Line 6 Helix

siremoon

Rantette part 2.

My ticket has been answered.  Hooray!

The guy who answered it clearly didn't properly read what I wrote so the answer completely misses the point.  Boo! 

Not impressed.  Perhaps I should join TGP and pretend I come from Tumbleweedville, Arizona then I might get somewhere.

:x

matt1973

Im using an L3 at the moment but will probably go to the less cumbersome L2. The Stagesource are pretty good speakers but having heard the Helix through the main KV2 rig we use, the Stagesource dont sound as warm to my ears.

Cabicular

siremoon;959472" said:

Rantette part 2.



My ticket has been answered.  Hooray!



The guy who answered it clearly didn't properly read what I wrote so the answer completely misses the point.  Boo! 



Not impressed.  Perhaps I should join TGP and pretend I come from Tumbleweedville, Arizona then I might get somewhere.



:x

There are some good people that answer tickets
There are some that if they were working for me .. Would be seeking other options

Cabicular

What's your bug btw?

siremoon

Cabicular said:

What's your bug btw?

Ah the bug.  How I got to it is very long winded but may be worth telling as it gives the background to my frustration.

When we play live I use a Digitech Whammy DT as a pitch shifter to play some songs in different keys.  Providing you don’t shift more than 2 or 3 steps up or down it does a pretty good job without any particularly noticeable artifacts or artificial quality to it.  Wouldn’t use it for recording but for live it’s ok.

Anyway I’d hoped that the Helix Pitch Wham block (or the Pitch Shift block which turned up in FW 1.06.0) would do the same job and allow me to dispense with the Whammy DT.  Anyway it doesn’t, the block is ok for solos but for chords it is truly horrible with a nasty oscillating artefact which I can’t dial out so that block is useless.  The statements from Line 6 are that they aren’t going to improve the block which was frustrating because it is imo basically unusable as an all round pitch shifter.  It certainly doesn’t work anything like as well as the Whammy DT it is supposedly modelled on.

So I had to continue with the real Whammy and for reasons that don’t matter I wanted to put it in an FX loop rather than in series with my guitar input.  I also wanted to feed the return of the loop into both Path 1 and Path 2 so I effectively had a pitch shifted signal available in path 1 and path 2 without having to use splits, this meant I could use the splits for something else.  I tried to set this up with FX Loop 1 as the first block on Path 1 and FX Loop return 1 as the input for Path 2.  Contrary to what you might expect the system actually let me do this and it worked.  Fantastic.  I was really chuffed and impressed with the routing flexibility.  Saved the patch, went away and did something else.  However when I later recalled the patch, all the blocks in Path 1 had been deleted and only path 2 remained.  Did it again - exactly the same.  Let me do it, it worked, after a save all of Path 1 was gone.  More frustration.  Grrrr.

I raised a ticket explaining what I’d done and pointing out that if it was an invalid configuration then the system should prevent it being created and the fact that it didn’t was a bug.  I also pointed out that as it actually worked when you set it up then perhaps rather than preventing it being set up they could fix the save function for it as it was a really useful feature to have and would enhance the flexibility of the unit.  Anyway the gist of the response was “this is normal behaviour”.  What!  My point was that there is a bug whichever way you cut it so how can it be “normal”?  Also there is 95% of a very useful feature already there and so rather than bin it why don’t they fix the save part and make it usable for those that would find it handy?

I know this is only a minor bug in the general scheme of things but the "whatever" response to it together with the time I spent trying to dial out the garbage on the pitch shifter only to get the brush off over that being improved has really irritated me.

The end – sorry but you did ask

Cabicular

I have a couple of songs where I use the pitch whammy for intelligent harmonies where I toggle the key changes with a momentary (The Trooper and Detroit Rock city if you're interested)
Normally I'd put the whammy block right at the beginning but like you I was getting horrible artifacting. I moved it after the amp and it works fine now.
Strange but I assume you have tried all that

Cabicular

P.p.s could you not feed output 2 into the aux in and then set up path 2b with that as the input?

siremoon

Good suggestions thanks.

I have tried lots of things before the amp but tbh I didn't think of moving it after the amp (D'Oh!).  I will give that a try.  Too suckered in by the "if you do what you do with the real hardware it will sound the same" type hype.  When it doesn't I need to start thinking more laterally.

Yes I think you're right there are possibly other ways of achieving the routing.  I thought of jumpering send 2 to return 3, putting send 2 in path 1 with a 50:50 split and making return 3 the input to path 2.  I'm sure there are other ways too.  On one patch in particular I have a problem with no spare blocks on Path 1a which I'll need to figure out but it's a possible way forward nevertheless.

Cabicular

Bear in mind (and you may know this but I didn't )
Obviously you can chain path 1 and 2 together but what I didn't realise is if you split Path 2 into 2A and 2B you can put a different input on 2B
Which is what I'm talking about above
So input 1 guitar goes to path 1A 1B and 2A and aux input has its own path on 2B

A screenshot would be useful if I'm not explaining it well but I'm not near the unit

siremoon

No I understand what you mean.  I think we're both essentially saying the same.  It should work for any of the inputs/FX returns (even an FX return you're already using as long as you don't want to save the preset!)

Cabicular

Yes the only bit I didn't get at first (because there are few examples) is that it is possible to do a 75/25 split
So my patches all use 2B for the mic input (not anymore since it's broken grrrr) and 1A 1B and 2A serialed together for guitar

hotpickups

I know this would never be for me as I don't understand half of it what you are taking about lol

siremoon

No but if you got one you would.

Basically the thing has 4 paths (1a, 1b, 2a, 2b) which you can arrange in various parallel and/or serial combinations.  A path input can be configured to receive signal from an earlier path or from an external inbound connection, similarly a path output can be configured to send signal to a later path or to an external outbound connection.  What we've been talking about is how best to utilise these connection options to achieve a particular configuration. 

As is often the case with these kinds of things it is much easier to do than to explain.

Sporky

I think it makes more sense when you can see the signal paths laid out too.

I am mostly decided on using a pair of good grunty monitors with my Helix.

However, there are at least a bazillion good monitors out there. I have no idea how to choose. I like, for no specific reasons:

Presonus Eris E5
Equator Audio D5
Fluid FX8

fretmeister

I wonder if it would sound good through a Mackie SM150

Sporky

Not much under 100Hz out of that so a bit thin for cello, I fear.

guitargeek62

All I can say is I love mine through my Yamaha HS7s, particularly with the OwnHammer IR cab on any of the crunchy amps.

fretmeister

Sporky said:

Not much under 100Hz out of that so a bit thin for cello, I fear.

Mmm. Could be right there.

I just wondered because I have one. I use it for singing practice and for a mini PA when I'm performing magic.

Sporky

S'probbly good for guitar, particularly in smaller rooms where you can't get as much bass going anyways.

Digital_Igloo

Cabicular said:

Does no one there have a VU meter and an hour?

Leveling presets has to be done by ear anyway, as meters don't properly account for monitoring volume, room modes, resonances, distortion, and frequency response, all of which (and more) affect perceived level.

Factory presets have been releveled in 1.06.