Line 6 Helix Stadium

[mikah912]

Oh and it case it isn’t clear, I don’t disagree with you @Tito83 about wanting to see some more stuff in this box before I’m convinced to buy it. For now, they lost me at “no new reverbs”. I’m not dropping 2K on an all in one floor unit unless it has truly top shelf reverb, delay, and amp modeling. The reverb came up short for me in Helix, and Stadium won’t interest me unless that gets a lot better.

Plenty of others are gonna buy it as it comes out, and that’s totally cool too. Just not compelling enough for me to abandon FM9 right now.

D

Totally reasonable take.

I'm a happy FM9 owner too. It's an incredible piece of gear and a bargain, frankly, for all you get.

There's almost nothing I'm missing on it, soundwise. It meets almost all of my happy place needs (modded Marshall sounds galore, great reverbs and delays, plenty of horsepower, versatile footswitching, exposed parameters for performance pages, great factory presets with scenes galore). Aside from better bass presets and amp options, I'd be fine if they never added another model.

After a couple of years of ownership, however, I do still feel stuck in terms of being able to significantly edit presets on the fly with the on-unit interface - especially moving blocks. I've also come to appreciate cloud-based functionality that I've enjoyed on both Quad Cortex and Tonemaster Pro. Being tethered to the PC for management sucks. Finally, I've REALLY come to appreciate having favorites/device-level presets available to immediately call up when building patches from scratch or making said significant edits live/in the room.

Stadium XL looks to me like the "just right" form factor that combines the best of everything I've wanted over the past few years - especially once Proxy gets up and running early next year. I personally think the Line 6 "dynamic" reverbs are top shelf already, but I think they're aware that Fractal has become the measuring stick here, and they're going to keep taking cracks at it.

 

[molul]

One thing I liked about the Stadium is that Line6 seems willing to filling all the gaps with competitors (and even bring some new stuff) instead of just saying "they have that but we have this", so if Fractal reverbs really are better than Helix's (can't really say), I could expect them to address that in the future.

 

[AlbertA]

I know he’s all Fractal this and AxeFx that, but who cares. He probably can’t play Blackened anymore anyway.

 

[Karl Houseknecht]

I think the stadium is a unit between the helix and the next gen flagship

Remember, DI introduced this in the presentation as "here's what the next 10 years will be bringing us", or something to that effect. Stadium IS the flagship.

 

[ian_dissonance]

But will it do pitch/dynamics followers like Fractal?

 

[Mooselake]

But wouldn’t they want eventually all shouts tones in it if it’s a new and improved engine? Like the x amps in the boss units that ARE much nicer to my ears. Maybe shouts is only a new engine on the amps side of things vs effects or cabs?

I think there are two aspects to to it. One is the Agoura modeling technique, which if I understood correctly is a more detailed method of component modeling than how they did the OG modeling. The other aspect is the combination of increased DSP capacity, a new floating point architecture, and expanded dynamic range.

The latter aspect could theoretically benefit everything audio that happens inside the Helix, and why they've indicated OG models and presets might sound different (possibly better) in Stadium.

The first aspect, in principal, requires components to model. I think in general things like reverb and pitch effects are largely algorithms and for the most part aren't trying to copy existing pedals/hardware units. So depending on where you want to draw lines, L6 could theoretically generate much more complex reverbs and pitch effects without relying on Agoura specifically (if I'm understanding what Agoura is), but rather by virtue of having more signal processing and dynamic range capability. Modulation effects and delays are probably a mixed bag. They (Helix developers) do model/emulate hardware devices in those categories which could potentially be improved over OG with Agoura, but I'm guessing their originals in that realm are more algorithmic than they are replications of existing electronic devices. Gain/boost/fuzz seem more often to be models of hardware and possibly something that could be respun in Agoura. Many pedals are relatively simple circuits, which is why I think it appears possible for some "new Stadium effects" to be ported back to OG, so long as they don't exceed the number crunching capability of those units. They may lose a little in translation due to the dynamic range differences, and might have to simplified somewhat to go to OG.

 

[EOengineer]

My sweetwater rep came crawling back this morning, offered to match if I got him a screenshot of the offer.

I sent him the screenshot just so they knew I wasn’t making it up, but let him know that ship has already sailed.

 

[Mongillo19]

My sweetwater rep came crawling back this morning, offered to match if I got him a screenshot of the offer.

I sent him the screenshot just so they knew I wasn’t making it up, but let him know that ship has already sailed.

Mine is still being annoying. I gave him one final chance. Still waiting to hear back

 

[EOengineer]

Mine is still being annoying. I gave him one final chance. Still waiting to hear back

Honestly with the MF reward kickbacks they end up being a much better deal than SW…granted you don’t get stale candy from 1974 in the box.

 

[Mongillo19]

Honestly with the MF reward kickbacks they end up being a much better deal than SW…granted you don’t get stale candy from 1974 in the box.

For sure. I just placed my order on MF. Thanks @eggpl@nt .

