Line 6 Helix Stadium

[Digital Igloo]

Is there any talk about having something like Helix Control for HX Stadium? Or will maybe Helix Control be upgraded to even be compatible with it?

It's up to our users. Nexus is pretty open-ended, so sure, I could see a remote control for Stadium in the cards. It'd have to make sense financially, of course.

Unfortunately, Helix Control won't work because it doesn't have Nexus; the circuitry, data, and power handling is all totally different.

Obviously I can use any MIDI controller I want, but first party tools are always going to be the most compatible and easy to configure.

Any time I see someone trying to shoehorn a 3rd-party MIDI controller into acting as their main Helix Rack controller, it makes me a sad panda. There's sooooo much functionality, speed, and feedback you miss out on.

...we are probably talking about a 4U box where the touchscreen is at an awkward angle.

We probably wouldn't put the touchscreen at an angle, but yeah, it'd most likely need to be 4RU. There's a tiny chance we might be able to squeeze it into 3RU, but the bottom edge of the encoders would need to almost align with the chassis bottom. Years ago I showed a 3RU mockup to our head of ME and he said "Uh... that's probably not going to fit but we can take a look."

Sure, we could design some crazy car stereo-like ID where the entire cluster slides out and pivots up but that's risky on a tour reliability front (not to mention the public perception of reliability problem) and it'd be a lot of work for something that will ultimately sell a small fraction of Stadium XL and Stadium numbers. (On a similar front, we could've gotten all clever with Expand D10's ME, but its run rate warrants a dead simple folded steel box.)

Stadium Rack's best chance (and I'm not implying the chance is all that good) is to be able to reuse as much ME and EE as possible.

 

[laxu]

We probably wouldn't put the touchscreen at an angle, but yeah, it'd most likely need to be 4RU. There's a tiny chance we might be able to squeeze it into 3RU, but the bottom edge of the encoders would need to almost align with the chassis bottom. Years ago I showed a 3RU mockup to our head of ME and he said "Uh... that's probably not going to fit but we can take a look."

Sure, we could design some crazy car stereo-like ID where the entire cluster slides out and pivots up but that's risky on a tour reliability front (not to mention the public perception of reliability problem) and it'd be a lot of work for something that will ultimately sell a small fraction of Stadium XL and Stadium numbers. (On a similar front, we could've gotten all clever with Expand D10's ME, but its run rate warrants a dead simple folded steel box.)

Stadium Rack's best chance (and I'm not implying the chance is all that good) is to be able to reuse as much ME and EE as possible.

Yeah I expected it would have challenges like this. If HX Stadium Rack ever becomes a thing, I'd probably prefer it to lean on mobile/computer editors and be more like a rudimentary "see your preset/snapshot name and your levels" thing with knobs for setting output levels and not much more. Could probably cram it in 2U like that.

If you look at e.g John Petrucci's rig, he's got two Axe-Fx IIIs at the bottom of a rack where they're going to be a pain in the ass to adjust without Axe-Edit. They're either heavily pre-programmed or used via Axe-Edit which wasn't really shown in the vidoes.

 

[JiveTurkey]

This

Jacks on the back (with the Stadium Control that happens to use the same housing as the Helix Control)

 

[Chocol8]

Stadium Rack's best chance (and I'm not implying the chance is all that good) is to be able to reuse as much ME and EE as possible.

I would think Stadium Rack’s best chance would be if you could fit it into a 1u or no more than 2u form factor with a completely remote UI. Trying to force a touch screen and encoders onto a rack unit is going to result in way too many compromises that will doom it to failure out of the gate.

 

[TheTrueZoltan!]

This
View attachment 53083
Jacks on the back (with the Stadium Control that happens to use the same housing as the Helix Control)

Helix Stadium Infield ™