Digital Igloo (Eric Klein, YGG)

That's not a "No"!

Please also don't talk about the new form factor that's a bit smaller.

Digital Igloo said:
If you don't mind, I'll use this as an opportunity to soapbox a bit to anyone reading this.

Exactly ten years ago, and several years after, Frank, Ben, Igor, myself, and others were stupid transparent about Helix, probably to a fault. If we knew something was coming or thought it might show up soon, we'd post "not at launch" with a wink and a nod. IdeaScale was wide open to anyone, and anyone could easily infer what we may or may not be working on. I waxed poetic at length about how yeah, we almost added wireless mobile editing to Helix, and yeah, we had an entirely different touchscreen-centric design, and all sorts of other internal goings-on.

The trick is that ten years ago, the usual suspects (Fractal, Kemper, BOSS, Atomic, Line 6, a couple others) generally operated in good faith. Sure, everyone's marketing toed the hyperbole line, but by and large, we stayed in our lane and focused on solving problems for our own customers. All I knew is that Cliff and Christoph were (still are, of course) geniuses and while the customer overlap was probably more than a tiny sliver on a Venn diagram, we strived to design, develop, and support gear on our own terms and appeared to be largely unconcerned with what "the other guy" was doing. In fact, Line 6 actively eschewed what the other guy was doing, and if the masses demanded a feature that existed elsewhere, we strived to understand the problem and solve it in a unique and novel way. Everyone did back then.

But over the years, the multieffects market feels like it's slowly devolving into opportunism, feigning credit for things you shamelessly ripped off, and obsessing more about stealing sales or market share from others than helping grow the market to lift all ships. One company executive apparently made their box all about cutting Line 6 off at the knees (due to a petty grudge from years previous), another very obviously slagged both Fractal and Line 6 (without specifying them) in the very first paragraph of their very first post-release interview and we caught their employees insulting our gear in front of visitors to our own NAMM booth. Yet another climbed the corporate ladder by falsely claiming they "created Helix," and their fellow employees even trolled Helix threads, claiming the reason 'Helix 2' didn't exist was because Line 6's brain trust quit years ago.:mad: And now there are a butt ton of cheap knock-off companies that embrace a specific cultural notion that innovation, design, and R&D are unneeded expenses. What's worse, some of the public not only defends these actions, they celebrate them. It's like this market is slipping more into do-you-even-lift-bro-crypto-startup douchebaggery and less real passionate people who just want to make cool boxes and buy each other beers at NAMM.

Also, it appears that every little thing Frank, Ben, Igor, or I say is not only picked apart by our customers, but by our competitors as well (who are much better at reading between the lines than our users), and given that Stadium won't be out for many months, that gives them ample time to embrace reactionary me-too development instead of good faith competition. This is a big reason why we shut down our IdeaScale—no need to do those guys any favors. And it's why we're very careful about what and when we divulge specific details about Helix Stadium.

And whether it's the political climate or what, gear forums have also devolved into... I'll just say it. There are a lot of straight dicks. "Oh, here's a thread about a new box. I won't read any specs or watch any videos or absorb any context whatsoever but I GOTTA :poop: all over it because everyone MUST hear my opinion!" Yeah, of course, it's not like this isn't like every other online community out there, but it's just... a bit less fun to be here now. Well, TGF is cool; others less so, especially when the mods decide to slap 30 pages of a sewage dump criticism thread onto the very front of a legitimate Helix Stadium discussion. EDIT: They fixed it. Thank you; you're cool again!

Joe, Steve, Simon, Ben, Brandon, and I were also extremely purposeful about what we did and didn't divulge at the June 11 keynote and subsequent videos/interviews. In fact, I sent the entire 10-page script to like 20 Line 6ers ahead of time to make sure no one was all "Whoa, mentioning that might imply to someone paying attention that we're working on..."

So that's a really long-winded, circuitous, old-man-yelling-at-cloud way of saying "we can't talk about any looper stuff right now." :D

/soapbox
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Digital Igloo said:
So that's a really long-winded, circuitous, old-man-yelling-at-cloud way of saying "we can't talk about any looper stuff right now." :D
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Not to me, not at all.

That was the exact kind of insight I hoped to see on here; open communication between members and companies. You guys hear about our motivations nonstop of why we use the gear, often via complaint that some piece of gear is “entirely useless” because it can’t do one particular function or have some feature 1 out of every 10K guitarists will use, or the celebratory “I finally got what I’ve been searching for!” posts, but we rarely get to hear the motivations of how and why companies make the choices they do, or getting the non-technical insight behind the gear they make.

