Helix issue? Weird stuff happened

[Bob Zaod]

Had back to back gigs this weekend among a bunch of other goings on so I went simple. Helix LT direct to desk. Something I have done so many times. Gig 1 Friday night went fine (as far as what I am gonna talk about) and I had no issues at all with my rig. Left all the gear in the vehicle and changed absolutely nothing.

Gig 2 last night from sound check til the last note struck, my guitar sounded like there was no IR or cab in the chain and like I was running into the Helix LT way too hot. Just terrible, splatty, sterile like I was plugged directly into a home stereo or something.

Checked my path and it was good. Blackback 30 cab and it was enabled. Nothing in chain after it. Checked levels going into mixer and no issues there even with solo boost engaged. Checked the channel effects and eq and no effects engaged, eq was flat. Tried 2 other channels on mixer and same issue even at lower volumes. Switched guitars out, same issue. Swapped out my wireless for a cable and same issue. Engaged guitar pad and same issue. Reset the Helix LT several times and same issue. Tried a different XLR out to mixer and same issue.

I could not solve it at sound check or between sets so I spent the entire gig sounding like that. I am being haunted or something. Lately having such weird stuff happen.

 

[dbagchee]

Phantom power at the mixer was off?

 

[Bob Zaod]

Phantom power at the mixer was off?

Definitely. It's also assignable per channel.

 

[James Freeman]

Try headphones.

 

[sleewell]

I got lost in my helix recently too

For me it was the mushrooms lol

 

[DieSchmalle]

After that you got home and the LT was ok again?

 

[Bob Zaod]

After that you got home and the LT was ok again?

I havent had a chance to unpack it and try yet

 

[Bob Zaod]

Did the same thing at home. factory reset cleared it up.

 

[EOengineer]

Is it just me or does this thread seem to describe similar behavior?

 

[northern_fox]

The way you describe the sound sounds like digital clipping and I know it's fairly easy to do that by accident on the helix in the chain. I'm not sure why it would suddenly happen though, unless a setting somehow changed

 

[James Freeman]

It could by an internal buffer issue or a bug that scrambles the sample stream, but we're just guessing.

 

[Bob Zaod]

The way you describe the sound sounds like digital clipping and I know it's fairly easy to do that by accident on the helix in the chain. I'm not sure why it would suddenly happen though, unless a setting somehow changed

One thing I always do during sound check is set levels. It was running around where it always is about -15db then with solo boost on almost a dead on -12db which is supposed to be unity on my mixer. It absolutely sounded like digital clipping combined with no cab in the chain. According to my Helix LT display and my mixer preamp level, neither were happening.

 

[Bob Zaod]

Is it just me or does this thread seem to describe similar behavior?

I read through it some and yeah very similar to what I went through. If it happens again I am downgrading to 3.5

 

[EOengineer]

I read through it some and yeah very similar to what I went through. If it happens again I am downgrading to 3.5

I’ll update to 3.6 once I get back home later this weekend so I can try to observe and reproduce. I’ve been sitting on 3.5 but now I’m interested to know if there’s a bug here.

It’s not like you just started using a Helix. You know what you are doing. Seems pretty suspect.

 

[Alex Kenivel]

The only time I had an odd horrible tone coming from my Helix Floor (other than my garbage presets) was right after an update (forget which one, before 3.0 even). After booting back up everything sounded like it was running through the Bitcrusher distortion. It went away after I reflashed my FW.

 

[Bob Zaod]

I’ll update to 3.6 once I get back home later this weekend so I can try to observe and reproduce. I’ve been sitting on 3.5 but now I’m interested to know if there’s a bug here.

It’s not like you just started using a Helix. You know what you are doing. Seems pretty suspect.

Yeah I have been gigging a Helix LT since the first week they were available in the US. I know it pretty good. Was on the beta testing team for awhile til I just didn't have proper time for it any more. This isn't the first time I have had issues since updating to 3.6 either. I have had it freeze on me several times, had it stop outputting audio, and FS2 stopped working completely at one point. Each time I ended up doing a factory reset to clear the issue because I don't like futzing about.

 

[Bob Zaod]

It could by an internal buffer issue or a bug that scrambles the sample stream, but we're just guessing.

I started to suspect heat because the first gig last week was indoors with climate control and the 2nd was outdoors and it was 97 degrees out but some of the other times it's given me issues were at rehearsal or just dubbing around in my house which is also climate controlled so I'm at a loss.

 

[EOengineer]

Yeah I have been gigging a Helix LT since the first week they were available in the US. I know it pretty good. Was on the beta testing team for awhile til I just didn't have proper time for it any more. This isn't the first time I have had issues since updating to 3.6 either. I have had it freeze on me several times, had it stop outputting audio, and FS2 stopped working completely at one point. Each time I ended up doing a factory reset to clear the issue because I don't like futzing about.

Do you happen to recall if you restored from your backup or pulled any of your old data back in after the factory reset?

Sometimes backups end up containing a corrupted file - so we end up wiping and restoring over and over and putting the issue right back on the wiped hardware. Probably a bit of a reach to assume that’s what’s happening though.

 

[Bob Zaod]

I decided to just go back to 3.5. I have too many gigs this month to take chances again. This time I am going to build patches from scratch and not import them. Some of them I cant even remember what fw version I created them on.

 

[Bob Zaod]

Do you happen to recall if you restored from your backup or pulled any of your old data back in after the factory reset?

Sometimes backups end up containing a corrupted file - so we end up wiping and restoring over and over and putting the issue right back on the wiped hardware. Probably a bit of a reach to assume that’s what’s happening though.

Yes I had been re-importing individual patches.