Reverb & delay - Helix vs Fractal
- Thread starter sashimi
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DLC86
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I don't know what else you've used but there are a lot of delay and reverb pedals out there that call "mix" what is actually a wet level knob... And my approach to have that with fractal is to leave mix at 50% and use the input gain instead, that also has the additional benefit that when you change that setting mid-song trails are not altered abruptly.
Reverb pedals that have a proper mix knob instead usually have pretty much the same mix law as fractal delay block, i.e. the dry level is reduced only for values greater than 50%.
No. The pedals I’ve used generally have a typical mix knob where the dry signal is left unchanged until above 50% where it is reduced until it is 100% wet. Even then, fractal is much different in the amount of wet signal for a given position below 50%.
Nothing I can’t work with, but it’s decidedly different from all other reverb pedals I’ve used. TC, source audio, L6, etc, all work pretty similar in this regard, my FM9 is the outlier.
D
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hahahaha, fucksake. Just found this again.
Bumping this thread because I was about to start another and saw we already had one…
Spent some time revisiting some things in Helix, I expected to test a lot of things but never made it past delays and a quick jaunt down the reverb trail. Some asked last week that I post what I found.
Long time Helix and fractal user. Started with Axe standard, went to big pedalboard rig, went to Helix, went to FM9 over a period of years. Fm9 has been the main squeeze for over a year now.
My recollection was that the delays on Helix were a little more to my liking than the Fractal ones. After comparing that this weekend, I have to take it back. My favorite helix models were vintage digital, cosmos echo, and elephant man. I was able to get all the things I loved about those sounds and more from the FM9.
It’s still more straightforward in Helix. If you want cosmos echo, pull up cosmos echo. In Fractal, you need to go to worn tape and change the eq and modulation and add a modulation to the motor speed. But the sound was in there. Vintage digital, I needed to add the compander in Fractal and change the threshold value, but that sound was in there too. Elephant man was more straightforward but I still needed to tweak the eq, modulation (wrong default waveform and speed), and compander settings.
No surprise here, it’s more work in Fractal. But I was surprised that I could actually recreate my favorite sounds. Previously I didn’t think I could quite get there.
The things I learned along the way helped me streamline what I was doing in my delay blocks and ultimately come up with a delay sound that was more to my liking than anything I had pulled from either unit, so the time spent on this was a win. That’s saying a lot when I was perfectly happy with the delays I had going in each box already.
D
Spent some time revisiting some things in Helix, I expected to test a lot of things but never made it past delays and a quick jaunt down the reverb trail. Some asked last week that I post what I found.
Long time Helix and fractal user. Started with Axe standard, went to big pedalboard rig, went to Helix, went to FM9 over a period of years. Fm9 has been the main squeeze for over a year now.
My recollection was that the delays on Helix were a little more to my liking than the Fractal ones. After comparing that this weekend, I have to take it back. My favorite helix models were vintage digital, cosmos echo, and elephant man. I was able to get all the things I loved about those sounds and more from the FM9.
It’s still more straightforward in Helix. If you want cosmos echo, pull up cosmos echo. In Fractal, you need to go to worn tape and change the eq and modulation and add a modulation to the motor speed. But the sound was in there. Vintage digital, I needed to add the compander in Fractal and change the threshold value, but that sound was in there too. Elephant man was more straightforward but I still needed to tweak the eq, modulation (wrong default waveform and speed), and compander settings.
No surprise here, it’s more work in Fractal. But I was surprised that I could actually recreate my favorite sounds. Previously I didn’t think I could quite get there.
The things I learned along the way helped me streamline what I was doing in my delay blocks and ultimately come up with a delay sound that was more to my liking than anything I had pulled from either unit, so the time spent on this was a win. That’s saying a lot when I was perfectly happy with the delays I had going in each box already.
D
sashimi
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Elephant man, cosmos and transistor tape are my go-tos in Helix. I’m also a big fan of ADT. I use it in stereo and set the expression pedal to change the delay time on one side, a narrow range just to get a stereo flange/chorus effect I can sweep through. Sounds really cool on a fuzzed out solo.
I was a big fan of criss cross too. It’s kinda more of an enhanced version of vintage digital with a cool modulation option and two delay lines. You can get what it does (or at least what I used it for) from fractal pretty easily just applying the vintage digital concepts to the fractal dual delay. Like many things fractal, you have to know how to roll your own to get there though.
D
EOengineer
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Karl Houseknecht
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My main gripes with the Helix delays in general are:
- Not as prominent as the Fractal ones (mix law is different). I have to put them at 50% to get what I get in Fractal at 15%. And 50% on Fractal is MUCH more prominent than HX.
- Limited EQ options for HX
- Adriatic delay is simply FAR too dark and you can't brighten it up. I love the Fractal Stereo BBD. Can't get that sound in Helix
- Elephant Man is great. Except it's constrained to the limitations of the real pedal when it comes to delay times. Come on! It's a digital model. Put in an option for longer delay times.
- They're simply not nearly as good as the Fractal models. Like no contest. Not even the new "dynamic" models.
- Same mix law prominence issue
- Limited EQ options
Funny I found the opposite on the delay “prominence” as you call it. For some of the helix models, 50% mix is actually more than 50% mix the delay is louder than the dry signal. In fractal, I had to raise the mix above the 50% line to get the delay level right and then boost the block output a little to make up for the fact that it lowered the dry because I went above 50%. I was finding something like 45% in helix to equate to 55-60% in fractal.
