Set lists on the Helix pretty regularly for Preset Development, Play-Along Set Lists, Sunday Set Setlists, Christmas, Top 100 songs, Bass Guitar Set lists, recording, etc. But this only allowed me to at least always have a backup of a set list that I needed to offload in order to create a new one or bring another one in. Remember, we could have 8 Setlists of 128 songs! So far, I have had to reset my Stadium back to Factory several times due to buggy issues and that has only made preset management MORE problematic trying NOT to lose presets that I had created so far (which is not very many yet, either. Remember to ALWAYS SAVE (like the early days of Windows!) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kfletchah Posted January 5 Share Posted January 5 I’m actually hoping to pick up my stadium today. I’m coming from a midi pedalboard where my MC6 pro had songs programmed and would send PC/CC messages and midi clock for each preset. i’d like to use a single kitchen sink preset for a whole performance and not sure the best way. question: from my reading it seems like both setlists and songs/playlists can point to a universal gig preset but do both also allow for midi clock to be adjusted per song. it looks like showcase/songs/playlists has you put in BPM per song that I assume will change delay tempo of the preset you’re playing. does using setlists allow you to send midi clock per alias? Trying to decide the best way to set up performances. thanks!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bbehrens Posted Wednesday at 09:16 PM Share Posted Wednesday at 09:16 PM I have no experience in setting/using the MIDI clock on the Stadium yet. I am just not set up for that quite yet. Sorry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cacibi Posted Thursday at 07:14 PM Share Posted Thursday at 07:14 PM My Stadium XL just shipped so - no experience with using it but, I have been poring over the manual. Seems to me, based on the MIDI implementation chart, that there are 122 (5-127) User setlists available for recall via MIDI. By routing the MIDI out back to the MIDI in on the unit (and disabling MIDI Thru), it seems like you could build a dedicated preset that would recall any setlist and then load a preset within that setlist? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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