Line 6 Helix Stadium Talk

[eggpl@nt]

Spoke to a MI store sales rep today, and they mentioned that Stadiums were originally expected in January but now they’re hearing late February, into March.

On the other hand, DI has said that Stadiums should be available “long before [March 20]” about a month ago.

Has anything else been said of the Stadium release? These two points conflict with one another (as I read them), unless something has slipped in the last month.

 

[GTR37]

Spoke to a MI store sales rep today, and they mentioned that Stadiums were originally expected in January but now they’re hearing late February, into March.

On the other hand, DI has said that Stadiums should be available “long before [March 20]” about a month ago.

Has anything else been said of the Stadium release? These two points conflict with one another (as I read them), unless something has slipped in the last month.

Up here in Canada they are saying February is what they are hearing from supplier

 

[molul]

I would bet there will be a release date during NAMM.

 

[essemmarr]

Was just messing around with a preset I made with the Ecstasy using both channels and some ODs and mods and man that is a great little performance rig that covers all the bases. Feels outstanding, sounds tremendous from clean to fully saturated. Great to play.

I tried the OG Helix Floor three different times over its lifespan and there was something stiff about the feeling and response that I found more offputting than any other modeler (even though I loved their UI philosophy, which has only gotten better with Stadium). That issue is gone with the Stadium, at least with the Agoura amps (I haven't dipped into the legacy amps at all yet and frankly wish I could hide them entirely).

A few bugs here and there, yes, but looking forward to what this thing looks like by say 1.5.

 

[EOengineer]

 

[fiftyshadesofslay]

So unfortunately I’ve actually returned mine. It’s a similar story to Rhett Shull’s video (can’t believe I’m in agreement with him) but ultimately it’s just too buggy and unfinished in its current state.

I’m actually pretty disappointed that it’s shipped with so many issues, which are a deal breaker for me. I appreciate that if you’re a home player or hobbyist then you can wait for bug fixes, but if you’re doing paid gigs you can’t be waiting for it to lose audio or make weird pops or volume spikes during a performance.

It definitely has the sounds and I’m sure it’ll all get sorted eventually, but it’s being sold as unit that can be used by pros right now and it’s not that.

 

[HotRats]

Things will be fixed and the product will shine, but I guess the Stadium didn’t go as planned/imagined.

 

[molul]

I felt bad for the Stadium team in the weeks prior to release, but I think they must be way busier now and for the whole year, fixing bugs while also delivering more announced features.

Keep it up, devs! I'm sure Stadium will be huge once the big work is done

 

[Sascha Franck]

This is precisely why I always only buy products based on their "as is" status, not on future promises. For me, all of this is stuff I'm using to play live, hence generate the largest part of my income.
And while I'm actually willing to deal with known and foreseeable bugs to a certain extent in case there's workarounds, I'm defenitely not willing to deal with any random stuff (yes, I know, there's still chances it'll happen with each and every unit, but in this case it seems to be just too much). There's enough other things I need to be aware of on each and every gig (broken strings, cables, PSUs, tablets and what not), so my main sound generating device better be rock solid.

It's also why I'm never an early adopter with all these things. That policy served me very well through plenty of years already (the unfortunate exceptions actually being two "events" related to Line 6 gear, go figure).

 

[Deleted member 3656]

This is precisely why I always only buy products based on their "as is" status, not on future promises. For me, all of this is stuff I'm using to play live, hence generate the largest part of my income.
And while I'm actually willing to deal with known and foreseeable bugs to a certain extent in case there's workarounds, I'm defenitely not willing to deal with any random stuff (yes, I know, there's still chances it'll happen with each and every unit, but in this case it seems to be just too much). There's enough other things I need to be aware of on each and every gig (broken strings, cables, PSUs, tablets and what not), so my main sound generating device better be rock solid.

It's also why I'm never an early adopter with all these things. That policy served me very well through plenty of years already (the unfortunate exceptions actually being two "events" related to Line 6 gear, go figure).

That's not been my income for ages, but I totally feel what you're saying.

There's actually some unpredictability that's positive for my playing and I typically welcome it. But there's also unpredictability that makes no sense adding to such circumstances, like units behaving wrong.

I'm much more tolerant of such issue nowadays, but it's also because of rarely playing live these days and/or especially relying on it for income.

I'd pick the most "reliable" unit for playing live -- in its current state. No increased stress, no waiting, no nothing. And would gladly take a tonal hit for that if it wasn't substantial.

Fractal fm3 offers that. Kempers do. But they're much more mature products.

