Line 6 Helix Stadium

[Mooselake]

How are you going to hype a twin reverb? squeaky clean knopfler, crunchy srv or gainy george thorogood?
Jcm800 = tight high gain slayer?
Plexi = light crunch ac/dc or super gainy van halen?
Rectifier = mid forward limpbizkit or uberscooped godsmack?

Who's deciding what the hype knob will do and who knows for certain what other people believe an amp they never played sounds like?
How redundant the hype knob will be after people try it and decide it's not what they thought the amp should sound like? Isn't knob-real-estate valuable?
What is the probability that more than half of people will find more than half of the hype knobs in more than half the amp models useful?

You and I understand hype very differently.

What you describe about a twin reverb, et. al., that's the purview of focus view/individual user knob turning of the real world amp controls. Hype I think is beyond that. It's an interesting question regarding how it might work when the amp is set for radically different tones. Maybe it's context dependent. But I think we'll find that hype is rather subtle. Like maybe some filtering to reduce flubbiness in non-master Marshalls, fizz in higher gain amps, stuff like that. I think when DI says how a user "expects an amp to sound" he means what the amp treated on a record we've heard or something. I don't think we'll see that if we dial in a plexi for a clean tone that increasing hype makes AC/DC come out.

Also, I think the "knob" part is a metaphor. I suspect it will be a slider control on the screen or something, not a physical knob on the panel. I think we non-Line 6 employees have coined the term Hype knob because it's more fun than Hype slider or Hype parameter control.

I could be wrong about all that, of course.

I suspect one day they'll release a short video demonstrating Hype and we'll see it's at worst something a person might ignore. I anticipate the tone of the discussion will then turn to: I can do the same thing using two filters and a compressor and such things.

 

[Richard_G]

I think the hype knob is an interesting idea.

One of the fascinating things I experienced when getting seriously into modeling gear with the Ultra and II many years ago was that I learned a lot about the actual effects of different FX on my signal and signal processing in general.

I wouldn't mind a "hype knob" where one could gradually morph from an authentic model to an "idealised" version based on the preferences of the very fine folks at Line 6 with one important caveat: I want to know what was changed! If they tell me what they changed, I might learn something. If it's just a "black-box-this-is-more-of-the-secret-sauce-so-this-is-the-best-fucking-thing-ever" I'm not that interested.

 

[Mooselake]

...

That is the point I’m making - the feature is simply something I would ignore. Same as how I avoided the Pure Cabinet controls on a Kemper, and even if they developed it more I simply wouldn’t care. I’m really amazed that the concept of not every feature appealing to every user is so contentious.

The ability to load 3rd party cab IRs is a feature I fully intend to ignore in Stadium. But since I know other people like it, or even if I just knew other people might like to try it out, I say kudos to Line 6, that feature makes Stadium even better, rather than saying: I'm not going to use it, but who at 3rd party vendor decides what mic is placed exactly where for the capture, and what technique and which gear are used, and which ones are blended and how are they are mixed?

I doubt if anyone cares whether you use it or not. You have come across as being almost affronted by the very existence of the option. It's probably made primarily for people like me who aren't studio rats, and to whom the only thing that is real is what I hear coming out of the speaker when I play. The path to getting there is is not what's important. I tend to chime in because I believe Hype is being mischaracterized by its detractors, and even though it's a relatively minor feature in the grand scheme of all that's new in Stadium, I think a more balanced discussion of it is helpful.

 

[Richard_G]

I think the hype knob is an interesting idea.

One of the fascinating things I experienced when getting seriously into modeling gear with the Ultra and II many years ago was that I learned a lot about the actual effects of different FX on my signal and signal processing in general.

I wouldn't mind a "hype knob" where one could gradually morph from an authentic model to an "idealised" version based on the preferences of the very fine folks at Line 6 with one important caveat: I want to know what was changed! If they tell me what they changed, I might learn something. If it's just a "black-box-this-is-more-of-the-secret-sauce-so-this-is-the-best-fucking-thing-ever" I'm not that interested.

To further explain my point:
- I'm interested in the advice of Line6 experts when using Line6 products.
- Taking into account that a lot of factors may be dependent on each other, having a macro knob expressing some of that advice combined might be worthwhile.
- I still want to know what was changed and I want to be able to adjust every one of those parameters by myself, so that I can choose which - if any - of the suggestions I want to use.

 

[Mooselake]

I think the hype knob is an interesting idea.

One of the fascinating things I experienced when getting seriously into modeling gear with the Ultra and II many years ago was that I learned a lot about the actual effects of different FX on my signal and signal processing in general.

I wouldn't mind a "hype knob" where one could gradually morph from an authentic model to an "idealised" version based on the preferences of the very fine folks at Line 6 with one important caveat: I want to know what was changed! If they tell me what they changed, I might learn something. If it's just a "black-box-this-is-more-of-the-secret-sauce-so-this-is-the-best-fucking-thing-ever" I'm not that interested.

That's an interesting idea, and I would love it (knowing specifically what Hype is doing), but I'm guessing Line 6 probably considers details of what changes they make to the Agoura models with Hype to be IP. I think the name 'Hype' is meant to be tongue-in-cheek and am willing to bet they'd never come out and say anything about a Hyped model being 'better', just different, with any judgement left to the ear of the user. I thought I heard them say somewhere that with hype they are just going in an shaving off some of the real world warts that commonly need addressing somewhere else in the signal chain.

But if we ask nice DI might get them to add some text that says general things like "tightens up the bass" and things along those lines. They have given some broad brush descriptions of a few of their original amp models, but nothing too detailed that I recall.

Regarding your second post, maybe you're conflating Hype with Focus View? It essentially, using the amps normal controls, provides a few setting suggestions for iconic tones for the amp, and as you adjust it around, you can watch all the amp models control value parameters change. Maybe someday there will be more flexibility in Hype, maybe not, but I'd imagine a user-configurable hype is a nightmare of complexity. We might have to live with using what they give us, or not, despite what we want, but it's a cool idea to have more insight and control over what it does. I wouldn't want that much involvement with the nuts and bolts in terms of trying to reconfigure hype myself in general, but I get the desire.