Helix Stadium wishlist

[MirrorProfiles]

Anything longer is just going to be room reflections.

Why wouldn't these be desirable in an IR? They're in all the recorded guitar tones we love and trying to replicate it after the fact doesn't sound as good. Seems weird to me to shave that part of the sound off.

 

[AlbertA]

Could be the converters?

Nah

 

[AlbertA]

• Importing of Speaker impedance curves (ZMA files maybe?)
  • Be able to bundle/link an external IR with its corresponding speaker impedance curve (and an unlink/ignore option to go along with it)

 

[Digital Igloo]

- Yes, 42ms feels a little short...
- Fantastic! As I couldn't find any other information in the manual, I assumed that, like the original Helix devices, it couldn't be synchronised to an external clock.

OG Helix resolves to S/PDIF in as well. AFAIK, that's how S/PDIF works—if you're getting audio, it's clocked.

Unless you mean you want Helix/Stadium to change its entire system from 48kHz to whatever SR appears at the S/PDIF in, which never happens in any hardware guitar product.

 

[sashimi]

I do remember DI saying that increased headroom and upgraded components could even make existing models sound better, could this be why some of you think the reverbs sound better?

I never thought they were bad in the first place, for what it’s worth.

 

[TheTrueZoltan!]

OG Helix resolves to S/PDIF in as well. AFAIK, that's how S/PDIF works—if you're getting audio, it's clocked. [...]

Don't get me wrong, of course you know your product better than anyone else. But so far, I've always assumed the following:

 

[Chocol8]

Why wouldn't these be desirable in an IR? They're in all the recorded guitar tones we love and trying to replicate it after the fact doesn't sound as good. Seems weird to me to shave that part of the sound off.

Because full room reflections would require a MUCH longer IR. You can keep the IR short and have the cab, or you can go all the way to 1+ second IR to capture cab and room. Anything in the middle is generally going to be a mess. It's better to just get the cab in the cab IR and then add the room in a separate longer room reverb IR if you wan't that.

 

[TheTrueZoltan!]

Because full room reflections would require a MUCH longer IR. You can keep the IR short and have the cab, or you can go all the way to 1+ second IR to capture cab and room. Anything in the middle is generally going to be a mess. It's better to just get the cab in the cab IR and then add the room in a separate longer room reverb IR if you wan't that.

That's BS. To capture a little bit of room ambience you don't need "1+ second" IRs. We are not talking about actual reverb here. Besides, what you claim to be "better" is just a matter of taste. Some people would like to have the option for a higher resolution in the cab/IR block.

 

[Frodebro]

John Cordy, and one of his videos thinks that six months after the release the price will drop on the stadium in the stadium XL but for some reason, I just don’t see that happening and he uses the Quad cortex and the fender TMP as examples of companies that drop their prices Six months or eight months after release do you guys think this is possible with line 6?

Usually a manufacturer will drop a price only after sales have dropped below a target threshold. Could be an item that is approaching its EOL, or it could be because the original price was higher than the market would support.

 

[jmcecil]

John Cordy, and one of his videos thinks that six months after the release the price will drop on the stadium in the stadium XL but for some reason, I just don’t see that happening and he uses the Quad cortex and the fender TMP as examples of companies that drop their prices Six months or eight months after release do you guys think this is possible with line 6?

listening to anything from his channel beyond guitar noodling will destroy your brain cells.

 

[Mongillo19]

Usually a manufacturer will drop a price only after sales have dropped below a target threshold. Could be an item that is approaching its EOL, or it could be because the original price was higher than the market would support.

Tim is just queuing up excuses, don't let him fool you

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Because full room reflections would require a MUCH longer IR. You can keep the IR short and have the cab, or you can go all the way to 1+ second IR to capture cab and room. Anything in the middle is generally going to be a mess. It's better to just get the cab in the cab IR and then add the room in a separate longer room reverb IR if you wan't that.

big disagree here. 500ms is usually plenty for most situations, people aren’t typically recording their cabs in reverb chambers with omni mics. Pretty easy to just make IR’s in any given space and then decide what works best on a case by case basis.

