Helix Talk

[Sascha Franck]

Yeah, managing snapshots kills me.

The thing with snapshots is, that once the initial honeymoon (which I'm sure many people experienced) is over, you will notice just *how* convoluted things get, simply because there's zero visual control of what's going on within a patch.
In case you're only using on/off assignments, things usually are fine, but start throwing in parameter changes and it gets messy real quick.
Just open an intense patch that you haven't used for a while and try to reverse engineer it (or even just understand what you were thinking at the time of creating it).
It's why I usually prefer "direct" manual assignments. You get a list of all parameters controlled, which is helping a lot.
And it's also why the way Boss is doing it, isn't all too shabby. Sure, tough to set up but somewhat easy to decipher, should you want to modify things after a while.
After all, there's a reason why many synths have modulation matrixes for these kinda things and there's also a reason why Boss pretty much adapted them for their GT (and other) units.

And well:

and now I understand those who ask for global blocks.

And that's just one reason why global blocks would be great.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Is there still no way to reorder snapshots in HX edit?

Don't think so (if you have a free one left you can obviously use that as a repository).

 

[CakeEater]

Hi @Digital Igloo . I recently created a Helix preset which is consistently crashing my Helix floor. It was made entirely through HX Edit, and I didn't manually modify the JSON in the Helix file at all. Nonetheless, it consistently crashes. I did check the JSON and it's well formed, and if I remove a couple of blocks it generally performs okay. It seems to me that it's running out of DSP when in use, or there might be some allocation error in the background, or a mismanagement of resources. Most of the blocks in use are used identically in other presets without issue.

The most common ways I can crash it are rolling up or down the high-cut parameter in the IR block, or activating the mono gain blocks at the end of the stereo channel.

It has two irregular blocks at the end of the chain, a mono-gain that's there just to collapse to mono before the Dynamic Ambience should I want to, and a mono-gain with -120dB that's toe-switch activated, just to act as a mute. A completely wild guess from myself is that there are too many potential instances of summing to mono in a signal chain that's already maxed out on DSP, but that's pure speculation.

I can send it on to you or a team member if you'd like to take a look?

 

[Sascha Franck]

That's handy, but I need to be able to change amp parameters on snapshot changes, so an external solution won't work for me

Really?
Personally, while I thought snapshots and parameters controlled by them could come in handy, in the end it's never even remotely been worth the hassle. I mean, would you not get along with any analog amps because of that, either? Because those would never allow you to do anything like that (unless it's one of the very few motor controlled ones).
Seriously, that's not a trick question, I simply can't imagine a context when I would really need that functionality (unless we're talking about switches only, but there's very few of them on the HX amps).

 

[laxu]

The thing with snapshot is, that once the initial honeymoon (which I'm sure many people experienced) is over, you will notice just *how* convoluted things get, simply because there's zero visual control of what's going on within a patch.
In case you're only using on/off assignments, things usually are fine, but start throwing in parameter changes and it gets messy real quick.
Just open an intense patch that you haven't used for a while and try to reverse engineer it (or even just understand what you were thinking at the time of creating it).
It's why I usually prefer "direct" manual assignments. You get a list of all parameters controlled, which is helping a lot.
And it's also why the way Boss is doing it, isn't all too shabby. Sure, tough to set up but somewhat easy to decipher, should you want to modify things after a while.
After all, there's a reason why many synths have modulation matrixes for these kinda things and there's also a reason why Boss pretty much adapted them for their GT (and other) units.

Yeah this sort of stuff could use some "show everything that this snapshot changes" view that just collects the bypass/enabled states and parameter value changes etc.

I don't think Boss's "Excel sheet of parameters" is a good way to assign that stuff, but it's a good way to see what is happening.

 

[Sascha Franck]

I don't think Boss's "Excel sheet of parameters" is a good way to assign that stuff, but it's a good way to see what is happening.

I think what could massively help would be drag and drop modulations (obviously only available in the editor, but that's fine as these things are "homework" anyway). That's something you can find in many softsynths already - and even in Guitar Rig. Ideally, any such d'n'd modulations would then show up in the modulation matrix instantly, so you can always see what's happening. Add some "sort by parameter/block type" options and it's only getting better.

 

[GTR37]

I have always thought line 6 helix has some vg effects.. not all but many

The delays , drives and new verbs are all excellent IMO

 

[Digital Igloo]

Hi @Digital Igloo . I recently created a Helix preset which is consistently crashing my Helix floor. It was made entirely through HX Edit, and I didn't manually modify the JSON in the Helix file at all. Nonetheless, it consistently crashes. I did check the JSON and it's well formed, and if I remove a couple of blocks it generally performs okay. It seems to me that it's running out of DSP when in use, or there might be some allocation error in the background, or a mismanagement of resources. Most of the blocks in use are used identically in other presets without issue.

