Line 6 Helix Stadium

[mikah912]

I’m assuming it’s still there in stadium, but do we know if the M series legacy effects will still be there?

I have a bunch of ambient stuff that uses the legacy Particle Verb in the stable mode and it would really suck to lose that. That verb has a unique lofi thing that is so musical it just works for me. Part of me wants to see L6 create an updated version of it but it’s kind of a modern classic in my book.

Same here, and I would definitely want them to have the legacy synth effects as well.

 

[sashimi]

I think the strymon el capistan is such a great pedal. Including the simple spring reverb. I absolutely loved that pedal. When I got my HX stomp I decided to do some comparisons with transistor tape, cosmos echo, elephant man, and hot springs, and I put the el capistan up for sale within a week. I don’t miss it. I could dial them in to be indistinguishable. I watched some john cordy videos where he did the same with a couple strymon reverb pedals and helix passed with flying colors. I have mixes where I replaced UAD pure plate or oceanway reverb busses with dynamic plate or dynamic ambience in helix native, and I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. I might just have dog shit ears but to me helix reverbs and delays are competitive with anything else I have tried. Helix’s harmonic tremolo is very good and retro reel is indispensable to me. I’m not big on chorus or flange so I can’t speak to those. But I feel like a lot of the criticism of helix’s effects is either coming from helix haters or people who haven’t tried a lot of the newer models. But I could be totally wrong. There’s no objective truth to any of this stuff, just a lot of opinions.

 

[Chocol8]

It's amusing to see that kind of stuff when it's addressed to people who have upwards of a decade first-hand experience with "team Helix", as though we shouldn't believe our lying eyes and ears and rather give weight to the cynical spin. Of course the OP fromFractal forum was meant for Fractal fans, but I've read stuff about Stadium and L6's potential future behavior that makes me want to say, "Where have you been since 2015!?"

2015? a decade? I still have a Line 6 amp that I bought in 2000, and it wasn't their first product. Yamaha bought them in 2013/14 before Helix release and so far they haven't managed to screw them up either. We know what kind of company they have been for close to 30 years now.

 

[dk_ace]

I care a ton about reverbs. We just have different taste is all. I think the Dynamic ones are special indeed.

Id love for you and @KingsXJJ to elaborate on what exactly is underwhelming about them (and please identify specific models/types). I feel that I've been detailed in what I enjoy about them....would love to hear more detail from the other side, so to speak.

Have you compared them directly against something a lot better?

Dynamic hall has a metallic sound you cannot dial out in any way. If you set it brightish so that it will be audible in the mix, the repeats have a lot of “trash” in them that you can’t dial out. It always is quite modulated, even with motion at 0.

The new drippy spring sounds more like a caricature of an outboard tank than an actual outboard tank. I don’t know how to be more specific than that, it just doesn’t sound like an outboard tank. I’m traveling, so I can’t plug it in and find better words right now.

The 63 spring can sound nice. It sounds more like an amp reverb than an outboard tank to me. I got the best sounds from it by putting it on a parallel path with a comp and a preamp block. I can’t take any credit for that, John Mark Painter on TGP figured that out. It really is a good sound, but it takes up a parallel path and a lot of dsp. Without that, it was usable but nothing special.

The “cloud” reverbs in fractal I could get in Helix with dynamic hall and the vowel filter on a parallal path, but again we lose a parallel path and extra dsp and have the above caveats about dynamic hall. I’m fine without this though, just providing it as an example. I don’t feel like any of the helix special effect reverbs really stack up against the fractal clouds. If you get into the reverb sounds that fractal plex delay can do, there’s nothing in Helix that comes close.

None of this is to say that I couldn’t pull cool and usable reverb sounds out of Helix. If you tell me I have to play a gig with them tonight I can dial something in and be fine in short order. But they just don’t hold up against better reverb units.

If I didn’t have a Ventris at the time to know just how much better reverb could sound, maybe I wouldn’t have cared as much, but there’s a certain IYKYK thing that got to me.

D

 

[Mooselake]

2015? a decade? I still have a Line 6 amp that I bought in 2000, and it wasn't their first product. Yamaha bought them in 2013/14 before Helix release and so far they haven't managed to screw them up either. We know what kind of company they have been for close to 30 years now.

Yeah, I had one of the original beans, Axsys212, couple of the early POD floorboards, and a Variax--was just limiting it to the Helix era because in my experience that's when they became a stellar customer-facing outfit.

 

[timbuck3]

Do both stadiums units have same size touchscreen?

 

[Enchilada Jones]

A desktop version , a touch screen angled up and a flat base for io with real sliders faders?


Too soon?

Bonus points if it can fold closed to protect screen.
Helix Studio

 

[Southpaw-DD]

DI did post comments like this as recently as December 2024: "...I think if we ever get around to a new flagship platform..."

