Line 6 Helix Stadium Talk

[Orvillain]

And then right after that:

You, telling him he's wrong by asserting that you can't be wrong.

Sprachen zie Albion??

 

[Karl Houseknecht]

Sprachen zie Albion??

Nur donnerstags

 

[OneEng]

I think digital gear is solid on the whole, but real amps still have that extra something about them.

Yep, about 50lbs extra! Seriously though, I really believe that any advantage tube amps may have had is now eclipsed many times over by the other advantages modern digital amps provide ..... at least in a live gig situation. I do miss the smell of the tubes warming up, but not so much moving the beast to and from the gig.

Being critical for good cause is not bad, but I don't think I'd feel comfortable betting against stadium. It just may evolve to be iconic

I think you may be right. I think they are definitely on to something here. Give it a year to mature and I don't see much of anything holding a candle to it.

I guess some people have a misconception about the term "modeller" and what they are supposed to do.

It's always possible to make an accurate model sound "good" if they already don't, just like real amps, by using a different cab/mic/IR, EQ, compressor, drive, reverb etc. but it is way harder or impossible to make a good sounding model sound accurate.

Reading and ignoring the "wHat if it's not acCurate, it soUnDs gOod aNywaY." comments is overwhelming and tiring after some time.

Fair enough. If accuracy is important to you then NAM is your friend. Why would you spend so much money to get a Stadium?

 

[dean701]

I'm not going to say that the FAS Stealth Blue is 100% accurate but I know Cliff has an endless journey trying to keep things as honest as possible.
Utilizing the same IR, here are the settings I did to the Stadium to get things close. (I think there is an inherent compressor/DI magic in Fractal that makes FAS sound like FAS but that might just be me - therefore the compressor at the end was polish)

FAS settings for Blue: (no other blocks besides the IR)

Is this extreme manipulation - I don't know but it took a while to get them close.

 

[Mongillo19]

I'm not going to say that the FAS Stealth Blue is 100% accurate but I know Cliff has an endless journey trying to keep things as honest as possible.
Utilizing the same IR, here are the settings I did to the Stadium to get things close. (I think there is an inherent compressor/DI magic in Fractal that makes FAS sound like FAS but that might just be me - therefore the compressor at the end was polish)

FAS settings for Blue: (no other blocks besides the IR)
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Is this extreme manipulation - I don't know but it took a while to get them close.

Arguably most important, what did you prefer

 

[Karl Houseknecht]

I'm not going to say that the FAS Stealth Blue is 100% accurate but I know Cliff has an endless journey trying to keep things as honest as possible.
Utilizing the same IR, here are the settings I did to the Stadium to get things close.

Those aren’t the same amps so I’m not surprised it took some doing to get them close.

 

[dean701]

Arguably most important, what did you prefer

sound wise - they are close enough (in fact, I starting stomping on the FM9 buttons when it was actually the Stadium)
* - there is still something out of control with dynamics though. They sound close but pedalling on bass notes is an issue on the Stadium. Theres that barky thing going on

UI - you know the answer to that

 

[dean701]

Those aren’t the same amps so I’m not surprised it took some doing to get them close.

they kind of are within reason: sure the stealth has more gain for sure.

 

[Karl Houseknecht]

the stealth has more gain for sure.

And more treble and less low end. When I compared the Agoura EV blue to the corresponding Fractal model with the same IR and same settings, it was really, really close. Don’t forget the master volume. Fractal defaults to 2 for the non-stealth blue. Agoura defaults to 5. As soon as you pull it back everything lines up.

 

[[Nathan]]

Seems to only really be on this forum where people don’t think Proxy is accurate. Getting rave reviews everywhere else. Is it the best? Probably not, at least just now. Is it good enough? 100%.

"Getting rave reviews everywhere"
"Is it the best? Probably not,"

I agree its good enough but why stop there and accept it. "Good enough" was pod bean days yet everyone welcomes and loves all the digital advancements over the years. Things can always get better and when you take ego and cope out of the mix the discussions here are generally about what can make things better / why some things might not sound like the real sources.

