Line 6 Helix Stadium

[GTR37]

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

Wait, what? Okay, once it's delivered, the "Never Bought Shit" label should definitely come off.

Can we change it to pre ordered shit now ?

 

[Digital Igloo]

What I'm saying is that the effects I'm referring to directly, especially reverbs, I don't think are up to snuff with the current top tier modelers - and I'm not alone thinking this. If they sounded really great, I would hope for improvements, sure, but I would not be pushing for new ones. As it stands I think an upgrade for the time based effects, reverbs especially, is as deserved as the new amp modeling.

Here's the rub. Once you're in all-new-flagship-multieffects-platform territory, there may be 1000 or more infrastructure projects to finish that people don't see and another 1000 DSP and feature projects that people do see. One goal of Helix was to—eventually—improve absolutely everything about HD500X (which I'd argue we did in spades, except for maybe size, weight, and lack of vocoder). A goal of Stadium is to—eventually—improve absolutely everything about Helix Floor.

The other trick is that Line 6 doesn't have a Cliff Chase. We don't have someone who can seemingly do anything at the drop of a hat. If we want to do Proxy and an all new looping engine, we can't do them at the same time because the same engineers who are experts at LSTM, GRU, and Wavenet are also the in-house experts at building cool new looping capabilities. So one of those things simply has to wait until the other is finished.

It's one thing to ask if one's pet feature or model (out of 1000) will ever make it into said platform. It's another thing to act all flabbergasted that one's pet feature or model (out of 1000) wasn't specifically announced amongst the dozens of others, months before any boxes actually ship... as if Line 6 is suddenly gonna switch gears and decide to not improve the platform over many years. (Including reverbs.)

I'm not suggesting you believe this, Tito, but some people honestly believe that Helix 3.80 should've been what we delivered back in 2015. And some people today believe that Stadium 5.0 or whatever is what we should be delivering on day one this fall. Those people are impossibly out of touch with how any tech business works.

 

[AlbertA]

Ok I did it… preordered. Stadium xl. 1827 after tx and 15% off and my my gear card discounts (230$)with 48 month financing

 

[timbuck3]

Here's the rub. Once you're in all-new-flagship-multieffects-platform territory, there may be 1000 or more infrastructure projects to finish that people don't see and another 1000 DSP and feature projects that people do see. One goal of Helix was to—eventually—improve absolutely everything about HD500X (which I'd argue we did in spades, except for maybe size, weight, and lack of vocoder). A goal of Stadium is to—eventually—improve absolutely everything about Helix Floor.

The other trick is that Line 6 doesn't have a Cliff Chase. We don't have someone who can seemingly do anything at the drop of a hat. If we want to do Proxy and an all new looping engine, we can't do them at the same time because the same engineers who are experts at LSTM, GRU, and Wavenet are also the in-house experts at building cool new looping capabilities. So one of those things simply has to wait until the other is finished.

It's one thing to ask if one's pet feature or model (out of 1000) will ever make it into said platform. It's another thing to act all flabbergasted that one's pet feature or model (out of 1000) wasn't specifically announced amongst the dozens of others, months before any boxes actually ship... as if Line 6 is suddenly gonna switch gears and decide to not improve the platform over many years. (Including reverbs.)

I'm not suggesting you believe this, Tito, but some people honestly believe that Helix 3.80 should've been what we delivered back in 2015. And some people today believe that Stadium 5.0 or whatever is what we should be delivering on day one this fall. Those people are impossibly out of touch with how any tech business works.

Thanks for that. I totally understand with my background what you’re talking about but I consciously made a decision today to jump into the helix platform again in 25/26
And my hesitant am I leery, of course, but not in a bad way just in a cautious way, but like I said, I consciously made the decision to jump aboard knowing the track record. I do have faith and who knows next year I may also buy the new fractal or whatever But with the discount available to me at this time, I just couldn’t resist.

