Line 6 Helix Stadium Talk

[CorrosiveMatter]

Well my poor FedEx driver delivered it at about 8pm.

Plugged it in with headphones and got it updated and played with a few of the Factory Presets. Created a new simple preset, copied a factory preset with a bunch of down tuning snapshots to a user preset so I could save changes, uploaded a handful of IR's and needed to get off it. Shut it down and left it for the night.

This AM I got up to an empty house so I could plug it into my PXM-12's and turned it back on. The screen was stuck on the boot logo but you could use the foot switches and play but none of the knobs work including the volume, I thought maybe it was rebuilding presets or something in the background so I left it while I had my first meeting about a meeting later..... 45 minutes later it's still stuck on the boot screen. Power off and back on and go make coffee. Still stuck.

Factory Reset 1

It feels great, sound and the touch screen.

It sounds great as well but I have not really had much time with it yet, as I type this I am in the meeting that I had the earlier meeting about.

 

[AlbertA]

That's why I'm curious why you care about the USB RTL. The typical way to use it as an audio interface would be to monitor direct, in which case the USB RTL doesn't matter.

Or are you using it as an input audio interface to play amp sim plugins in your DAW? If so, no guitar processor will ever have latency as low as a dedicated audio interface.

Think other virtual instruments (in my case Piano plugins).

Also, since reported latency is different than measured by quite a bit, you have to adjust the latency compensation number in the DAW so it matches up between takes.

 

[banned]

We ARE your vacation!

Wrong. NDSP are your vacation. See latest travel package from them -

 

[Orvillain]

Other thoughts as I sit here watching gingerbread cunts dancing on TV to the delight of my son, as he runs around the living room with the monster truck car that he CLEARLY used to smash the living shit out of my Mesa Mark V amp as it was sat near the back door; and only sat there because I couldn't move amps yesterday after being too tired from sedation and being throat "entered" by a doctor of very suspicious heritage. Ahem.

But yes... other thoughts....

- The touchscreen is beautiful. Very slick, easy to use, and VERY responsive. More responsive than the Quad Cortex for sure.
- I'm gonna need to get used to this unit. A few times I tried to joystick one of the knobs. Oops.
- The startup sequence was quite speedy, installing the firmware and all that jazz. Very easy to just connect to my WIFI and grab the update. Way less twat hoops to jump through than NDSP put in your way.
- The unit is a lot less uglier in real life than in product images. In product images there's so much studio lighting washing out the expression pedal, I was kind of worried about it looking cheap and nasty. But it doesn't.
- Downloading and installing the software editor was easy as pie too.

 

[JiveTurkey]

HX0 with a new controller with tiered footswitches just like the XL would be pretty darn enticing

 

[Karl Houseknecht]

How's the brightness on the 2203? ... the Fractal one is too bright.

Where you setting the treble on the Fractal model? I find myself putting at 9:00 or lower. And of course, depends on cab and mic.

 

[EOengineer]

How's the brightness on the 2203? That amp model is hit or miss for me depending on modelers. I loved the QC version but the Fractal one is too bright.

I can’t answer authoritatively until I sit down with a Les Paul and run with it for a minute. My sense is that it’s not quite as bright as the HX but it still has that 800 crushed glass harmonic thing I love.

 

[EOengineer]

Were you setting the treble on the Fractal model? I find myself putting at 9:00 or lower. And of course, depends on cab and mic.

This is pretty much how I set up my real 2204 when using the bright cap. Some folks just DONT like those aggressive bright caps. I love it, it’s part of the thing for me, but a way to bypass the bright caps would help those who prefer the darker vibe. I think there are better amps for that tone.

 

[laxu]

HX0 with a new controller with tiered footswitches just like the XL would be pretty darn enticing

You could even call it....a HX Turkey Sandwich!

 

[Digital Igloo]

On the non-XL Stadium, can you also hold the touchscreen buttons to access e.g more mode?

From the manual:

Is there any way to see what exactly each footswitch with multiple assignments does, like the above example as some sort of list?

Nope, because a single stomp switch can have up to 16 assignments. You can custom label (and color) it whatever you want—just tap-hold the switch and tap "Label/Color"—but it's limited to ~16 characters or so.