 

[Mooselake]

Yeah, the Stadium thread over on ToS was apparently completely nuked and this one went dormant for a few days. I still have mine but have locked in on a couple presets I made and have just been playing, mostly, while making some small adjustments to the presets, revisiting effects I hadn't tried in some time. Most recently I was fighting with the Double Take. I've never been able to get just what I want out of it, and on Stadium it seems a little more difficult than what I remember from when it was relatively new in OG. I mentioned before that I reacquainted myself with the Glitz reverb. I tend to run hot and cold on ambient-ish tonality, but some combination of coming out of the holiday music season and the Stadium audio improvements have me enjoying that one, although it does seem to do only one thing, it does it well. It reminds me of some vids I saw trying to replicate the Kelly/@AT Nocturne pedal using delays with modulation from digital multieffects. Another one I've dusted off is the Line 6 original 4-Voice Chorus. I'd gotten into the Ampeg Liquifier and forgot about it. I seem to get closer in a sense to what I want from the Double Take from it than I do with the Double Take.

Pure speculation, but I'm wondering if we won't be getting some sort of hot fix fairly soon. In my usage I've really only encountered two "bugs". One was a one-off where a preset that had been copied and edited across OG and then Stadium 1.1 and 1.2 got corrupted. Building a new preset from scratch rather than editing a copy of one with an old pedigree fixed it. And I still have problems keeping the edit app and unit connected over wifi. It'll drop once or twice per hour, but the drops don't seem to affect the unit itself, and reconnecting after disconnect hasn't been an issue aside from a bit of inconvenience.

One thing I never did much of was utilize snapshots in OG, so my project over the next week is work through adding snapshots to some of my presets. Wish me luck, lol. I still haven't done anything with Showcase either. That'll follow after I make a couple basic snapshots that I can use Showcase to switch between during playback. I'm woefully behind on many of the fancier things OG and Stadium do. I was pretty content working with simple presets and just turning individual effects on and off.

 

[EOengineer]

Ola seems luke warm. I’m also getting the impression he’s not super familiar with the ecosystem. You don’t start your Agoura demo with Badonk.

This is reminding me I still need to try Stadium through a guitar cab.

 

[EOengineer]

So unfortunately I’ve actually returned mine. It’s a similar story to Rhett Shull’s video (can’t believe I’m in agreement with him) but ultimately it’s just too buggy and unfinished in its current state.

I’m actually pretty disappointed that it’s shipped with so many issues, which are a deal breaker for me. I appreciate that if you’re a home player or hobbyist then you can wait for bug fixes, but if you’re doing paid gigs you can’t be waiting for it to lose audio or make weird pops or volume spikes during a performance.

It definitely has the sounds and I’m sure it’ll all get sorted eventually, but it’s being sold as unit that can be used by pros right now and it’s not that.

I’m not actively gigging right now, but I can see how working musicians might be scared off by bugs. In general it’s risky for working musicians to early adopt digital products. I do feel DI accurately set expectations in terms of the bug situation in the lead up to the release and throughout the pre-order period though. It’s very possible your average non forum dwelling musician misses that context though.

Perhaps selection bias, but it feels like an awfully high number of Stadiums went back amongst our smallish group here and it’s kind of a bummer. IMO we’re going to see a massive wave of adoption over the next year or two as L6 realizes more of their vision for this thing. Hopefully they are undeterred.

 

[12tone]

For good or bad, I'm keeping mine. I can afford to as I have an FM3 I use for gigs so it is not a necessity for me and I can wait for the bugs to be dealt with. Last time (Helix OG) I returned mine before the return window closed due to startup bugs and amp tones but ended up buying another one at 2 separate points through the years in my relentless pursuit of the perfect modeling solution ( an endeavor which has never been fulfilled). This time I'm going to wait it out and try to get the most out of it, and hopefully soon, it will become my main gigging unit.

 

[EOengineer]

For good or bad, I'm keeping mine. I can afford to as I have an FM3 I use for gigs so it is not a necessity for me and I can wait for the bugs to be dealt with. Last time (Helix OG) I returned mine before the return window closed due to startup bugs and amp tones but ended up buying another one at 2 separate points through the years in my relentless pursuit of the perfect modeling solution ( an endeavor which has never been fulfilled). This time I'm going to wait it out and try to get the most out of it, and hopefully soon, it will become my main gigging unit.

I was a very late adopter of Helix, bought in just before the new cab engine and saw enough to know Stadium was the clear path forward for me.

I won’t use a lot of the new features. I’m pretty meat and potatoes amps n cabs so Agoura is the main attraction. While I do think Agoura needs refinement, I saw enough progress in this iteration to keep my hardware and buckle in. I think it will get there.

 

[StarF666]

Is the Stadium missing 12dB of gain?

And here is the story: I have both a Stadium XL (long time OG Floor user) and an AM4 (just to see, how good FAS really is). Over the last weeks I swapped back and forth between both units and I somehow gravitated towards the AM4. It just sounded bolder, ballsier, rawer. The Stadium felt more polite, hi-fi but a tad lifeless. I just used a single model of a 5F6A Bassman to not get distracted by switching between to much stuff. I know the (real) amp pretty well. I used the same IR (Amalgam MAGN DUSK MIX) on both units to rule out the cab.