 

[sashimi]

I also would love to see this because when I had the helix, I was not impressed with the reverbs, but that was 10 years ago when it first came out, but after reading a lot of forums and videos and things like that I think that is one of the weakest areas in helix as well as the fuzzes From what I understand so yes, I would hope that they would not just sit back on their laurels as far as the effects go, especially the most important ones which are time based in reverb and think they’re just good enough going forward however obviously DSP plays a huge role in effect quality so if this stadium units are gonna be wrapped up with GSP the ability to really improve the effects especially the time based in reverb effects is going to be there I hope

Not only do I think the newer reverbs in helix sound great, but the fuzzes really surprised me. I thought for sure they would be disappointing. But I have analogman and fulltone fuzzes that I leave in their boxes because I can get exactly what I want from the helix fuzzes. I think the fuzz distortion and overdrive options in helix are very good.

 

[Los-D]

Ok I did it… preordered. Stadium xl. 1827 after tx and 15% off and my my gear card discounts (230$)with 48 month financing

Congrats!!

 

[timbuck3]

Congrats!!

Oh, come on it’s no big deal. I’ve been buying gear all year just not modelers. I’ve been on this acoustic kick my favorite brand of acoustic guitar right now is Yamaha. In fact, I kind of went overboard and my acoustics in the last eight months, but I’m kind of where I wanna be as far as my acoustics anyways so now I guess it’s back to modeling
I will say I did buy that new Yamaha Tran acoustic TAC three or whatever it’s called TAG3C and I returned it because it just didn’t sound as good as the old Tran acoustic I had and it was like 9 pounds

 

[paisleywookiee]

Oh, come on it’s no big deal. I’ve been buying gear all year just not modelers. I’ve been on this acoustic kick my favorite brand of acoustic guitar right now is Yamaha. In fact, I kind of went overboard and my acoustics in the last eight months, but I’m kind of where I wanna be as far as my acoustics anyways so now I guess it’s back to modeling
I will say I did buy that new Yamaha Tran acoustic TAC three or whatever it’s called TAG3C and I returned it because it just didn’t sound as good as the old Tran acoustic I had and it was like 9 pounds

This ain’t theacousticforum.com

 

[EOengineer]

Ok I did it… preordered. Stadium xl. 1827 after tx and 15% off and my my gear card discounts (230$)with 48 month financing

Dude! Congrats! You made the right choice with the XL. This may have actually been my first time ever preordering a product.

Wait, what? Okay, once it's delivered, the "Never Bought Shit" label should definitely come off.

Definitely. Our boy has grown!

 

[timbuck3]

This ain’t theacousticforum.com

Dude! Congrats! You made the right choice with the XL. This may have actually been my first time ever preordering a product.

As I said, I did pre-order the original helix 10 years ago or whatever and I was very underwhelmed within 30 days of using it so I did send it back, but that was 10 years ago that was then and honestly, I haven’t tried the helix since then so I’m a bit apprehensive, but I’m also excited And I trust that line 6 will evolve this product as much if not more than the original helix down the road . I guess the biggest factor is that all those discounts I got but also that it’s local I can get it at the local store guitar center and I can return it just as easy if I really needed to so that’s something that fractal does not really have the ability or kemper locally.
I really hope from what I remember on the original helix that the squirrels are gone with the new engine that’s coming

 

[AlbertA]

Oh, come on it’s no big deal. I’ve been buying gear all year just not modelers. I’ve been on this acoustic kick my favorite brand of acoustic guitar right now is Yamaha. In fact, I kind of went overboard and my acoustics in the last eight months, but I’m kind of where I wanna be as far as my acoustics anyways so now I guess it’s back to modeling
I will say I did buy that new Yamaha Tran acoustic TAC three or whatever it’s called TAG3C and I returned it because it just didn’t sound as good as the old Tran acoustic I had and it was like 9 pounds

So in a way, you've funding the Stadium development all along.

 

[eggpl@nt]

The MF coupon seems to have stopped working.

Damn. Can confirm.

 

[sashimi]

Damn. Can confirm.

Haha. Probably wasn’t supposed to work on a preorder for an unreleased product in the first place. I wonder how many got sweetwater to match the price too, lol.

 

[HomespunEffects]

So there’s a Vocoder?

 

[[Nathan]]

Wait, what? Okay, once it's delivered, the "Never Bought Shit" label should definitely come off.

