Line 6 Helix Stadium Pre-Launch Discussion

[Sascha Franck]

If you want your dirt pedal or compressor to “identify” as your base tone, that’s fine. But don’t expect everyone else in the industry to do it.

It's not about me "identifying" or so. It's just about which item does what in a patch. Effects are clearly distinguishable, dirt boxes, EQs and compressors are not (at least typically).

 

[Sascha Franck]

An Italian company called Redmatica even made software that would automate the process—it'd spit out a MIDI note to your synth, capture the resultant audio, trim the empty space, and repeat for the next note or range of notes. Apple acquired them in 2012 and integrated some of their IP into Logic.

Fwiw, Logic's autosampling feature is quite gorgeous, especially as you can layer stuff and then "consolidate" things nicely. It's pretty much what I could imagine doing with captures (in case the algorithm behind it allows for that). One of my bass patches is an autosampled mix of P-bass, a double bass and a synth bass, works great.

And fwiw #2: It's a shame Redmatica (which I've been betatesting for way back in the days) was bought. They also had a great software called "Keymap", which would allow you to map samples and export them in many formats (Logic's EXS, Kontakt, IIRC SF2 as well), and as if that wasn't enough already, you could do quite some nifty things with samples, such as kinda "drawing" vibratos out (think Melodyne), stretch and pitch them destructively (pretty great quality, again IIRC) so the sampler didn't have to do it, etc. Unfortunately, none of that has made its way into Logic so far (ok, perhaps there's some of it under the hood).

 

[HotRats]

It's not about me "identifying" or so. It's just about which item does what in a patch. Effects are clearly distinguishable, dirt boxes, EQs and compressors are not (at least typically).

While I agree with your general view, it has to be said that a distortion pedal into a clean amp is clearly distinguishable form the base tone just like a phaser is.

 

[FuzzyAce]

Maybe I might as well (as said, didn't watch, no plans to do so, either). And yet, the premise is stupid clickbaiting. If you look through any Stadium thread, the question is just silly, simply because pretty much everyone seems to care about the Agoura amp models. Whether it's all people and how much they care can certainly be debated, but releasing a video with such a title is just embarrassing.

I agree the clickbait titles are stupid, and this is only the second video I've watched from the guy. But I still agree with the points he made, generally speaking.

 

[Sascha Franck]

While I agree with your general view, it has to be said that a distortion into a clean amp is clearly distinguishable form the base tone

Nah, that's not what I meant.
When you listen to the final tone, you won't be able to tell whether it's a pedal into an amp or just the amp (only in case you know the amp settings beforehand or do an A/B comparison, but this is just about listening to the final sound).
When you however listen to a sound with a phaser on it, you'll instantly be able to tell.

 

[Digital Igloo]

It's a shame Redmatica (which I've been betatesting for way back in the days) was bought. They also had a great software called "Keymap", which would allow you to map samples and export them in many formats (Logic's EXS, Kontakt, IIRC SF2 as well), and as if that wasn't enough already, you could do quite some nifty things with samples, such as kinda "drawing" vibratos out (think Melodyne), stretch and pitch them destructively (pretty great quality, again IIRC) so the sampler didn't have to do it, etc. Unfortunately, none of that has made its way into Logic so far (ok, perhaps there's some of it under the hood).

Yeah, I had all the Redmatica stuff back in the day. (Been neck-deep in Logic since 3.2 back in...'97? Long before Apple snagged Emagic.) Loved it; really clever team of engineers.

 

[Sascha Franck]

But I still agree with the points he made, generally speaking.

Rhetoric question: Did you need to watch the video for that? Has it been a "wow, good to know!" moment? Or didn't you just know everything before already?
As said, I didn't watch, but in the past I watched several of his (and other's) videos of that kind - and it's pretty much always been at least a 95% waste of time. Zero new information, zero "needed" confirmation of what I thought anyway, etc.

 

[FuzzyAce]

Rhetoric question: Did you need to watch the video for that? Has it been a "wow, good to know!" moment? Or didn't you just know everything before already?
As said, I didn't watch, but in the past I watched several of his (and other's) videos of that kind - and it's pretty much always been at least a 95% waste of time. Zero new information, zero "needed" confirmation of what I thought anyway, etc.

I survived. Nothing negative happened! It wasn't a complete waste of time because I was drinking a delicious smoothie and thinking happy thoughts.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Loved it; really clever team of engineers.

I think it's been pretty much a one-man-show for the most part (at least I only ever had contact with Mr. Gozzi, also met him in person two times). Excellent guy. Too bad I lost contact once the takeover happened. Such is Apple...
Edit: OIC, you were talking about the Logic team (which I used to know pretty well, too, been a tester for them back in the Windows days...).

 

[BenIfin]

..... captures suck in that they're not truly dynamic

Hey D.I.

Great post. If you don't mind could you elaborate on why ^this^ is the case ?