So after all the comparisions on what model sounds "more realer" on which unit, I set both units' models to the same settings and realized the AM4 had more gain at the same settings. Still curious I hooked up the AM4 via SPDIF after the Stadium. When bypassing all blocks on the Stadium and with all other parameters set to default on both units, especially all gains and levels, the AM4 suddenly lacked a lot of gain. I double checked by going direct to the AM4 input. I had to add a +12dB gain block to the input of the Stadium to get the AM4 to sound like going direct into the AM4. With that +12dB boost on the Stadium I was able to dial in both Bassman models very close to each other. Without the boost, both models sounded equally weak. The difference in sound an feel of both units was much smaller when going through the Stadiums input. Interestingly the input meter on the AM4 showed quite high levels when going through SPDIF even without the boost.

So my question is: Does the Stadium (and probably OG Helix) has too low internal levels or has Fractal (at least the AM4) to high internal levels? Or what am I missing? Feel free to try that setup if you have both units.

 

[Orvillain]

Is the Stadium missing 12dB of gain?

And here is the story: I have both a Stadium XL (long time OG Floor user) and an AM4 (just to see, how good FAS really is). Over the last weeks I swapped back and forth between both units and I somehow gravitated towards the AM4. It just sounded bolder, ballsier, rawer. The Stadium felt more polite, hi-fi but a tad lifeless. I just used a single model of a 5F6A Bassman to not get distracted by switching between to much stuff. I know the (real) amp pretty well. I used the same IR (Amalgam MAGN DUSK MIX) on both units to rule out the cab.

So after all the comparisions on what model sounds "more realer" on which unit, I set both units' models to the same settings and realized the AM4 had more gain at the same settings. Still curious I hooked up the AM4 via SPDIF after the Stadium. When bypassing all blocks on the Stadium and with all other parameters set to default on both units, especially all gains and levels, the AM4 suddenly lacked a lot of gain. I double checked by going direct to the AM4 input. I had to add a +12dB gain block to the input of the Stadium to get the AM4 to sound like going direct into the AM4. With that +12dB boost on the Stadium I was able to dial in both Bassman models very close to each other. Without the boost, both models sounded equally weak. The difference in sound an feel of both units was much smaller when going through the Stadiums input. Interestingly the input meter on the AM4 showed quite high levels when going through SPDIF even without the boost.

So my question is: Does the Stadium (and probably OG Helix) has too low internal levels or has Fractal (at least the AM4) to high internal levels? Or what am I missing? Feel free to try that setup if you have both units.

Fractal SPDIF levels are weird. They're always too bloody loud. I wouldn't be so sure that Stadium is doing anything wrong. Nor Fractal tbh... but on my Axe FX III, to get a unity gain signal, I have to set my SPDIF level to -18dB.

 

[Sascha Franck]

I'd pick the most "reliable" unit for playing live -- in its current state. No increased stress, no waiting, no nothing. And would gladly take a tonal hit for that if it wasn't substantial.

That's precisely what I'm doing. My two live boards (coincidentally both based on GT-1000s and Tonex Ones) are performing super flawlessly and offer exactly the kind of quick accessibility in a busy live situation that I often need. And it's not a "tonal hit", either - but defenitely an "editing hit". Modifying presets to accomodate a gigging situation is working just great, building new ones sucks quite a bit.

Would I get along with a Stadium and a kitchensink preset per gig instead? Yes, very likely. But I rather wouldn't have to go for kitchensink presets yet again and I defenitely don't want to, reading about some specific bugs. Besides, the XL is too large to replace my small board (which is what I'm using the most these days).

 

[StarF666]

Fractal SPDIF levels are weird. They're always too bloody loud. I wouldn't be so sure that Stadium is doing anything wrong. Nor Fractal tbh... but on my Axe FX III, to get a unity gain signal, I have to set my SPDIF level to -18dB.

You just made me realize I had something not on defaul. AM4 input level was at 10dB. But that would mean, +22dB gain from Stadium input through SPDIF to the AM4 to get to the same gain level as the AM4 analog input. And because this is the Stadium thread, the takeaway so far is Stadiums input level seems to low. Or AM4 to high. That could explain why some find FAS more attracting. Or it is just me finding my Stadium sounds more FAS with some boost on the frontend.

I didn't follow that whole comparison thing the last weeks. Did those guys set both models to the exact same settings? Did you find the amps (models) had the same amount of gain when doing so?

I just double checked with JTM45 and AC30 models. Without any boost on the Stadium and same setting on both models, the FAS model seems to have way more gain.

 

[StarF666]

...tried a Deluxe Reverb. Different story. No gain needed on Stadium to make the models sound equal. I'm lost. Guess it's back to just dial in by ear until it sounds good. And both units do. The Stadium is back on par now that I know I just need some extra gain on some models. It's back to deciding which one to use for what workflow.