Helix 3.7: The Freeman Update

[kartikg3]

I fired up the Elmsley model, paired with a dual open casts cabs, threw in a legacy screamer with a Bass knob, loaded up a huge plate followed by an ambience playing through my headphones and I was in "Sounds like a live rock gig" heaven. The main thing I was missing was a roaring audience which got me thinking about my next HX fw request add:

A Crowd/ Audience Simulator Block

Params:
Crowd Size
Spread
Uproar
Mexican Wave (assignable to the expression pedal.. essentially a pan+uproar)
Random Screamer (random seed that initialized chance of some lone guy screaming randomly from among the audience)
Cougher
And ofcourse, Mix.

All these should be footswitchable, assignable to expression controllers, so we can simulate audience responses, while playing alone (Or at a gig to compensate for a bad set/encouragement)

I am only partially kidding?

 

[paisleywookiee]

I fired up the Elmsley model, paired with a dual open casts cabs, threw in a legacy screamer with a Bass knob, loaded up a huge plate followed by an ambience playing through my headphones and I was in "Sounds like a live rock gig" heaven. The main thing I was missing was a roaring audience which got me thinking about my next HX fw request add:

A Crowd/ Audience Simulator Block

Params:
Crowd Size
Spread
Uproar
Mexican Wave (assignable to the expression pedal.. essentially a pan+uproar)
Random Screamer (random seed that initialized chance of some lone guy screaming randomly from among the audience)
Cougher
And ofcourse, Mix.

All these should be footswitchable, assignable to expression controllers, so we can simulate audience responses, while playing alone (Or at a gig to compensate for a bad set/encouragement)

I'm sure one of the cloner modeler makers have added that in, to "differentiate" their product. Hotone, Mooer, Valeton?

 

[Sascha Franck]

However, that guy's comments on TGP may have pushed the Bogner farther down a couple of notches. (Not really.)

Ask him about a DI take of his (!) playing and a sample of an isolated track using an amp he'd like to see. Ideally the amp track would be recorded with his DI take.
This will usually end the discussion very quickly.

 

[Orvillain]

The thing is, we don't check boxes, and priority order gets shuffled around all the time.

If we only paid attention to requests, Helix would be a far more boring and pedestrian piece of gear.

Genuine question Eric. How do you square this with the IdeaScale. How much does IdeaScale factor into design/product/firmware decisions?

 

[Digital Igloo]

Genuine question Eric. How do you square this with the IdeaScale. How much does IdeaScale factor into design/product/firmware decisions?

The data that everyone sees isn't necessarily the actual data. Requests that have been there for years will obviously have way more votes, many requests have multiple submissions, and the same people will vote for the same thing multiple times. We have additional tools to parse through all of that and get to the meat. But the real data is in the comments, where we'll read between the lines and figure out exactly where the friction lies.

I'll be honest—we've occasionally discussed shutting down IdeaScale. It rarely tells us something we don't already know (I can count maybe three or four genuinely original+good+feasible submissions we hadn't already discussed to some extent) and it's basically free market research for our competitors. But Products/Engineering also uses it as defensive data to shore up any internal "why should we spend resources on that?" criticism.

 

[the-trooper]

How much does IdeaScale factor into design/product/firmware decisions?

Considering how many ideas at the top of the page are still marked as "in review" even though they have been completed a looong time ago, I'm gonna guess not much (feels abandoned).

 

[Digital Igloo]

Considering how many ideas at the top of the page are still marked as "in review" even though they have been completed a looong time ago, I'm gonna guess not much (feels abandoned).

We don't want anyone—including our competitors—knowing what we're working on. I've mentioned this many times before, but IdeaScale is a 100% one-way street—data from our users to us, not the other way around.

 

[the-trooper]

We don't want anyone—including our competitors—knowing what we're working on.

Even for features that were completed and implemented a long time ago? Those could be either marked as solved, or removed altogether.
No need to have "Digital clipping indicator", "Helix Acoustic Simulator" or "Freeze" at the very top of the page, marked as "in review", when they were solved and already forgotten - people asking "is there some type of freeze effect in Helix", after it was one of the more asked effects. Two days later polysustain is forgotten.
I predict Freqout would meet the same fate. But I digress...

Oh, unless the thought is you might be working on another acoustic simulator or another freeze effect. Or you may be not. Makes sense.

 

[Digital Igloo]

Even for features that were completed and implemented a long time ago? Those could be either marked as solved, or removed altogether.