The most common ways I can crash it are rolling up or down the high-cut parameter in the IR block, or activating the mono gain blocks at the end of the stereo channel.

It has two irregular blocks at the end of the chain, a mono-gain that's there just to collapse to mono before the Dynamic Ambience should I want to, and a mono-gain with -120dB that's toe-switch activated, just to act as a mute. A completely wild guess from myself is that there are too many potential instances of summing to mono in a signal chain that's already maxed out on DSP, but that's pure speculation.

I can send it on to you or a team member if you'd like to take a look?

Yep. The fastest way is to open a ticket and send the preset into CS.

 

[molul]

Ouch. After a couple of days updating all my presets with better dialed amps, yesterday I copied them back from Native to my Helix LT, and I found that all the (I don't know a short name for this functionality introduced in 3.15) "snapshot controls on Command center>HX Snapshot parameters" configuration was lost. Had to spend a few hours redoing everything on all presets :_(

I could consistently reproduce the issue with setlists and presets exported from HX Edit to Native, then back to HX Edit, so I reported it to support. Hope it gets fixed in the next update

 

[molul]

Checking

Ouch. After a couple of days updating all my presets with better dialed amps, yesterday I copied them back from Native to my Helix LT, and I found that all the (I don't know a short name for this functionality introduced in 3.15) "snapshot controls on Command center>HX Snapshot parameters" configuration was lost. Had to spend a few hours redoing everything on all presets :_(

I could consistently reproduce the issue with setlists and presets exported from HX Edit to Native, then back to HX Edit, so I reported it to support. Hope it gets fixed in the next update

Small update: I run a diff of the two preset (hlx) files, as they're jsons, and there definitely are objects named "commands" being removed in Native when saving (or not being loaded from the file exported from HX Edit, thus not saved afterwards).

Hope there's an easy fix for that. It's been there since 3.15 (this is the second time this happened to me).

 

[pipelineaudio]

Ouch. After a couple of days updating all my presets with better dialed amps, yesterday I copied them back from Native to my Helix LT, and I found that all the (I don't know a short name for this functionality introduced in 3.15) "snapshot controls on Command center>HX Snapshot parameters" configuration was lost. Had to spend a few hours redoing everything on all presets :_(

I could consistently reproduce the issue with setlists and presets exported from HX Edit to Native, then back to HX Edit, so I reported it to support. Hope it gets fixed in the next update

Something similar keeps happening to me since I got my helix floor

 

[three_eyed_otter]

Hope there's an easy fix for that. It's been there since 3.15 (this is the second time this happened to me).

There is…Buy an FM9 & start using the hyphenated word, “Game-changer!"

Have a good one,

3EO

 

[Alex Kenivel]

There is…Buy an FM9 & start using the hyphenated word, “Game-changer!"

Have a good one,

3EO

 

[DieSchmalle]

 

[MindCrime]

There is…Buy an FM9 & start using the hyphenated word, “Game-changer!"

Have a good one,

3EO

You sound just like TB3....

 

[molul]

There is…Buy an FM9 & start using the hyphenated word, “Game-changer!"

Have a good one,

3EO

Never until I earn so much more money!

 

[GTR37]

Line6 must be working something new for sure as they mentioned 3.8 is a much smaller update and they just pushed it out till the fall possibly
Last update was November 2023 so it’s looks likely 2024 will only see 1 update

 

[molul]

Line6 must be working something new for sure as they mentioned 3.8 is a much smaller update and they just pushed it out till the fall possibly
Last update was November 2023 so it’s looks likely 2024 will only see 1 update

Yep, something seems to be on development.

Or maybe it's shorter in blocks but it has cool new features that has required most of the time. I remember DI saying something about some new feature that would arrive "when it makes sense".

 

[Perrymusica]

Line6 must be working something new for sure as they mentioned 3.8 is a much smaller update and they just pushed it out till the fall possibly
Last update was November 2023 so it’s looks likely 2024 will only see 1 update

We'll see what the new update brings. Beyond that, I know a lot of people who are switching to other pedalboards like the QC KMP FRCT, but I don't know anyone who is coming back. I hope that line6 in some update or in some new generation of pedalboard manages to reverse this trend.

 

[Vic Winters]

HX One $50 price drop.