- Find some IR's you love, and load them on the unit.

Note that the first time you turn on the unit after loading new IRs, it'll take roughly 300ms longer per IR to boot. This only happens the first time, however; once the IRs are indexed, boot time is normal. Both database indexing and overall boot time will improve.

 

[Orvillain]

Speaking of which @Digital Igloo - feature request for the future... IR creator on the unit. Export as WAV file please. Not a proprietary format.

Have a nice holibobs!

 

[AlbertA]

First impressions - not wowed by the presets I quickly checked out - to be expected I suppose.

Went to an empty preset - went to the EVH Panama red, Cali v30, 57 mic - ok that's bit better. I can now hear what @GuitarJon was saying in his video, like I want more "ooomph" - still early but not "wowed" yet. Yeah I think the master was too high.

However that was probably 30 minutes of playing at volume since I wanted to go to the Taylor guitar show at the Guitar Sanctuary and then when I got back - couldn't play at volume 'cause you know... family :) so latency testing it was.

I tried the criss-cross delay to get in the area of a Keeley halo - it was decent - I wished for a bit more control on the cross feedback paths though.

UI is very intuitive - I didn't even read the cheat sheets (fun fact, the Spanish version says it's a "chuleta" )

Editor on computer - intuitive as well, didn't have to read the manual yet, I was able to import a couple of test IRs easily. I also used it to update the Helix Stadium BTW (instead of wifi on the device itself).

• One thing that's driving me nuts though is the scroll wheel starts adjusting parameters, instead of scrolling the page down. You have to find an area that when scrolling down won't intersect with parameter sliders.
• All knobs or all sliders - uh... why?
• The color scheme has really low contrast - For example, amp page - red on black? why?

 

[laxu]

Nope, because a single stomp switch can have up to 16 assignments. You can custom label (and color) it whatever you want—just tap-hold the switch and tap "Label/Color"—but it's limited to ~16 characters or so.

Even if I custom label it, there has to be some way for me to figure out "wtf does this thing really do". That's why I feel like it should have some sort of "actions list" to pull up. Otherwise you just can just keep piling up stuff and if you need to change any of it...good luck.

Or was that "nope" for holding the touchscreen buttons? Eg. on the Stomp A/B if I want to go to the "More" view, do I need to always hold the footswitch, or can I just hold that particular button on the touchscreen? I think on the others it just opens the momentary/latching assignment view?

 

[Dimiguitar]

People are often impressed by how things sound in YouTube videos. This has been true for official Line 6 videos as well -- though there can also comparison videos where some feel the Agora doesn't sound as good.

There may be meaningful distinctions between these scenarios (comparison videos vs. Agora-only demos), but I wouldn't completely dismiss people's listening experiences based solely on the YouTube platform.

(Let's say it's taken that far).

I've done many gear comparisons over the years, and several have been uploaded to YouTube. In pursuing these tests, I've frequently encountered this point, that they're totally pointless due to YouTube compression.

However, in my experience, especially high gain tone differences that were evident to me in the DAW remained clear enough in the YouTube uploads. I've never had a comparison where I thought, "This is so obvious in the DAW, but I can't hear anything on YouTube." or "Man, this sounds amazing in the DAW, but crap on YouTube ".

In other words, changes introduced by YouTube compression have never been significant enough to alter my judgment. I score the same on different kinds of tests in my DAW as I do on those same tests after uploading to YouTube.

P.S. It's possible YouTube has changed something more recently—I can't speak to that. The above is just my experience from a few years ago.

 

[eggpl@nt]

Some very weird choices for the stock cab mic choice and position choice. A user could be sort of forgiven for thinking a certain amount sounds dark and wooly, if they don't realise that some hardly ever used condenser microphone has been loaded on the cab.

Ahh, that part of the Helix DNA is still very much intact. Bummer. This is and has been one of my top gripes with Helix. User defaults and Favorites provide good workarounds, but I still wonder at a lot of the Helix defaults. Looks like I’ll keep on wondering whenever the Stadium drops.

 

[banned]

You know what - I'm pretty good at judging things over youtube. That simply comes from watching so much content on it that your ears get calibrated.