Line 6 Helix Stadium Talk

[laxu]

any particularly magical dual cab combos for classic and hard rock are welcome

Greenbacks and V30s.

 

[ccc118]

Not sure what I'm doing wrong here, but just came back to the Stadium, and added a stereo cab block, with one speaker left and another right.

Sounds great with one speaker, but as soon as I add the second, it turns into a fuzzy mess. Seems to happen no matter which speaker or mic is selected.

Anyone else come across this? I normally use IRs, but wanted to try the built-in cabs.

As a side note - any particularly magical dual cab combos for classic and hard rock are welcome :)

I haven't had any trouble with them, but have not tried panning anything yet. I'll have to try that later and see. Have you tried them centered without panning?

I'm sure it's going to depend on the person, but I've been having good luck with the 4x12 Greenback for those types of sounds. I'm usually using a 57 + 160 or 121, with the ribbon mic a little lower at -3-5db or so.

 

[Karl Houseknecht]

Sounds great with one speaker, but as soon as I add the second, it turns into a fuzzy mess.

Are you certain that you loaded a speaker into it or does it say "no cab"? I find the "no cab" option a little strange because it would do exactly what you're saying.

 

[DG80]

Are you certain that you loaded a speaker into it or does it say "no cab"? I find the "no cab" option a little strange because it would do exactly what you're saying.

Yep, fully confirmed I've got a speaker loaded. It does kind of sound like it's bypassed though (and confirmed the block is NOT bypassed).

 

[EOengineer]

As a side note - any particularly magical dual cab combos for classic and hard rock are welcome :)

I tend to use the same cab on both instances and then use mic combinations - like a 57 up close off axis and then a ribbon back a bit. Basically emulating using a real world multi micing approach.

 

[JiveTurkey]

I feel like if you are using a single cab; there should only be one cabinet "tab" showing. I actually like the visual adjustment/interactions with the onboard cab block.

 

[ccc118]

I tend to use the same cab on both instances and then use mic combinations - like a 57 up close off axis and then a ribbon back a bit. Basically emulating using a real world multi micing approach.

What position number are you generally ending up at for the 57? Just curious about what other people are doing.

 

[EOengineer]

What position number are you generally ending up at for the 57? Just curious about what other people are doing.

It’s HIGHLY variable depending on what I’m doing. I would say I tend to lean more towards cone than cap. If there’s too much low end happening I’ll usually back the mic off the cab to kill some of the proximity effect.

 

[fr8_trane]

To elaborate, I used my notes for when I did this with the Axe-Fx III: https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/keeley-halo-take-2.185495/ and the attached Halo block diagram from Keeley.

This is a simplified block diagram for Halo core in wet-only mode using Andy's settings (the LFO phases for Delay B is not quite this, but close enough)
View attachment 55873

• Note the phase inversion in the cross-feedback from Delay A to B
• Note the phase inversion of the saturated and filtered signal at the input of Delay B.
• Note there's no cross feedback from Delay B to A.
• Note the modulation LFO phase between delay lines
  • 90 degrees between Delay A L and Delay B L
  • 90 degrees between Delay A R and Delay B R
  • 90 degrees between Delay A L and Delay A R
  • 90 degrees between Delay B L and Delay B R

Now here's a a simplified view of the Helix Stereo Crisscross delay block using the following settings:

• Pan A => Left 100
• Pan B => Right 100
• Shape => Sine
• Phase => 90%
• Mix => 100%

View attachment 55874

A couple of parallel crisscross blocks would be a good fit for emulating the Halo if we had the following additional options:

• Independently controlled cross-feedback for A => B and B => A
  • With independent controls, we would set B => A feedback to 0%.
• Phase reversal option on cross-feed path
• Phase reversal option on input L and/or input R

Since we don't actually have these options currently available, we have to do the cross-feed manually, so we can apply phase reversal and only cross-feedback from Delay 1 => Delay 2.