For reverbs, the opposite is true. Fractal stuff is absurdly wet at very low mix settings and helix behaves more how I expect a mix knob to work. I really dislike the mix law on fractal reverbs. It is fine when I want a huge effect, it is not fine when you want something more typical like a little spring on an amp tone. If I have to set a mix knob at 2-5% to get settings that would sonically to equate to 20-40% of a spring reverb mix knob, something ain’t right.
Agreed on the reverb quality. I revisited it briefly but the helix stuff was just so far off the grid it wasn’t worth more than about 4 minutes to just move on. I actually think I might like the reverbs from the gen before the dynamic reverbs better than the dynamics. Didn’t stick around long enough to confirm, there was no chance I was getting them close to what I like in fractal.
D
I absolutely love the sheer onslaught of delay/reverb options and quality in my FM9, but honestly....I might use 5-7 of each category of them?
I happen to love the Dynamic reverbs in Helix, but not for "being good as" Fractal cloud reverbs. They're their own thing, but serve a similar space-y purpose if you crank the decay.
I think the Helix delays are incredible, actually. I just use them exactly how Leon Todd sets them up in his patches, and I have zero complaints. He seems to love them too.
But the device I've seen with as many reverb and delay algorithm choices as Fractal is maybe Kemper? I don't think Line 6 is trying to give you the same sorgasboard of choices.
I happen to love the Dynamic reverbs in Helix, but not for "being good as" Fractal cloud reverbs. They're their own thing, but serve a similar space-y purpose if you crank the decay.
I think the Helix delays are incredible, actually. I just use them exactly how Leon Todd sets them up in his patches, and I have zero complaints. He seems to love them too.
But the device I've seen with as many reverb and delay algorithm choices as Fractal is maybe Kemper? I don't think Line 6 is trying to give you the same sorgasboard of choices.
I've been playing with the HX One and I was actually very impressed with Dynamic Hall for huge ambient verb! I also remember really liking Dynamic Plate for long verbs on guitar and it being basically interchangeable with FM3 plates on normal settings (this was before the plates were updated on the FM3, maybe they're much better now?)
Just before I sold the FM3 I tested the reverbs extensively, and I really didn't like them as much as I thought I would!
Just before I sold the FM3 I tested the reverbs extensively, and I really didn't like them as much as I thought I would!
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I’m agnostic on lots of choices. I really have a few very specific things I’m looking for, and I’m interested in the boxes that get me there. I occasionally dabble with other choices to break things up, discover something new, etc. 98% of my time is spent with my basic favorite flavors though.
In fractal, I use 3 reverb types regularly and one more that filters in on occasion. In Helix if I did it all ITB it would be similar, although I tend to use external reverbs with helix. A spring, a plate, and a big ambient reverb cover my needs. The trick is getting a box that can cover each of those sounds to my liking.
For delays, I used 2-3 delay models, I do the same in FM9. There isn’t much I want to do that can’t be covered with a good 12 bit digital delay, a memory man, and a tape delay.
D
Yeah, honestly...I have about the same needs. The Helix Hot Springs before any Fender model does what I need spring reverb to do. The Dynamic Plate with subtle settings gives me my arena-rock backing environment. The Dynamic Plate with cranked decay and a good amount of mix gives me the big cloudy reverb I need while retaining clarity with the dry signal.
Someoldqueenorother
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Crisscriss is utterly brilliant in every way.
C'mon... the legacy L6 reverbs are HOT GARBAGE (IMO). Metallic and ringy as all hell. Years back I was pleading for new HX verbs over at TGP. The dynamic verbs delivered and shut me up. Unless fractal verbs are on par with the best VST plugins (I doubt it) then I dont see how they can be SO MUCH better. I have yet to hear ANY guitar reverb device sound as good as a Valhalla reverb or any of the other top DAW plugins (soundtoys superplate is amazing).
As for delays the Transistor tape and Crisscross meet most of my needs (I can get most of the way to Halo delay with the crisscross). I never liked the Elephant man because of that too loud first repeat.
So you’re commenting on devices you’ve never used…. The HX dynamic reverbs do not hold up to Meris, Fractal, or Source Audio’s best reverbs. They are not even close. If you are happy with them, that’s awesome. I do not recommend you try the above, or you will probably no longer be happy with them.
I liked the dynamic verbs when they came out. Once I compared them to better verbs, I heard what was wrong with them. I cant unhear that, and now I find them really unsatisfying. There’s a really “metallic” (I know that term is meaningless but it’s the most accurate way I can describe what I hear) quality in dynamic hall that you cannot dial out. I’ve twice done blind tests with other listeners where I’ve dialed in my very best with HX dynamic reverbs and compared them to the Ventris or fractal. Both times the listener chose the fractal or Ventris consistently no matter how I tried to confuse them. That really disappointed me, because I wanted to find that the HX was just as good. It just isn’t.
Of course I could and have played gigs with them. But they aren’t nearly as good.
D
I'm saying I have no complaints and no desire to see if the other side of the fence is greener. For live playing the HX dynamic verbs are more than good enough. If I want REALLY good verb for recording I'll use my plugins.
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