What's preventing you from getting a Helix Stadium?

[[Nathan]]

Yep. I just have too much time on my hands to try things. Generous music store return policies are also a factor. In December I dumped an ax3, bought a qc, am4 vp4 and an fm9. The qc was pre CorOs 4 and it kept crashing so I dumped it. Then 3 weeks later they upgrade the OS. Ffs. the mini is a pretty much a retry.

The battle between the am4/vp4 and the fm9 is still ongoing.

I discovered my final dislike of digital 4cm when I got the vp4, too much messing around and the final straw with it was not being about to do 4cm and have stereo output via spdif. If you just want a simple pre or post digital box it’s fine but otherwise I wasn’t into it

The am4 was alluring but I feel it’s going to be a repeat. Then I see the plugin also has some stuff to scale it down from the full axefx experience. I guess I’m just an all in or don’t bother with these ecosystems. When the axe4 launches I’ll get it cause I know it’ll be the flagship and have everything you could ever need.

QC mini is right on the fence, in theory it should be able to do absolutely everything but if I run into one scenario where some io is limited or something I’ll be kicking myself that I just didn’t get the full unit. It’s an extremely close call there I still might get the mini over the full, we’ll see

 

[dean701]

I discovered my final dislike of digital 4cm when I got the vp4, too much messing around and the final straw with it was not being about to do 4cm and have stereo output via spdif. If you just want a simple pre or post digital box it’s fine but otherwise I wasn’t into it

The am4 was alluring but I feel it’s going to be a repeat. Then I see the plugin also has some stuff to scale it down from the full axefx experience. I guess I’m just an all in or don’t bother with these ecosystems. When the axe4 launches I’ll get it cause I know it’ll be the flagship and have everything you could ever need.

QC mini is right on the fence, in theory it should be able to do absolutely everything but if I run into one scenario where some io is limited or something I’ll be kicking myself that I just didn’t get the full unit. It’s an extremely close call there I still

Oh yes, they all have their limitations.
I don't like the SPDIF on the AM4 because the SPDIF output is before the analog loop. wtf. so if I daisy chain the AM4 to the VP4 via SPDIF and put a pedal in the loop then it never gets to the VP4.
The FM9 fw11 is basically the amp updated equivalent to the AM4 1.0.2. AM4 is solid, sounds great. The FM9 has bugs. Dropped audio, misfires on stomp buttons. frustrating. FM9 is solid on v8, v9 and v10. v11 is the issue.
The FM9 is also the only unit with my favorite block, the multiband compressor.
The QC mini has less connections but a morningstar MC8 will hopefully fill the button void.
My Tonex pedal is really the only thing that's safe from sale.

Back somewhat on topic, the Stadium loses both an input and 2 foot controller inputs to the XL. The last one is odd to me. If the regular Stadium doesn't have an integrated foot pedal then why take away the foot controller jacks. I can handle the loss of input 2. I will miss the scribble strips but $550CAD is a big difference.