Im not saying you do this but when people try to chop down those discussions its really counter intuitive.

 

[Bosons Tear]

thou I could see how the untrained eye could see it as an attempt to establish a narrative defining a product launch

 

[fiftyshadesofslay]

Doesn’t FAS have the same version 5153 modelled as well as the stealth? Would be good to hear some comparisons between the two OG’s if it hasn’t been done already.

I had an original first run 5153 ages ago and I remember it didn’t have much gain on the blue channel. It always sounded better boosted, or there was a common mod to clip a resistor to increase the gain.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

I had an original first run 5153 ages ago and I remember it didn’t have much gain on the blue channel. It always sounded better boosted, or there was a common mod to clip a resistor to increase the gain.

Yeah the original 5150 100W’s blue channel is less gainy and voiced differently. It takes boosts well, but also kind of needs it. They gained it up for the Stealth (and possibly the 50W “regular” models?).

Fractal, STL and Mercuriall (and I’m sure others) have solid models of the original circuit.
too.

 

[Sascha Franck]

For a change: Could we talk about some other things the Stadium series really needs instead of the endless accuracy talk?
What about a new round of a fine global blocks discussion?

And btw, I have actually been absolutely serious (ok, minus global blocks perhaps, at least for the time being).
In this thread, around 80% of all more or less meaningful posts are about modeling (and now cloning) accuracy. Maybe with a bit of reverb-talk mixed in. And that's about it.

For me personally, none of that is of any even remotely significant importance - and I'm sure that at least for many other folks mainly into live playing (and/or possibly recording original stuff), it isn't all that important, either. IOW, if you can't get professional sounding core tones out of the unit as is, it's not the because of the unit (and no, that doesn't "justify" or "excuse" inaccuracies, they're just not important anymore in many cases).

So, what about better other things?

What about a drive box that actually does the fuzz thing well in a buffered environment without having to fool around with input impedance (which goes down the shitter anyway once you slap some buffering pedal in front)? I don't want yet another fuzz box copy - only to find out it won't work as well as the original due to the digital environment anyway. Give me a Line 6 take on things any day.

Goes for other dirt boxes as well. Why clone things 1:1? Please come up with your own take. For instance, the Top Secret OD IMO is almost phenomenal. My most used dirt box in the HX universe. But why oh why can't it have decent tone controls onboard? And more output volume when dialing in lower gains? I always have to couple it with an EQ - and that shouldn't be necessary. So again, f*** authenticity and give me your own Line 6 take on the thing.
Fwiw, the KWB has already been a good start. Finally a rather fresh take on OD pedals. I want more of that. And give me advanced versions that possibly could even only exist digitally.

Or what about dynamic filters, envelope followers and what not? As is, a cheap Zoom MS-50G does a better job on pretty much all of these. The Line 6 ones all have a tendency to sound pretty harsh, so I need to tame them with compression, EQ and what not. Look at the filter box in the NDSP JM plugin (or whatever the original is, don't remember right now). That's a damn smooth dynamic filter box and it can get pretty funky, too. Or, yet again: Come up with something on your own. In case you need ideas, don't hesitate to ask.

Also, modulations. Guess we almost don't need to talk about them. Sure, most of them are serviceable, some better, some not so good, some are downright horribly bad (rotary anyone?). There's a reason the modulation modeler box has never been as popular as the delay modeler. So. plenty of room for improvement here as well.

Even goes for delays, something where Line 6 usually is considered a rather strong player. Yeah well - so why do we still have quite some delays without any tone controls? For me, to make delays work, at least some low/hi cut/shelf is almost as crucial as delay time and feedback. Oh wow, I have a "BBD Size" parameter - but WTF, why isn't there any tone controls?
What I'd like to see is a delay along the lines of Sixth Sample's "Deelay" (freeware plugin). I'd possibly never need to use any other delay for standard and somewhat enhanced delay duties ever again.
I also wish there was a delay with separate volume controls over each tap. And give me around 4 different taps for maximum rhythmic madness.
And I want a delay with a transient shaper on the input to finally tame those pesky transients of my delay repeats a tad.