We can rearrange the Halo block diagram in terms of two dual mono delay blocks.
To preserve the modulation LFO phase relationships between all the 4 delay lines, we swap L/R at the input and output of Delay 2.
View attachment 55875

• Essentially we have 3 parallel paths:
  1. Input => Delay 1 (1/8 dotted) => output
  2. Input => Delay 1 (1/8 dotted) => Phase inversion => 50% level reduction => Delay 2 (1/4) => output
  3. Input => Phase inversion => Delay 2 (1/4) => output

• Ok, so then we should be able to use a couple of Helix Crisscross delay blocks, with cross-feed set to 0% - which turns them into dual mono delay blocks with the modulation we need.
• To reverse the phase and swap the L/R channels, we can use two "Stereo Width" blocks in series which have the option to swap channels and invert the phase of the R channel (after swapping).
  • View attachment 55876
  • View attachment 55877
• For saturation I ended up using a Deluxe Comp block with fast attach and release so it kinda approximates the static non-linearity used in the Halo
• For the lowpass filtering after saturation I used an EQ Tilt block

Now, I ran into some obstacles with routing - I couldn't quite figure out how to do the 3 parallel paths described above (+ the dry) without having to replicate the whole input chain. So that's what I had to do to get this to work.

View attachment 55881

I also noticed that the feedback controls in the Crisscross delay block are not linear taper (they appear to be audio taper) so a 43-45% feedback on a linear control maps to about ~65% on an audio taper.

I've attached the preset

Have you tried turning down the headroom parameter on the crisscross for input saturation?

 

[EOengineer]

Those headroom parameters can have a pretty substantial effect on how some of the analog modeled effects deal with dynamics.

 

[Mooselake]

Last night I fired up the Stadium XL and navigated away from one of the factory presets I'd been experimenting with over to one of my presets. I noticed a little coating of fizz on the preset and immediately thought wow, this doesn't sound so good like I remember. Has the honeymoon worn off so soon? Turns out I'd navigated to the setlist I'd imported, which was my old User3 bank from my LT and selected the last preset in the list. When I realized what I'd done and got into my Stadium User Folder and went to the bottom one (coincidentally, they had sort of similar names) all the gloriousness returned. That old preset I loaded first wasn't even a good representation of what OG Helix could do. Moment of panic there, lol.

 

[mbenigni]

Holy Hell, 1 hour 47 minutes?! That's a full length motion picture.

Without any motion.

 

[JiveTurkey]

Posted the vid then saw the thread about it on TGP by the "new member" and decided to go ahead and delete the video post

 

[GTR37]

Holy Hell, 1 hour 47 minutes?! That's a full length motion picture.

Without any motion.

Clearly NDSP should hire him

 

[I S]

The Line 6 folks are far too humble. I'd go so far as to say, too humble for today's competitively aggressive marketing by others. "Agoura is our brand new modeling technology and we think it's the best, most accurate modeling platform out there," is the opening line I'd expect. Lee meanders all over the place. It's clear he respects Paul but isn't too keen on the Line 6 offerings. Lee plays the "look how simple it is to use" because he thinks that's L6's strong point, rather than how good things sound and play. It's been this way for years. Someone needs to bitchslap Lee with some confidence.

(All this coming from me, known to be overly humble to my own detriment).

 

[ccc118]

Not sure what I'm doing wrong here, but just came back to the Stadium, and added a stereo cab block, with one speaker left and another right.

Sounds great with one speaker, but as soon as I add the second, it turns into a fuzzy mess. Seems to happen no matter which speaker or mic is selected.

Anyone else come across this? I normally use IRs, but wanted to try the built-in cabs.

As a side note - any particularly magical dual cab combos for classic and hard rock are welcome :)

I tested out a stereo cab and panning left and right seems to work fine. Some of the factory presets use dual cabs. Try testing some of those out and see if they sound normal. Maybe there is something weird going on with your preset.

 

[DanRad]

This may be user error or simply not understanding how the new preset/setlist system works, but I keep getting shifted from the setlist I'm working on to the User Presets section. I'm guessing because I'm tweaking the preset? But if I tweak a preset during a gig, I do NOT want to be thrown back into the full User Presets section.

Am I doing something wrong or what? (Gig on Saturday, so it would be great to get it sorted by then.)

EDIT: I just confirmed that it pops back to the User Presets section on save. So if I tweak a preset during the gig and save it, I have to manually go back to the setlist I was in. This can't be how it's supposed to work, can it?

 

[DG80]

I tested out a stereo cab and panning left and right seems to work fine. Some of the factory presets use dual cabs. Try testing some of those out and see if they sound normal. Maybe there is something weird going on with your preset.

Just started from scratch and seems fine now.....

 

[Guitar541]

The scribble strips on my stadium flash when banking up or down on presets until you select one then they stop flashing is this normal ?

 

[EOengineer]

The scribble strips on my stadium flash when banking up or down on presets until you select one then they stop flashing is this normal ?

No. It’s not. It’s finally happening. It’s become sentient and we’re all doomed.