Its not something I've ever considered before.

Is this in relation to how a static capture -vs- a component modeled Amp reacts to changing your guitar Volume ? -or- how each reacts to "the strings being hit harder or softer" during playing ?

Thanks,
Ben

 

[ian_dissonance]

Hey D.I.

Great post. If you don't mind could you elaborate on why ^this^ is the case ?

Its not something I've ever considered before.

Is this in relation to how a static capture -vs- a component modeled Amp reacts to changing your guitar Volume ? -or- how each reacts to "the strings being hit harder or softer" during playing ?

Thanks,
Ben

I think he means more that any eq you do after the fact is either pre or post “sound” so you’re always eq’ing away from the capture more like a home stereo than a guitar amp.

 

[BenIfin]

I think he means more that any eq you do after the fact is either pre or post “sound” so you’re always eq’ing away from the capture more like a home stereo than a guitar amp.

Yep. I totally get that. When I do use Captures, all my EQ'ing and up or down gaining is done in separate blocks before and / or after the Capture Block.

I like to keep the Static Capture's integrity unchanged .... to my ears, the inbuilt EQ and Gain controls on Tonex / NAM just respond and sound really "crap".

I took "dynamic" to mean from a guitarists playability-dynamics perspective ?

 

[ian_dissonance]

Yep. I totally get that. When I do use Captures, all my EQ'ing and up or down gaining is done in separate blocks before and / or after the Capture Block.

I like to keep the Static Capture's integrity unchanged .... to my ears, the inbuilt EQ and Gain controls on Tonex / NAM just respond and sound really "crap".

I took "dynamic" to mean from a guitarists playability-dynamics perspective ?

If the capture it good it should be as dynamic playing-wise as the device being captured at those settings. The requirement of an external eq block was something I really did not enjoy in my runs with Kemper and other profiling.

 

[Digital Igloo]

Hey D.I.

Great post. If you don't mind could you elaborate on why ^this^ is the case ?

Its not something I've ever considered before.

Is this in relation to how a static capture -vs- a component modeled Amp reacts to changing your guitar Volume ? -or- how each reacts to "the strings being hit harder or softer" during playing ?

Let's stick with the multisampler analogy. A really deep multisample might have multiple velocities sampled, so, for example, when you play middle C softly, it'll trigger a different sample than if you play it loudly. Huge multisamples might have each individual note sampled at various velocities, so a patch may actually be made up of hundreds of individual samples.

But now say you want to change the amount of suboscillator or VCO mix or tracking or Duty Cycle—things people control all the time. You can't really unless you multisample the whole thing again and save it as a different patch. And forget assigning Duty Cycle or embedded filter cutoff to, say, mod wheel or expression pedal so it can ramp up into your prog rock solo or something.

Are any of these issues concerning for most guitarists? Nah, not really. But at a certain point, if you're trying to accomplish certain things or certain sounds, especially within the context of a live show or attempting to recreate all the cool dynamic studio trickery you and your engineer spent months on, the limitations of multisamples—and static captures—can become increasingly apparent.

 

[Chocol8]

Are any of these issues concerning for most guitarists? Nah, not really.

How often do you see guitarists twisting knobs on real amps in the middle of playing a song live? I think that is a very different situation than keyboards.

 

[Chocol8]

Hey D.I.

Great post. If you don't mind could you elaborate on why ^this^ is the case ?

Its not something I've ever considered before.

I think he is only referring th the ability to change settings, not the dynamics of playing.

Is this in relation to how a static capture -vs- a component modeled Amp reacts to changing your guitar Volume ? -or- how each reacts to "the strings being hit harder or softer" during playing ?

I would hope not since good captures do this extremely well, better than most models currently.

 

[Sascha Franck]

How often do you see guitarists twisting knobs on real amps in the middle of playing a song live?

Obviously not often while playing but often enough during soundchecks.

Anyhow, as long as fully parametric captures aren't available, I personally and vastly prefer using component modeled amps in pretty much all situations (regardless of whether it's live or in my humble home studio environment). I often use one and the same amp for pretty much all sounds I may need for a particular project, from clean to heavily driven, from soft to mean. A tough call to do with many captures.

 

[Chocol8]

A tough call to do with many captures.

I usually do it with only one or two.

 

[Sascha Franck]

I usually do it with only one or two.

No doubt it could work, but I guess you'd be hard pressed finding a sufficient amount of (homogenous) captures to cover the same wealth of sounds, say, the Grammatico GSG is capable of.

 

[Digital Igloo]

How often do you see guitarists twisting knobs on real amps in the middle of playing a song live? I think that is a very different situation than keyboards.

Reaching over and twisting knobs with one hand while playing with their other hand? Almost never.

But these products aren't real amps. You can assign any amp or effect parameter to realtime controllers and/or snapshots, which people do all the time. Plus, in the future, there may be more cool things you can do with models that you can't with proxy clones.