And where's the POG 3 simulation? Or any other killer pitch based FX?

Want a role model for pretty much all of that? Look at what Eventide does in their H9/90. People just love that stuff - for good reasons. No "here's another TS clone" philosophy. Instead there's great new algorithms *they* came up with all over the place.

And btw, so far I didn't even mention modulators (basically input level, envelopes, LFOs). It's a f***ing new *world* of options these would open up for.

These are the things to make you come up with wicked new sound ideas to keep you inspired. Not those last 2% of modeling accuracy.

See, not one word about global blocks...

 

[Orvillain]

I really believe that any advantage tube amps may have had is now eclipsed many times over by the other advantages modern digital amps provide ..... at least in a live gig situation. I do miss the smell of the tubes warming up, but not so much moving the beast to and from the gig.

I don't really vibe with this kind of laziness.

 

[Sascha Franck]

I really believe that any advantage tube amps may have had is now eclipsed many times over by the other advantages modern digital amps provide

Unfortunately this isn't so. But it's not about the sound.
An analog amp's clean channel stays at its settings, no matter how much I switch presets calling that very channel up.
You really want to force me into another global blocks discussion round, don't you?

 

[mikah912]

Can someone please explain why Agoura Panama Blue is so odd sounding? I know it isn't the Stealth version, but I've had the two amps side by side before, and they're really not THAT different. But the Agoura Panama Blue sounds quite undergained to me versus the others, even though the knob positions were all very similar and should really result in similar sounds.

It is interesting how the frequency response of the Agoura is similar to the Axe FX III, and the Quad Cortex is closer to the real amp, but still a bit different.

I'm all ears - I had a Boss DD-500 running as a looper, feeding the instrument inputs of all devices. Same IR in all cases too. So about as fair a test as I can make it.

I think the two amps ARE that different, and the precise differences you note (less gain and "duller" sounding) are how the OG sounds compared to a Stealth of the same wattage and power tubes. The Stealth just a more scooped, sizzlier and gained up amp overall

That being said, I like the HX version better because it seems to sit in between the two, even if inadvertently.

 

[Orvillain]

I think the two amps ARE that different, and the precise differences you note (less gain and "duller" sounding) are how the OG sounds compared to a Stealth of the same wattage and power tubes. The Stealth just a more scooped, sizzlier and gained up amp overall

My experience having them side-by-side was, gain around 4 o'clock on the OG, was more or less the same as gain around 12 o'clock on the Stealth. The core tone and frequency response is pretty much the same, maybe the stealth is a bit brighter.

FWIW; the Agoura version, it is impossible to get the same kind of gain from it. Which on th real amp if you tits the blue channel, it really does get into stealth territory. You can confirm this on the Axe FX III too.

 

[BenIfin]

... Is it the best? Probably not, at least just now. Is it good enough? 100%.

Dare I say that for very many people it is almost certainly good enough already ...... but also

I agree its good enough but why stop there and accept it.

It needs to and should get better given that one of Proxy's objectives, at least partially, must be, to make as perfect a copy of the "thing" or "system" it is copying.

In this respect as others have said, I have zero doubts the tech crew at L6 are already working on it.

Without wanting to sound like a 1990's Corporate wanker .... I think given the "vision" / "target" L6 want Stadium to reach, it would be a very brave person to bet against them "getting there" .... both with Proxy and also the issues multiple people here are highlighting and discussing re:- the current Agoura'ed Amps

 

[EOengineer]

My point is more that companies know that the average user does care about accurate captures and models.

False premise. How do you know what the average user cares about? Prove it.

What the average user lacks is the tooling and knowledge to compare head on. We’re in a connected world though. When enough of those folks who DO have that ability hit the web with their findings that your platform is less accurate than the competition, average users are going to care. Then it’s herpes. You’re stuck with it for life. People still give L6 shit for the spider amps from 3 decades ago.

We don’t want modeler herpes.