The phrasing could be carefully cited and whatnot, but there were posts that implied original Helix was not being updated "soon". The very next post in the thread below was a user assuming that meant HX had/has the flagship future still in tact.

My only direct care is for Native to get an update eventually. I'm a not a user of the floor modeler all-in-ones at the moment.

Line6 Helix

Man, if it wouldn't destroy everyone's presets, we'd love to do this. Even though the 3.80 EV Panama is modeled from a different 5150 than our 1.00 PV Panama, you could perhaps consider this the type of approach we might embrace going forward. Maybe we'll eventually shuttle some of the older...

www.thegearpage.net

 

[mikah912]

Have you compared them directly against something a lot better?

Dynamic hall has a metallic sound you cannot dial out in any way. If you set it brightish so that it will be audible in the mix, the repeats have a lot of “trash” in them that you can’t dial out. It always is quite modulated, even with motion at 0.

The new drippy spring sounds more like a caricature of an outboard tank than an actual outboard tank. I don’t know how to be more specific than that, it just doesn’t sound like an outboard tank. I’m traveling, so I can’t plug it in and find better words right now.

The 63 spring can sound nice. It sounds more like an amp reverb than an outboard tank to me. I got the best sounds from it by putting it on a parallel path with a comp and a preamp block. I can’t take any credit for that, John Mark Painter on TGP figured that out. It really is a good sound, but it takes up a parallel path and a lot of dsp. Without that, it was usable but nothing special.

The “cloud” reverbs in fractal I could get in Helix with dynamic hall and the vowel filter on a parallal path, but again we lose a parallel path and extra dsp and have the above caveats about dynamic hall. I’m fine without this though, just providing it as an example. I don’t feel like any of the helix special effect reverbs really stack up against the fractal clouds. If you get into the reverb sounds that fractal plex delay can do, there’s nothing in Helix that comes close.

None of this is to say that I couldn’t pull cool and usable reverb sounds out of Helix. If you tell me I have to play a gig with them tonight I can dial something in and be fine in short order. But they just don’t hold up against better reverb units.

If I didn’t have a Ventris at the time to know just how much better reverb could sound, maybe I wouldn’t have cared as much, but there’s a certain IYKYK thing that got to me.

D

Well, I have a FM9, and I stand by what I said. I love Plex Verb/Delay and the multiple Cloud and Spring reverbs Fractal has. Love it!

It's a luxury, and I doubt anyone else will offer that much variety for every possible type of reverb.

That being said, I believe the newest Helix reverbs absolutely compare and I frequently use them with Helix native in my DAW as opposed to laying down tracks with the reverb printed on them from the FM9.

I find them to all be different flavors of greatness.

 

[KingsXJJ]

We all get what you are saying. We also understand that Yoda, the Enterprise and apparently you are living in fictional fantasy worlds.

You can’t develop complex hardware and software products overnight with a snap of the fingers. Even with an unlimited budget there are limits. Early in my career I witnessed an exchange between an unrealistic executive with your attitude and an engineering project lead who was being grilled about not being able to meet an unrealistic timeline. At one point the exasperated executive said “simply tell me how many people and how much money it will take to get it done by September first.” The lead engineer replied, “What you seem incapable of understanding is that it doesn’t work like that. One woman can have a baby in nine months, but I don’t care how many women and how much money you throw at them, they can’t make a baby in one month.”

In the real world, there is only so much even a company with the resources of Yamaha can get done in a certain amount of time. Can they hire more developers? Sure, but that not only costs money, but it takes a lot of time to recruit, interview, hire and train them. Enough that it could take longer than doing the work with the team they already have. And then what do you do, lay them all off on launch day because the work is done? You can do that exactly once before you find your reputation deeply tarnished and it becomes near impossible to hire and retain good people going forward. It makes a heck of a lot more sense to maintain the team and spread the work load more evenly.

What a load of assumptions. Who said a thing about developing it overnight? Who has said when they started development?

My attitude? What exactly is my attitude? That I’d prefer a finished and complete product? Your talk about hiring more developers hinges on a fictional timeline not being discussed or even known. And then you leap to folks being laid off? And now at the end, even though all of it is based on assumptions, things I’ve never said or alluded to, my reputation is ruined?

And I’m the one living in a fictional fantasy world. No, you are just projecting a whole lot of bullshit on me.

Because I wish it were launching with next gen effects. What a joke.