Even 200ms generally sounds much better than trimming short. I can’t see any good reason to shorten things to below 50ms just because really long reverberant ones might be an issue. No one is hearing their cabs mic’d up in an environment that doesn’t have even just a bit of room tone, it’s just needlessly sacrificing tone. Short IR’s are much more brutal as far as replicating a tone than longer ones (where the energy in the decay will have dissipated much more).

 

[synthpenguin]

I doubt they’d lower prices before or anytime soon after the presumed Stompium release unless they have to. I wouldn’t wait based purely on price unless you don’t mind waiting years.

 

[Chocol8]

To capture a little bit of room ambience you don't need "1+ second" IRs.

If you are happy with "a little bit" but not what a mic captures, sure a 200ms IR will get you partial room reflections, but that is not what a microphone picks up.

This is not a case of more is better, although the interwebs seem to think so.

 

[Digital Igloo]

Don't get me wrong, of course you know your product better than anyone else. But so far, I've always assumed the following:

View attachment 55120

Uh... That makes no sense whatsoever. There've been no concerns with Helix's S/PDIF input that I'm aware of. Again, unless something is very wrong (usually someone using a crappy consumer RCA cable instead of 75 ohm), S/PDIF just resolves automatically—in fact, I'm not aware of a situation where you can clock it externally. Any interfaces with BNC WC ins have ADAT lightpipe or AES/EBU inputs, neither of which resolve automatically.

Just checked; S/PDIF in on Helix works just fine from both my Lexicon PCM91 and Roland XV-5080. Just pinged CS to see if they've received any calls but the dev team would've heard about it.

I'm assuming your link is from Grok or some other AI?

 

[TheTrueZoltan!]

Uh... That makes no sense whatsoever. There've been no concerns with Helix's S/PDIF input that I'm aware of. Again, unless something is very wrong (usually someone using a crappy consumer RCA cable instead of 75 ohm), S/PDIF just resolves automatically—in fact, I'm not aware of a situation where you can clock it externally. Any interfaces with BNC WC ins have ADAT lightpipe or AES/EBU inputs, neither of which resolve automatically. […]

Can Helix NOT slave to incoming SPDIF?!?

Hello, I'm trying to set up my Helix in an SPDIF loop so I can route anything from my DAW to the Helix and back via SPDIF. But I can't find anywhere that mentions the Helix slaving to incoming word clock.. I sure hope I'm just missing something. I would hope/assume it just automatically clocks to...

line6.com

 

[Mooselake]

I'd like to see them add some logic (firmware or editor app, not sure which) so that if the wifi connection experiences a little hiccup after a connection has been established they will automatically reconnect (or at least attempt it) rather than the editor shutting down and requiring a manual intervention (i.e. button click on the pc screen) to reconnect the app and the device.

Similar thing for software downloads. Rather than just halting the download and requiring a restart of the download, have the Stadium pause and reattempt connection/continuing the download. I have other devices, cheap and expensive, that will just pause a moment if a download is interrupted then resume when whatever state that caused the pause is resolved. To download 1.1 I had to unplu my stadium, pick it up and carry it across the house and put it right next to the modem to download 1.1. And to get the Stadium app to reliably connect to it, I had to go out a buy a wifi extender and put it a few feet from the stadium hardware (and even then I get random connection drops at the rate of about 2 per hour). In the location I have my music setup, I have numerous wifi devices that worked just fine without the extender. So I guess what I'm saying is if wifi is going to be an important part of the unit's functionality, then a more robust wifi capability is maybe a good idea. Unless of course, my Stadium XL has a defect. I have no idea how to discern that.

 

[Digital Igloo]

Can Helix NOT slave to incoming SPDIF?!?

