Line 6 Helix Stadium Talk

Apologies :) I was a believer when I tried the Elmsley. I’m not a massive fan but the negative feedback dial thing it does seems to go vaguely in the direction of one of the only valve amps I’ve got (that has a bonkers negative feedback thing on it that just pokes the hornets nest of an already angry amp). I hadn’t found another model / profile / whatever that did that. It’s still not the same but it (and the Kemper ‘let’s make a reverb that does everything’ approach) persuaded me that it’s not always a bad idea
No apologies necessary. There are some great original models in there. I had a few of them saved as favorites. I can't explain my logic any further than I already have, tbh.

The GT1000 original models make sense because they don't have the desire or dedicated manpower to fix the list of real life equivalents in their 7 year(?)+ flagship. And it's not north of $2k. At that price point; I have expectations. I think Line 6 will meet them as well; the timeline just remains to be seen.
 
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global blocks, modifiers, not bright enough LEDs or anything related to UI stuff. It'll be just about the audio side of things.
I think these kind of things are somewhat binary, no one will disagree with wanting to improve them. I think it's tough to debate on something thats going to have essentially total agreement from all. Amp modelling is more of a grey area and harder to quantify in absolutes.

What we however don't see is *any* other improvements on the sound shaping side of things. There's not one single new drive model, not one single new compressor, filter, pitch, modulation, delay, reverb or whatever models. Zero. Nada. Zilch.
In all of these categories, there's some pretty great, some good, some not so good and some pretty bad models - but I guess we can agree that there's room for improvement.
Totally agree. I think again, everyone would agree. Line 6 made it pretty clear with the launch that there would only be new amps for now and that new FX would come later. Not sure what there is to debate here, unless people disagree with facts.
just looking at Valhalla's Supermassive or Sixth Sample's Deelay is sufficient. They're both doing things the L6 delays could only dream of. And they're *super* inspiring to fool around with. Or look at modulations and, say, Valhalla's Space Modulator. Just incredible. We could as well proceed to reverbs. Check out NI's Raum and see how easy it is to get a whole plethora of very interesting (and usable) sounds out of it. And fwiw, all the mentioned plugins are freeware.
Agree. I think things like this will probably come in Stadium's lifespan. Early days still, and Im sure L6 are aware of what's out there and what people are used to using.

I think part of the reason there is a discussion on the amp side of things is because thats one of the newest areas Line 6 have released. Even if the previous generation was pretty good, there was absolutely room to improve on the amp modelling side, and seeing as the FX and cabs are identical to before, the focus is naturally going to be on the amp modelling. If Stadium's new models were all Spring reverbs, I think we'd be discussing those, or if they changed the cab engine, that would get more discussion. I dont think it's wrong for the discussion to be on their newest algorithms.

Moreso, the vast majority of users are going to be using amplifier models (even if just a handful of amps). Niche effects will ultimately only get used by a smaller number of users and there's probably less to debate about them (compared to the meat and potatoes stuff). I dont expect everyone to care about the last few % of amplifier modelling (just because I do), and similarly, the number of users who care about other features will also be similarly small. Thats kind of the point - we all have our own areas of things we're interested in. And thats fine.
It does make for a boring-ass read when you don’t care about accuracy, though
Such is the case for forums for anything you don’t care about. I’d rather drink bleach than read more posts about aliasing or real time latency but those discussions always come up constantly too. The topics always rotate and quickly move onto something else anyway. The accuracy discussions usually pop up when someone discovers something and wants to share it.
 
Niche effects will ultimately only get used by a smaller number of users and there's probably less to debate about them

Just to be clear: I'm not only talking about niche effects but some bread'n'butter stuff as well. One of the reasons I went back to a hybrid setup was that I pretty much all throughout preferred analog dirt pedals over the HX ones. Yes, there's some pretty good ones, but others are really lackluster or just never felt too well under my fingers. Let alone there's no real AIAB pedals - which are great to have if you like the "paradigm" of working with pedal platform amps.
Same goes for other categories - it's pretty wellknown that the reverbs aren't much to write home about and we likely don't even need to talk about the rotary (which isn't that much of a niche thing I'd say). Etc.
And as said, while I absolutely agree that great amps are the skeleton for pretty much anything, you can as well spoil the fun you might be having with them by slapping a sub par drive pedal in front.
 
Very defenitely. Typically, they're not even interested in "the other" famous sounds. You will barely ever find someone asking for, say, Robert Fripp's and Adrian Belew's sounds on King Crimson's "Discipline" - even if that's a production pretty famous for wicked guitar sounds.

I've bought the tickets for next summer BEAT tour.
 
To be fair to Line6, while Stadiums has nothing new in the effects list, have or will have proxy, showcase a new UI and hardware and some more quality of life features (like stomp a & b or the added modes, playlist management, etc).

Showcase I'm sure will turn to be much more useful than most people expect it to be.
 
Hey right on, that's a happy gear corner you have indeed! Whilst that's really cool and all, you are replying randomly to something I posted which was an in-joke, involving a DSL and a certain forum member here a few months past. It was subtle and meant for people who were paying attention and have a memory of stupid shit from a few months ago. =)
I was just throwing it out there that I'm a big modeler fan and also a big tube amp fan!
 
TBH, I can't see any use case for me. But that might be completely different for other folks.

It's probably not for me either, but If I was doing anything with tracks it would be sweet. As well as eliminating the need for a lap top for a lot of people.
 
TBH, I can't see any use case for me. But that might be completely different for other folks.

Might not be your user casa but, for example, you can create an empty song with no audio files but still place flags on the empty timeline.