 

[banned]

I think the strymon el capistan is such a great pedal. Including the simple spring reverb. I absolutely loved that pedal. When I got my HX stomp I decided to do some comparisons with transistor tape, cosmos echo, elephant man, and hot springs, and I put the el capistan up for sale within a week. I don’t miss it. I could dial them in to be indistinguishable. I watched some john cordy videos where he did the same with a couple strymon reverb pedals and helix passed with flying colors. I have mixes where I replaced UAD pure plate or oceanway reverb busses with dynamic plate or dynamic ambience in helix native, and I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. I might just have dog shit ears but to me helix reverbs and delays are competitive with anything else I have tried. Helix’s harmonic tremolo is very good and retro reel is indispensable to me. I’m not big on chorus or flange so I can’t speak to those. But I feel like a lot of the criticism of helix’s effects is either coming from helix haters or people who haven’t tried a lot of the newer models. But I could be totally wrong. There’s no objective truth to any of this stuff, just a lot of opinions.

I found the same thing with the Strymon Iridium and Helix Amp models. Same also with UA Lion and the Helix Plexi.

 

[Lysander]

I’m assuming it’s still there in stadium, but do we know if the M series legacy effects will still be there?

That's a good question. I bet it is, but I guess it's not a guarantee.

Yes. Stadium will have backwards compatibility with OG Helix patches, meaning all Helix blocks will be available on launch - minus the old hybrid cabs.

 

[banned]

Have you compared them directly against something a lot better?

Dynamic hall has a metallic sound you cannot dial out in any way. If you set it brightish so that it will be audible in the mix, the repeats have a lot of “trash” in them that you can’t dial out. It always is quite modulated, even with motion at 0.

The new drippy spring sounds more like a caricature of an outboard tank than an actual outboard tank. I don’t know how to be more specific than that, it just doesn’t sound like an outboard tank. I’m traveling, so I can’t plug it in and find better words right now.

The 63 spring can sound nice. It sounds more like an amp reverb than an outboard tank to me. I got the best sounds from it by putting it on a parallel path with a comp and a preamp block. I can’t take any credit for that, John Mark Painter on TGP figured that out. It really is a good sound, but it takes up a parallel path and a lot of dsp. Without that, it was usable but nothing special.

The “cloud” reverbs in fractal I could get in Helix with dynamic hall and the vowel filter on a parallal path, but again we lose a parallel path and extra dsp and have the above caveats about dynamic hall. I’m fine without this though, just providing it as an example. I don’t feel like any of the helix special effect reverbs really stack up against the fractal clouds. If you get into the reverb sounds that fractal plex delay can do, there’s nothing in Helix that comes close.

None of this is to say that I couldn’t pull cool and usable reverb sounds out of Helix. If you tell me I have to play a gig with them tonight I can dial something in and be fine in short order. But they just don’t hold up against better reverb units.

If I didn’t have a Ventris at the time to know just how much better reverb could sound, maybe I wouldn’t have cared as much, but there’s a certain IYKYK thing that got to me.

D

Pretty much agree with this too.

 

[dk_ace]

Well, I have a FM9, and I stand by what I said. I love Plex Verb/Delay and the multiple Cloud and Spring reverbs Fractal has. Love it!

It's a luxury, and I doubt anyone else will offer that much variety for every possible type of reverb.

That being said, I believe the newest Helix reverbs absolutely compare and I frequently use them with Helix native in my DAW as opposed to laying down tracks with the reverb printed on them from the FM9.

I find them to all be different flavors of greatness.

I didn’t find anything in there I considered reverb greatness. If you think they’re great, use them in good health

I spent several evenings trying to get dynamic hall to sound as good as my main ambient sound in Ventris which was based on a modified meris m7 sound I had. I tried everything, even spent a lot of time with both 100% wet trying to get the tails just right or at least close enough. I was pretty sure I had something passable finally and brought my wife in for a listening test. A/B’d them for her in a few different contexts. Mixed them up so she wouldn’t know which was which, hit false buttons, etc. She picked the Ventris every time without any hesitation. I grilled her on why and she said what I already knew - that one just sounds better. Thus ended my time spent trying to get the helix reverbs to live up to my others. I still used it at times when I didn’t want to run outboard stuff, but then I could clearly hear the things I didn’t like about it even in the mix. I moved on.

D

 

[Mikael Dez]

Do modeler releases always get this spicy?

 

[Deleted member 472]

Dynamic hall has a metallic sound you cannot dial out in any way.

Did you try throwing the LA Comp at the end of the signal chain?

 

[dk_ace]

Did you try throwing the LA Comp at the end of the signal chain?

Dang it. I knew I was forgetting something…

D

 

[paisleywookiee]

Yes. Stadium will have backwards compatibility with OG Helix patches, meaning all Helix blocks will be available on launch - minus the old cabs.

Oh yeah that makes sense.

 

[Mongillo19]

Do modeler releases always get this spicy?

This one is honestly off to great start! It's usually much more rough.

You just have the traditional few who need to complain about something, whether they make sense or not is another story. It's a fine line with constrictive criticism and mindless rambling

 

[TubeStack]

Did you try throwing the LA Comp at the end of the signal chain?