Line 6 Helix Stadium Pre-Launch Discussion

[Lysander]

It's a conspiracy to observe a statistical pattern? You seem to be confusing that with a complaint.

Dude, there's been what, 4 sound sample videos released so far? And one of those was for the SLO 100 model, which sounded awesome.

 

[mikah912]

Yes, but I don’t want to pay $2200 for Helix sounds that I already have in Helix Floor and Native. I’m not using those amp models much these days. I’d been migrating back to amps and pedals when Stadium was announced. My Floor hasn’t left its backpack in 6 months.

No doubt there is increased realism in the fenders and Marshalls we’ve seen. I am excited for that, but that alone doesn’t bring enough value to the table. I need to hear something that demonstrates a significant step forward in the high gain realm and, to be fair to L6, I don’t think either of those live demos were the best venue for that.

Really hoping to see something convincing soon.

Understood. I think the Agoura Soldano will probably demonstrate the biggest progression. The HX EV Panama and Ecstasy are pretty recent and already sound great. The REVV I expect to be somewhere in between.

Those are all of the new high-gain flavors for now. Hopefully 1-2 more will make it into Stadium 1.2 by Christmas.

 

[Mongillo19]

Remember when DI said he doesn't like sound sample videos

 

[mikah912]

Dude, there's been what, 4 sound sample videos released so far? And one of those was for the SLO 100 model, which sounded awesome.

Yes, I liked the SLO100 video quite a bit. And it features Paul Hindmarsh playing something Van Halen-ish and rolling his volume knob back for a a good bit of it.

Why? To emphasize the expressiveness and responsiveness. Shortly after that we get a clip with the highest gain REVV channel...also with coil splits and all sorts of midgain crunch. And it's for the same reason.

Again...not a complaint. They're deliberately keeping the reins on all-out high gain tones for a very specific reason.

 

[PorcinePicker]

Yes, I liked the SLO100 video quite a bit. And it features Paul Hindmarsh playing something Van Halen-ish and rolling his volume knob back for a a good bit of it.

Just went back to that vid, and that's more like it. The way they dialed the SLO for that video is a better 'brown' by far than the one in the Lettieri vid. It has the sharpness and note separation where the more recent one was too flubby, with the pick attack getting drowned. All just my take, of course.

 

[I S]

They're deliberately keeping the reins on all-out high gain tones for a very specific reason.

The reason being?

 

[mikah912]

The reason being?

Read the second paragraph in the post you quoted again.

 

[Karl Houseknecht]

Mark Lettieri plays with such taste and class.

That demo was off the hook. Something for everyone in it.

 

[EOengineer]

Watched the lettieri video and honeslty everything sounded good or really good.
The high gain tones might not have been brutal but I liked the raw nature of every one of them.

The rawness is the part that gives me a lot of hope for the high gain stuff. That shined through even in the tones I wasn’t into.

The reason being?

Basically the more traditional players who might stay in the clean to EOB tonal areas have historically been less apt to use modeling. Or that’s the story, anyway.

The theory seems to be L6 is bending over backwards to try to win them over. Not sure if I buy it.

 

[banned]

I think it sounds excellent all through. Some of the high gain sounds need to be dialed in more.

But honestly, everyone sounds the same these days, so I think the way they had it sounded great as well.

What sold me was the first few seconds of the Mark Lettieri video - that Marshall sounded SO good with that cleanish tone!

 

[Chocol8]

It's a conspiracy to observe a statistical pattern?

You don’t have a large enough sample size to draw any meaningful statistical conclusions, so yes it is either a conspiracy theory or some other relatively unfounded theory.

Anyway, how many of you guys still believe you can properly evaluate tone capabilities from a YouTube video? You aren’t going to know what the device can do for you until you have it in your hands and try to dial it in with your gear. There are too many variables with someone else’s demo, and that’s before YouTube throws their AI smearing/“optimization” on the video and then their lossy compression.

 

[EOengineer]

Anyone know what Mark was monitoring through in the room?

 

[banned]

You don’t have a large enough sample size to draw any meaningful statistical conclusions, so yes it is either a conspiracy theory or some other relatively unfounded theory.

Anyway, how many of you guys still believe you can properly evaluate tone capabilities from a YouTube video? You aren’t going to know what the device can do for you until you have it in your hands and try to dial it in with your gear. There are too many variables with someone else’s demo, and that’s before YouTube throws their AI smearing/“optimization” on the video and then their lossy compression.

I can get a very good sense for both tone and feel (if the player is a dynamic player and not just slamming the guitar) from a youtube video. I've watched enough videos and very often what I see and hear corroborates with my own personal experience.

Yes, all the 'lossy compression' comments were valid once but now at 4K, it's more than enough for me to get a decent assessment.

 

[Chocol8]

Yes, all the 'lossy compression' comments were valid once but now at 4K, it's more than enough for me to get a decent assessment.

It’s actually gotten significantly worse in the last few months. Google is using AI behind the scenes to smooth out the videos. Visually, you can spot the fakeness in many places, so who knows what is happening to the audio. One thing for sure, 4k doesn’t mean anything as far as authenticity to the original source after It’s been compressed, modified, and then upsampled.

 

[mikah912]

You don’t have a large enough sample size to draw any meaningful statistical conclusions, so yes it is either a conspiracy theory or some other relatively unfounded theory.

Anyway, how many of you guys still believe you can properly evaluate tone capabilities from a YouTube video? You aren’t going to know what the device can do for you until you have it in your hands and try to dial it in with your gear. There are too many variables with someone else’s demo, and that’s before YouTube throws their AI smearing/“optimization” on the video and then their lossy compression.

I will add another perspective:

My day job is running content marketing for a pretty large enterprise. That means content strategy, a very deliberately planned calendar, and videos on multiple channels.

If we were launching a brand new flagship product, and there was a particular capability that we highlighted in a spotlight video, but we didn't put that video out in 2 months of weekly promotional drops touching on pretty much every other aspect of the flagship product- sometimes more than once -... my VP would be like "What gives?".

And she wouldn't accept "Oh, no particular reason. We'll get to it eventually." as an explanation.

I have no reason to believe that Line 6's marketing department is any less deliberate or strategic. I don't believe it's simply a coincidence that they haven't released a video showcase modern high-gain Agoura sounds in 13 promo videos with sound clips (+2 partner marketing showcases released yesterday).

 

[DrewJD82]

@Digital Igloo feel free to send a demo unit down here, I’ll take tone requests from everyone on the forum and once the unit starts shipping I’ll send it back to ya!

 

[EOengineer]

I heard they are bringing in Het for the downpicked palm mute video but they’re running him through the Princeton.

 

[ian_dissonance]

Hopefully they get someone doing actual modern metal tones when they do and not ‘80s butt metal or thrash tones. I want to hear it with a guitar tuned to double drop fuck.

 

[AlbertA]

Get Ola to do it.

 

[Lysander]

WE NEED TO TALK