I will still see what my rep can do as I have a feeling these will be backordered for some time and I got in right away at SW. But that isn't worth $150 extra to me

 

[Digital Igloo]

I'd like to think I'm pretty good at predicting what the kids will whine about but "Line 6 won't make any new effects after Stadium" was not on that list.

Sheesh, @Tito83. It's like you'd prefer we sat on all the new effects we've made in the past few years (while developing Stadium) just so we could say "hey, here are a bunch of new effects for our new platform... and Helix/HX users get them too!" The end result would be exactly the same except Helix/HX users would have waited for no reason other than... marketing? Appeasing a couple incredibly short-sighted armchair PMs?

 

[paisleywookiee]

I'd like to think I'm pretty good at predicting what the kids will whine about but "Line 6 won't make any new effects after Stadium" was not on that list.

Sheesh, @Tito83. It's like you'd prefer we sat on all the new effects we've made in the past few years (while developing Stadium) just so we could say "hey, here are a bunch of new effects for our new platform... and Helix/HX users get them too!" The end result would be exactly the same except Helix/HX users would have waited for no reason other than... marketing? Appeasing a couple incredibly short-sighted armchair PMs?

But they're not good, because they fit on the old one! It couldn't possibly be the case!

 

[timbuck3]

One thing I liked about the Stadium is that Line6 seems willing to filling all the gaps with competitors (and even bring some new stuff) instead of just saying "they have that but we have this", so if Fractal reverbs really are better than Helix's (can't really say), I could expect them to address that in the future.

Look at how fast Cliff from fractal addressed the convolution reverbs in the TMP that everybody was raving about didn’t he like immediately within a couple days or a week a new reverb that’s just as good if not better? I wonder as far as developing teams which team can work faster at actually implementing stuff quicker seems like fractal because it’s a smaller company and cliff is in charge. If he gets a bug up his butt, he can just go in and boom change it whereas maybe with line 6 they have to go through levels of hierarchy to getin OK to do something new or different or change something?

 

[timbuck3]

Remember, DI introduced this in the presentation as "here's what the next 10 years will be bringing us", or something to that effect. Stadium IS the flagship.

No doubt at this point for sure. I’ve decided if I can get guitar center to swing the 15% off to match musicians, friend, which they probably will they have in the past because they own musicians friend plus I can use those stupid credits that I have which as I said, I think it’s like 130+60+40 to put against it as well I think I’ll just go with the XL join the whole helix bandwagon thing
As I said before, I did buy the original helix I remember it was from music arts and I’m pretty sure it was like 1299 or something because of a 20% coupon at that time but I just really didn’t like the tones I was getting and within those 45 days I did return it however that’s been 10 years now so at this point, looking at the unit being a visual person the two things that were most important to me were the touchscreen, visually and easy access on the unit as well as a better looper than most units have which I think this will have
I’m hoping that the agora engine will improve the sounds even better than they have been in the last 10 years, which would make sense if it’s a new engine and I hope that the effects will continue to improve as well because I don’t think they’re quite up to fractal standards in some of the categories however, in certain categories, they are very good so it’s always gonna be a give-and-take right

 

[eggpl@nt]

I thought Zzounds was separate and AMS was part of the GC/MF group?

 

[mikah912]

Look at how fast Cliff from fractal addressed the convolution reverbs in the TMP that everybody was raving about didn’t he like immediately within a couple days or a week a new reverb that’s just as good if not better? I wonder as far as developing teams which team can work faster at actually implementing stuff quicker seems like fractal because it’s a smaller company and cliff is in charge. If he gets a bug up his butt, he can just go in and boom change it whereas maybe with line 6 they have to go through levels of hierarchy to getin OK to do something new or different or change something?

Cliff can whip up fantastic model sounds across a bazillion categories quicker than anybody else, but that'll likely always be the case. Line 6 isn't running that race anyway.

Fractal's speed in usability improvements isn't quite as whiplash-inducing. Lots of simple suggestions in their various wishlist forums have been gathering dust for years.

So their competitors are going to continue to thrive by innovating on that front in addition to their modeling engine development work.

 

[Karl Houseknecht]

I thought Zzounds was separate and AMS was part of the GC/MF group?

Pretty sure they're all the same company, share the same warehouses.

 

[HotRats]

Helix has several different generations of reverb and delay in it already. It also launched with no Helix-exclusive reverbs.

I'm surprised that people are looking back on their development over the last 10 years and fretting about this.

You're right but people still believe that helix reverbs are not good enough, compared to fractal or other brands. It doesn't matter whether is true or not.

From a pure marketing point of view, I was expecting some stadium only reverbs from day one.

 

[Mongillo19]

I think I scared my SW ENGINEER away

Got back to me first thing this morning now nothing

 

[eggpl@nt]

Pretty sure they're all the same company, share the same warehouses.

We might both be wrong. Googling indicates that AMS/Zzounds is the same company but separate from GC/MF.