Hello, I'm trying to set up my Helix in an SPDIF loop so I can route anything from my DAW to the Helix and back via SPDIF. But I can't find anywhere that mentions the Helix slaving to incoming word clock.. I sure hope I'm just missing something. I would hope/assume it just automatically clocks to...

line6.com

Again, works here fine. QA hasn’t experienced any issues and CS doesn’t have any logs of note. I honestly don’t think it’s ever been a thing. <shrugs>

 

[EOengineer]

Uh... That makes no sense whatsoever. There've been no concerns with Helix's S/PDIF input that I'm aware of. Again, unless something is very wrong (usually someone using a crappy consumer RCA cable instead of 75 ohm), S/PDIF just resolves automatically—in fact, I'm not aware of a situation where you can clock it externally. Any interfaces with BNC WC ins have ADAT lightpipe or AES/EBU inputs, neither of which resolve automatically.

This part is very important and often overlooked. Your standard red and white RCA cables aren’t gonna cut it. Composite video cables (often yellow tipped RCA) are 75 ohm and work beautifully. Most of us probably have a few in the basement.

 

[Orvillain]

My wishlist so far:

Amps
Agoura-fied:
Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier Rev. F
Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier Multi-watt
Mesa Boogie MKIIC+
Mesa Boogie MKIV
Mesa Boogie MKV
Mesa Boogie MKVII
Marshall JVM410H
Fryette Pitbull
Fryette Sig:X
Matamp GTI
Matamp GTII
Orange Rockerverb
Orange OR100

Bass Amps
Mesa Boogie Bass 400
Gallien Krueger RB1000

Effects
More analog flavoured delays, with control over the compander, anti-aliasing and reconstruction filter frequency, and any tone shaping filter frequencies. Like the functionality you get on the Boss DD500.
Expanded delay time ranges for the existing analog flavoured delays that are still a bit too authentic in this respect - Elephant Man for example.
A sweeter sounding digital delay, that really cuts through and achieves a LOT of echoes and doesn't soften out.

Now this is one I'm going to try and expand into a bit... because it is a bug bear area for me. But .... better reverbs:
- A Boss RV-5 "Modulate" style reverb. It should be able to get very bright and very brash. Not intended to be beautiful. Not intended to be subtle. Needs a very long tail, with plenty of non-concurrence in the feedback delay network used to create it. Use a Hadamard mixing matrix. Please don't even pay attention to what the RV6 or RV200 do. They sound garbage in comparison.
- An Alesis Midiverb II inspired 'Bloom' algorithm. The existing Nonlinear algorithm doesn't really cut it.
- Again, Alesis Midiverb II. The Hall sounds in particular. It has some "horrible" sounding reverbs in it, using Keith Barr's topology: https://valhalladsp.wordpress.com/tag/alesis/
- A reaaaaaally nice sounding Lexicon Hall, with modulation that doesn't sound all seasick'y and obvious. We still don't have it.
- Exceptional reference pedals: Source Audio Ventris, Meris MercuryX, Strymon BigSky, UA Golden.
- Some 'cloud' reverbs that can sustain for days, creating pads and textures; Fractal's Cumulonimbus is god-tier for this!
- TLDR; don't give me realistic reverbs. Realistic reverb is for the birds. Give me Kevin Shields hellfest reverbs, but high quality.

Functionality
Longer IR support.
Ability to choose a specific Speaker Impedance Curve with any amp or cab or IR.
IR capturing utility built in - WAV export please! Don't force us into a proprietary format.
Ability to lock the microphone+position when switching between stock cabs.
Ability to scroll through the current IR folder with one of the knobs.
Looper: Auto-record in the deluxe looper.
Looper: Auto-loop after N bars in the deluxe looper.
Looper: Timestretch to change the tempo.
Looper: Tap a switch to half or double the loop N amount of times (Quad Cortex has this and it is great!)
Looper: Save current loop to SD card.
Looper: Load a loop from SD card.
Looper: Ability to use multiple loopers ala Russian Circles.
Add the 'Gig View' from Helix LT/Helix Stadium (non-XL) - an optional mode you could turn on at a gig.
Ability to set all the mix laws to a standard equal power weighting - I feel like some of them are still quite different from block to block, especially in the delays.