If you place a flag for each snapshot change that happen in a song, you can then jump from flag/snapshot to the next flag/snapshot with a single footswitch. The song doesn't need to be played back and works simply like a big place holder.

Save the song, set it to load the correct preset and do it for each song in your repertoire.
 
If you place a flag for each snapshot change that happen in a song, you can then jump from flag/snapshot to the next flag/snapshot with a single footswitch. The song doesn't need to be played back and works simply like a big place holder.

Save the song, set it to load the correct preset and do it for each song in your repertoire.

I can see how that might be cool for some folks, but it's simply not how I do things. Apart from back in the days when I played more musical theatre stuff, I never even just once programmed patches per whatever songs. I just don't like that kinda thing because it's taking away some of the last bits of "freedom".
 
Another idea on how to use showcase without using it for playing tracks.

Let's say you use the same kitchen sink preset for the entire show and you also have other pedals (with midi) on your board and that different songs need to recall different programs/settings on those pedals.
A pretty common situation.

Instead of using multiple copies of the same stadium preset with different midi commands that recall the correct program on your extra pedals, you can use a single helix preset but then use showcase for the midi stuff,

You create an empty showcase song that will recall your kitchen sink preset and also will recall the correct midi program on the other pedals (and if you use snapshots or need to send midi program changes during the song you can use flags as described in my previous post).

Anytime you add a new song in your repertoire you won't need to duplicate (and maintain) the same helix preset. Create a new song and you're done and then you can organize your show setlists as list of showcase songs instead of a list of presets.

You can also combine this idea with the ones on my previous post.
 
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Other few ideas for using showcase without playing back tracks.

If you play in a band that use in ear monitors you can use showcase for playing the count in only and have synchronized song starts.

Or you can place audio cues in the timeline and send them to the band at will, things like "songs ends next bar".

Or you can use the showcase looper commands and records/playback intros/outros or whatever noise you need anywhere during the performance.
 
Does Showcase import MIDI along with audio? It’d be cool to run MIDI to a V-Drum module, in case something happens to the drummer. Or you can rehearse without the drummer. Or keyboards.
 
The line6 HX/Helix universe is for me more a platform than just a new modeler series called Stadium. Ever since Helix, line6 has been evolving the platform around software and hardware, and getting better with each step.

A lot of the newer effects were already built for the OG Helix as they still fit and worked on the older hardware. Thinking e.g. about new reverbs and poly effects. And they were already developing Stadium at that time, knowing what will be needed. With the poly effects they were on the limit on the OG Helix, and now with the Agoura models they definitly needed new hardware. And here they updated so much cool things with Stadium giving us more tools , options , DSP, routings and even the "old" effects and HX amps sound more alive on the new device. And as a lot of players say , the "feel" is more real than before, too!

So, I am not worried about new effects not being there yet, it will defintily come!
And I am really looking forward getting my device in the next weeks and am excited what line6 will further pull out of the hat here.
 
Does Showcase import MIDI along with audio? It’d be cool to run MIDI to a V-Drum module, in case something happens to the drummer. Or you can rehearse without the drummer. Or keyboards.

No, you can't load a midi files and I don't think is somenthing is planned for the future.
After all you can easily convert your midi into audio and then load the wav file.
 
No, you can't load a midi files and I don't think is somenthing is planned for the future.
After all you can easily convert your midi into audio and then load the wav file.

I hope it is a bit more open than that - Showcase allows you to add Flags to send MIDI for PC and other, and there are other Flags for tempo change.

it would be good if they could add MIDI file conversion into Flags - so a song arrangement can be changed in a DAW and dragged in without having to manually rework all of the Flags.
 
I hope it is a bit more open than that - Showcase allows you to add Flags to send MIDI for PC and other, and there are other Flags for tempo change.

it would be good if they could add MIDI file conversion into Flags - so a song arrangement can be changed in a DAW and dragged in without having to manually rework all of the Flags.

That would be a great addition indeed.
 
One thing I’d like to see added to Showcase (which I’m sure has already been thought of for a future update) is ‘the ability to change all snapshot flags at once on a song’.

Right now, I’ve got some backing tracks where I’ve added flags that select the overall preset at the start of the song and it then changes to other snapshots for chorus boost etc.

Although I can see the list of all the flags, I have to go to each one to swap patches. It’d be nice to change the whole lot from the list view, especially as the snapshot change flags themselves aren’t blindingly obvious on the playback engine. If I’m missing something obvious or this already exists, please educate me :)

Would also be nice to globally disable / enable all the flags - if I’m playing over a track and deciding if a new preset I’ve come up with would be a better fit, it’s not possible to do so as the flags will change to what you’ve previously asked it to do….. so a way of getting it to ignore them all whilst you tweak would be nice.
 
Am I the only one who feels it would be cool if Line 6 just went all in and made it possible to record straight to the tracks in showcase? Would be too demanding? It would be such an amazing creative tool to start with drum track wave and start adding guitar other tracks to songs.

Unlikely they’ll go that route, they specifically said it’s not supposed to be a DAW. But I have a feeling even more people would use it if it could capture ideas and save them?
 
Am I the only one who feels it would be cool if Line 6 just went all in and made it possible to record straight to the tracks in showcase? Would be too demanding? It would be such an amazing creative tool to start with drum track wave and start adding guitar other tracks to songs.

Unlikely they’ll go that route, they specifically said it’s not supposed to be a DAW. But I have a feeling even more people would use it if it could capture ideas and save them?
Yes 100% a basic daw on the go or travelling would be killer
 
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