Helix LT is now available for order. Cut down version - ish.

John_A

Voxman said:

robinbowes said:

Don't be stupid, without the mic it would be silent.

God, some people.

Well, exactly. You just can't find the staff nowadays, can you?

Reminds me of a studio I was in many years ago, the engineer told a story of how he was setting a mic up and the guy said 'I've been singing the clubs for 30 years, I don't need a microphone'

John_P

I've just spent the afternoon dialling in sounds with the ax8 running into a mid 70's marshall super bass and a marshall jubilee - sounds massive and glorious at ridiculous volumes and fairly lowish volumes - not exactly the way cliff will have intended it to be used I'm sure but the latest generation of modellers have enough options to get great sounds whatever the setup.   

I'll be very interested to see how sales and prices of the full helix continue when the new one comes out.

Sporky

robinbowes said:

Don't be stupid, without the mic it would be silent.

God, some people.

Laser interferometer onto the cone itself.

robinbowes

Sporky said:

robinbowes said:

Don't be stupid, without the mic it would be silent.

God, some people.

Laser interferometer onto the cone itself.

Sounds like a microphone to me...  

stickyfiddle

robinbowes said:

good enough

Precisely this. 

Every new tech has a "Good Enough" point where everyone goes, "now this is clearly a great option" and piles in.

The iPhone 3GS 
The Ford Model T
The Nintendo Gameboy
the Line 6 DL4
and now it's the Helix.

Drew_TNBD

um... what? I don't resonate with that 'good enough' idea whatsoever.

It's precisely because there is never a 'good enough' point that technology keeps evolving and improving, and it always will. Because of the naysayers, and the people who are routinely castigated as 'too negative', and the people who want to push things forward and destroy, erase, improve.

I don't want to live in a world where 'good enough' is the best we've got. Fuck that. That's some chicken-ass shit right there.

robinbowes

Bollocks. 

"Good enough" doesn't mean "perfect". 

Strat_a_tat_tat

"The best... or nothing." Gottlieb Daimler

I think he had a reasonable amount of success. ;-)

fretmeister

I'm in 2 minds on the "good enough" concept.

My iphone 5S is good enough in that it does what I want it to do. I have no reason to upgrade.

But, when I had a Nokia 3310 I also considered that to be good enough - but I had no idea how useful a Smartphone with web access could be for work and my own interests. Effectively it took someone else to come up with the idea of a smartphone before I discovered that what I had was not actually good enough anymore.

Drew_TNBD

fretmeister said:

I'm in 2 minds on the "good enough" concept.

My iphone 5S is good enough in that it does what I want it to do. I have no reason to upgrade.

But, when I had a Nokia 3310 I also considered that to be good enough - but I had no idea how useful a Smartphone with web access could be for work and my own interests. Effectively it took someone else to come up with the idea of a smartphone before I discovered that what I had was not actually good enough anymore.

Exactly!!

And eventually someone will come out with a modeller that addresses our current round of pet peeves and issues, and the whole cycle will start again.

robinbowes

Yeah, but they're more likely to do that if the "good enough" product has demonstrated that a market exists. 

Drew_TNBD

robinbowes said:

Bollocks. 

"Good enough" doesn't mean "perfect". 

Um... er.... *cough* ... er.... so I guess you agree with me???

stickyfiddle

robinbowes said:

Bollocks. 

"Good enough" doesn't mean "perfect". 

Exactly. It's not saying we should stop improving. It's saying the new thing is at a point that it's not worth holding onto the old thing (at least not all the time).

I'm in no doubt that modelling will continue to get better, and that's a really really good thing. But right now we're at the first instance of it really genuinely being good enough to substitute for a "real" rig for a lot of applications.

@fretmeister's 3310 is another great example - that was really the point where mobile phones had a good enough mix of small size, good quality and reasonable price that everyone dived in and got one. 

robinbowes

Drew_TNBD said:

robinbowes said:

Bollocks. 

"Good enough" doesn't mean "perfect". 

Um... er.... *cough* ... er.... so I guess you agree with me???

Uhhh, yes. I thought we're disagreeing with me  

R. 