The trick is that there's no way to determine whether the original requester would also consider them "solved." For example, implementing Snapshots addressed to our satisfaction a good two dozen seemingly disparate IdeaScale requests, but we could never close them because we didn't necessarily solve them in the method being requested. For example, there were lots of votes for assigning the same block to multiple stomp switches, but... Snapshots solved the underlying problem with a cleaner solution.

I suppose if IdeaScale allowed users to close their own submissions, that would work.

The only people who need to (or should) get any information out of IdeaScale is us, and as long as we can find clarity in the mess, it's a success. Any user expecting or wanting to find meaningful information about our product or update roadmap from IdeaScale is gonna have a bad time. They'll have much better luck asking questions of Ben, Sam, Igor, Frank, and I on forums, attempting to read between the lines, recognizing clues/winks/nudges, and side-stepping red herrings.

 

[pablo retamal]

Jubilee!

 

[TheTrueZoltan!]

Jubilee!

This year is the original POD's silver jubilee. Just sayin'

 

[vino_buono]

They'll have much better luck asking questions of Ben, Sam, Igor, Frank, and I on forums, attempting to read between the lines, recognizing clues/winks/nudges, and side-stepping red herrings.

Updated 2204 confirmed in 3.7!!!

 

[James Freeman]

Helix JCM800 2203 Request Thread

I thought I should clean the Helix threads form my repetitive JCM800 requests, to keep things cleaner and so people know what thread NOT to read. I will slowly moving all my JCM800 posts and memes here. Sorry for being annoying AF, this should mitigate it a little. Also, my old JCM800 thread...

thegearforum.com

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Would still rather see the Vitriol Crunch channel fixed before seeing new models, that one falls into a category of not being useful in its current state and I’d be amazed if anyone critically requires the broken version to remain.

Beyond that, I love the suggestions here. Line 6 is doing great at giving everyone what they want rather than focussing on just one niche so I don’t mind a few updates that don’t satisfy all of my personal wants. Rectifier orange channel and some other modes would be great. I’ve heard real 3 channel rectifiers that sound worse than the Helix model, I think it gets a tougher time than it deserves. That said, an updated version wouldn’t go amiss, would be very interesting to see how it’s tackled with their updated processes.

 

[James Freeman]

Would still rather see the Vitriol Crunch channel fixed before seeing new models,

Line 6 isn't known to fix released amp models, you'll have better luck asking for a new amp that does what you want.
Just saying.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Line 6 isn't known to fix released amp models, you'll have better luck asking for a new amp that does what you want.
Just saying.

In that case,

I would like a completely stock circuit, working, serviced, 5150/6505/Invective crunch channel. If I wanted a broken amp sound, I'm quite capable of butchering one of my own. Even with the controls available with the working models, its easy enough to create a "broken" type sound. A lot harder to remove that.

Definitely seems like certain stuff is able to slip through the net by the time it hits release. All well and good Line 6 being aware of certain quirks, but if users discover things once products in the open that won't get fixed then its a bit of a waste of all the work leading up until that point. I'm pretty sure the line with the Invective Crunch was along the lines of "none of the beta testers noticed a problem" which seems raises more questions than answers to me.

 

[Mooselake]

Just for the sport of it:

-Keeley HALO Andy Timmons Dual Delay
-Nobels ODR-1

I have to say though, most of what I really use in Helix is not stuff I would have explicitly asked for. Thinking back on it I don't think anything I've listed in one of these threads (which I consider 'just for fun') has made it into Helix. Yet I've been pretty darn happy with Line 6's curation of Helix. I've mentioned this on the other site, but I've come at this backwards. For financial and other practical reasons I got into modeling (red bean days) before ever having spent more than 30 minutes plugged into a 'real' tube amp. Much has changed for me since then, and I now own 2 tube amps (only use one of them, a PT-15IR, on occasion). Both came after my Helix LT. The only thing I really have left to do is learn to play a guitar.

 

[kartikg3]

Updated 2204 confirmed in 3.7!!!

I will never buy another modeler/profiler/plugin again ever in my entire life once they have an updated jcm800

 

[the swede]

I will never buy another modeler/profiler/plugin again ever in my entire life once they have an updated jcm800

I miss the JCM in the Headrush MX5…. And the J45… i never compared the J45 to whatever Helix equivalent, but loved that one too.

 

[kartikg3]

I miss the JCM in the Headrush MX5…. And the J45… i never compared the J45 to whatever Helix equivalent, but loved that one too.

Yes Headrush (and most other modelers, even the budget ones) do a good job of representing the jcm800 character. I know one day, we ll have it in the HX. I believe.