IE- less ‘company speak’ and more of the human element. Some of us know these aren’t just products being slapped together to make a company money and it’s easy to tell who truly cares about the customer’s desire to achieve their goals with the post-launch dedication to a unit.

Thank you, Eric!!
 
Digital Igloo said:
...

Focus view is only per-amp or effect, but the separate XY controller (which even gets its own hardware shortcut button so you can access it during a gig) can control dozens of parameters across many blocks. And each axis can send out MIDI CCs to control external gear simultaneously.

Basically, Focus view is a programming tool, while the XY controller is a performance tool.
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I'm having trouble envisioning what this one does. Does anyone have a real simple example of a way to use this one?
 
Mooselake said:
I'm having trouble envisioning what this one does. Does anyone have a real simple example of a way to use this one?
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Here's a simple one:
  1. Assign Cosmos Echo's Time to the X-Axis (Min and Max swapped) and its Feedback to the Y-Axis.
  2. Swipe your finger from the lower left to the upper right and the delay starts self-oscillating and feeding back.
  3. Move it to the upper left corner and the delays slow back down but the oscillation continues.
  4. Lift your finger and if the Rubber Band toggle is on, the XY position snaps back to the starting point at a speed set by Knob 8 (Rubber Band Time).
Now assign Reverb Mix, Reverb Decay, Room size, whatever and you could make it so both your reverb and delay bloom with a single swipe.

It's pretty much like having two fully assignable expression pedals you control with your finger—one for the X-axis and one for the Y.
 
Digital Igloo said:
Here's a simple one:
  1. Assign Cosmos Echo's Time to the X-Axis (Min and Max swapped) and its Feedback to the Y-Axis.
  2. Swipe your finger from the lower left to the upper right and the delay starts self-oscillating and feeding back.
  3. Move it to the upper left corner and the delays slow back down but the oscillation continues.
  4. Lift your finger and if the Rubber Band toggle is on, the XY position snaps back to the starting point at a speed set by Knob 8 (Rubber Band Time).
Now assign Reverb Mix, Reverb Decay, Room size, whatever and you could make it so both your reverb and delay bloom with a single swipe.

It's pretty much like having two fully assignable expression pedals you control with your finger—one for the X-axis and one for the Y.
Click to expand...
Thanks, that sounds like it could be a lot of fun. Is it controllable other than by a live finger?
 
Digital Igloo said:
I suppose you could use any other appendage, but please don’t tell us about it.
Click to expand...
Hmm, lol. I was thinking more like being able to automate it in Showcase or something. Was just wondering about the logistics of moving the cursor while distracted by something like playing a guitar. But it seems like L6 has thought of everything, per usual. ;)
 
Chocol8 said:
Thanks a lot! There goes all my interest in buying a used Stadium. Every time I see one for sale for the next ten plus years I will think about what appendages have been used on that touch screen, and then be forced to pony up for a new one.
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Yeah cause other touch screens are totally immune to that problem 😜
 
Looking forward to seeing the Helix Stadium; I haven't bought anything in this space since my Helix Floor close to 10 years ago. But with another big birthday coming up I can see it being time to upgrade.

As a JTV Variax, and L2t user I'm very glad to see the Expand D10.

There haven't been many details about it, so I have a few questions that would just disappear in the chatter on the dedicated thread.

The TOSLINK optical out - is that ADAT compatible? So I can connect it to my Audient EVO 16 and get 8 additional inputs?

How long can a Nexus connection run? Could I run a Nexus cable from the unit at the front to the back of the stage so the JTV VDI cable runs behind me?

Last one for now, probably hasn't been a consideration and is going to be limited to a very small number of users, but I noticed that the Expand D10 has a USB port, that is not referenced in the current description. I currently play some supplementary parts using GeoShred on a couple of iPads, and one of them has to connect via USB because I also run MIDI Guitar 2 on it and a Hammond emulation. So that would carry on using the main USB port on the device which presumably is still going to give 8 channels of audio. It is possible that the USB port on the Expand D10 could independently support a different Host device and similarly offer the audio channels allowing me to remain in the digital domain?

My second iPad currently connects using a USB to audio cable that returns into FX 1/2, but I could imagine that both USB ports could send the same 8 audio channels out, and both could accept 8 audio channels in with a simple mix of the two sources on each channel.

The icing on the cake would be if both ports were capable of providing power over USB so my iPad connections would be two simple cables.

I thought it best to ask before launch as there might be a very slight chance of inclusion even if the potential buying audience is just me!
 
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