Drew_TNBD

robinbowes said:

Yeah, but they're more likely to do that if the "good enough" product has demonstrated that a market exists. 

But there is no objective 'good enough' - as this thread itself demonstrates!! For the longest time @Clarky used a pair of Boss GT Pro's (correct me if I'm wrong dude) and it was 'good enough' for him, and then the Axe FX came along and he jumped ship. @digitalscream was very very happy with the Eleven Rack, and the Digitech GSP unit. Acle from Tesseract used a real 5150 head with a Pod rackmount unit for his clean tones for ages and ages until the Axe FX matured and he jumped over to that.

There is no one size fits all notion of 'good enough' - things meet people's needs, or they don't. If they do, they use them. If they don't, they wait for the technology to mature.

robinbowes

"good enough" is not fixed. 

Drew_TNBD

robinbowes said:

Drew_TNBD said:

robinbowes said:

Bollocks. 

"Good enough" doesn't mean "perfect". 

Um... er.... *cough* ... er.... so I guess you agree with me???

Uhhh, yes. I thought we're disagreeing with me  

R. 

Not really, just putting more emphasis on the technology matures angle, rather than the 'I'm happy with what I've got for the time being' angle.

Don't get me wrong, I love my Helix. Last few days I've been thinking it'd be great to run an Axe FX and/or a Kemper alongside it for a while too. I love all this technology, but I'm personally not quite ready to jump shit when it comes to the live stuff.

I was saying to @guitarfishbay recently that I'm really a sort of KISS guy when it comes to live - Keep It Simple Stupid

I found the Axe FX didn't immediately slot into my live setup, and so I wasn't prepared to spend the 5-6 months that it would take to do it. The Helix does slide in, because I use it mainly for FX when it comes to live performance. But I've only used it in the rehearsal room, not for an actual live show.

Sporky

robinbowes said:

Sporky said:

robinbowes said:

Don't be stupid, without the mic it would be silent.

God, some people.

Laser interferometer onto the cone itself.

Sounds like a microphone to me...  

A microphone converts sound into an electrical analogue of that sound.

A laser interferometer on the cone reads the movement of the cone, it doesn't measure or capture the sound waves. Thus it is not a microphone.

robinbowes

Sporky said:

robinbowes said:

Sporky said:

robinbowes said:

Don't be stupid, without the mic it would be silent.

God, some people.

Laser interferometer onto the cone itself.

Sounds like a microphone to me...  

A microphone converts sound into an electrical analogue of that sound.

A laser interferometer on the cone reads the movement of the cone, it doesn't measure or capture the sound waves. Thus it is not a microphone.

That's still a microphone:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone

R.

Teetonetal

Drew_TNBD said:

robinbowes said:

Yeah, but they're more likely to do that if the "good enough" product has demonstrated that a market exists. 

But there is no objective 'good enough' - as this thread itself demonstrates!! For the longest time @Clarky used a pair of Boss GT Pro's (correct me if I'm wrong dude) and it was 'good enough' for him, and then the Axe FX came along and he jumped ship. @digitalscream was very very happy with the Eleven Rack, and the Digitech GSP unit. Acle from Tesseract used a real 5150 head with a Pod rackmount unit for his clean tones for ages and ages until the Axe FX matured and he jumped over to that.

There is no one size fits all notion of 'good enough' - things meet people's needs, or they don't. If they do, they use them. If they don't, they wait for the technology to mature.

I think good enough is a pure weight of numbers issue. The tech has to get to a point where enough people are prepared to forgo their traditional setups in favour of new tech. This latest round of advances I think is the first time there shows signs of a mass modeller market. Admittedly I can't back that up with figures, only going on the feel I get from the internet..

It's not just the modeller though, it's all the associated tech too. The helix experience is marvellous, from the screen to dual DSP to the editor - soon to be tied to native. FRFR is now readily available, but not the only option.

The tech has got there imo, it's usable and providing stellar results. Make of it what you will.

IMO from here on it's all about marginal gains. I mean, how good can a sound get? I'm sure interfaces and power will improve but what is the holy grail? Is it even definable? Playing on a big stage with, mic'ed up amps and monitoring or playing direct via helix... very, very little difference.