Just needs to be updated to "Finally Bought Shit" or "I Bought Shit". An official poll might be in order

 

[HomespunEffects]

Damn. Can confirm.

I got $5 on they’ll walk back the discounts, too.

 

[Digital Igloo]

So there’s a Vocoder?

There was—HD500's vocoder which would've worked with Stadium's new sidechaining. But we pulled it out at the last second because we wanted something better.

 

[[Nathan]]

As I said, I did pre-order the original helix 10 years ago or whatever and I was very underwhelmed within 30 days of using it so I did send it back, but that was 10 years ago that was then and honestly, I haven’t tried the helix since then so I’m a bit apprehensive, but I’m also excited And I trust that line 6 will evolve this product as much if not more than the original helix down the road.

I reckon you'll love it, the helix stuff today is top tier and I'm buying the hype that Agoura is Fractal level good. You're going to get 10+ years of updates which is something cool to look forward to when they drop. Captures are coming so that's going to open up a whole other world. Showcase is being built out which is pretty cool for jam tracks all in the one unit. Obviously we're going to see more and more amps and pedal fx, it's just a winner from all angles for a day1 purchase imo. Fractal and Line6 are probably the safest bets when it comes to firmware updates, I guess they've pretty much been in the game the longest and have a proven track record.

Buy once cry once

 

[Tito83]

Here's the rub. Once you're in all-new-flagship-multieffects-platform territory, there may be 1000 or more infrastructure projects to finish that people don't see and another 1000 DSP and feature projects that people do see. One goal of Helix was to—eventually—improve absolutely everything about HD500X (which I'd argue we did in spades, except for maybe size, weight, and lack of vocoder). A goal of Stadium is to—eventually—improve absolutely everything about Helix Floor.

The other trick is that Line 6 doesn't have a Cliff Chase. We don't have someone who can seemingly do anything at the drop of a hat. If we want to do Proxy and an all new looping engine, we can't do them at the same time because the same engineers who are experts at LSTM, GRU, and Wavenet are also the in-house experts at building cool new looping capabilities. So one of those things simply has to wait until the other is finished.

It's one thing to ask if one's pet feature or model (out of 1000) will ever make it into said platform. It's another thing to act all flabbergasted that one's pet feature or model (out of 1000) wasn't specifically announced amongst the dozens of others, months before any boxes actually ship... as if Line 6 is suddenly gonna switch gears and decide to not improve the platform over many years. (Including reverbs.)

I'm not suggesting you believe this, Tito, but some people honestly believe that Helix 3.80 should've been what we delivered back in 2015. And some people today believe that Stadium 5.0 or whatever is what we should be delivering on day one this fall. Those people are impossibly out of touch with how any tech business works.

I will not pretend to even begin to understand the complexities of putting out a product by a company this size distributed world wide. I'm smart enough to realize I know nothing about it. I'm also self aware enough to realize I'm not your main target audience. My complains are mainly two types: one that's just my opinion as a user/possible future user of the product; the other is when I strongly believe I'm objectively correct - or as close as I think I can be. The input impedance is the second type - and I still have my problems with the way it's done currently; but everything I'll complaint about from now on is of the first type (ie talk out of my a$$).

I think Proxy and looping are cool, me personally I'd rather have the new reverbs first. But that's just me. Heck, even before Showcase, something I would GLADLY use "today" in a band I'm in. Would be huge to be able to integrate the live backing tracks in my setup and have controls assigned as time stamps. I'm really looking forward to try that. I'd still rather have better reverbs.

Again, is just the way I feel about it Showcase looks really awesome, I'd just rather have better reverbs at this point.

I really believe it. You really delivered with Helix. It's just that IMO, for me, in my world, for my demands, keeping in mind all what I first said, I would have done things in a slightly different order, giving some more attention and others less. I say that fully acknowledging that at end of the day you're the one whose's in the best position to make these calls, and also the one who ultimately ends up paying if stuff don't work out. Seeing the success of the Helix line I'd guess you're doing pretty great.

 

[Deadpan]

Please let the old Helix models play the captures!