Helix Native

guitarfishbay

I started on KRK Rockit 5s, moved to the 6s pretty quickly after on the recommendation of a friend and it was a good decision for those reasons. I've also owned some Yamaha HS8s but I didn't get on with those too well, wasn't the bass response it was the tweeters, just a bit too aggressive for my tastes I prefer something a little smoother. Low end was nice though.

Have had a have a set of Focal Solos now for the past couple of years. Between those and getting all the cabs out of the room to put up acoustic treatment I've enjoyed creating music so much more since going digital for guitar.

The only worrying thing is I'm running out of excuses, will have to actually make some decent music at some point because I can't blame the gear anymore lol...

Heartfeltdawn

gibsongretschfan said:

 Heartfeltdawn said
Dude you just told a guy that the thing he's been working on relentlessly for the past god knows how many years that his plugin was awful and when he was pleasant enough to offer some advice to you on a random forum which has nothing to do with Line 6 you were a little bitch to him. Then you stalk through my old posts.... get a grip and some manners

Given that I've been sodding around with modellers for years and still have a copy of the first Revalver, telling me that it's all about input levels was a bit patronising. Certainly not his intention though so a full apology to Mr Igloo is here now. 

Saying a product sounds poor is not rude. Not everyone will like your product so it should be water off a duck's back. It's clear that Line 6 have hit gold with Helix for many so one person's opinion shouldn't matter.

As for manners, given that you've been the first to throw out the insult, I don't see where you hold any high ground on that front.

Out.

guitarfishbay

Damnit, you changed the typo faster than I could post up the front cover of issue one.

guitarfishbay

FWIW I've used every generation of L6 modelling since Pod 2, with the current gen being the only one I've not owned something from but the 15 day trial is generous enough that you can spend proper time with it. And I have.

Helix is the best L6 modelling by far. I just prefer Fractal and directly comparing I couldn't switch without feeling like it would be a compromise for guitar, for my tastes. That doesn't mean I wouldn't use the Helix stuff, and if I didn't already own my Axe FX 2 the price difference would feel difficult to justify just because as Yngwie says, more is more...

I didn't think being asked to check input levels was rude but neither is a person replying that they don't like it even though it's set up correctly. It's just one guy's opinion and Digital Igloo was being professional and helpful I thought.

On the whole most people are pretty chilled out here. Making music isn't a team sport with a league table. If someone doesn't like something it's really not a big deal.

I'm pretty used to that though, given I put EMGs in PRS' and then play drop tuned music through 2x12s... works for me though

Jonathanthomas83

guitarfishbay said:

I'm pretty used to that though, given I put EMGs in PRS' and then play drop tuned music through 2x12s... works for me though

Give us a pic of that guitar, mate, to brighten up our (my) day!

Heartfeltdawn

Mr Igloo is always professional, both here and on other forums.

So I will retry Native again. But oddly I might be about to buy an LT having just sold my FX8 to Drew...

PolarityMan

this thread still isnt helping my gear lust

Drew_TNBD

Heartfeltdawn said:

Mr Igloo is always professional, both here and on other forums.

So I will retry Native again. But oddly I might be about to buy an LT having just sold my FX8 to Drew...

Didn't see that coming!

guitarfishbay

Jonathanthomas83 said:

guitarfishbay said:

I'm pretty used to that though, given I put EMGs in PRS' and then play drop tuned music through 2x12s... works for me though

Give us a pic of that guitar, mate, to brighten up our (my) day!

It has 81/60 now, this pic has a 57 in the bridge but I don't have anything more recent.

Sporky

I really like the one where it's only got a bridge pickup.

Jonathanthomas83

@guitarfishbay ;Beautiful, mate. I've really bonded with my Custom 24 this year, after a rocky start - it's my fave now!

octatonic

guitarfishbay said:

I started on KRK Rockit 5s, moved to the 6s pretty quickly after on the recommendation of a friend and it was a good decision for those reasons. I've also owned some Yamaha HS8s but I didn't get on with those too well, wasn't the bass response it was the tweeters, just a bit too aggressive for my tastes I prefer something a little smoother. Low end was nice though.

Have had a have a set of Focal Solos now for the past couple of years. Between those and getting all the cabs out of the room to put up acoustic treatment I've enjoyed creating music so much more since going digital for guitar.

The only worrying thing is I'm running out of excuses, will have to actually make some decent music at some point because I can't blame the gear anymore lol...

LOL and I agree 100%.

Read this: https://www.soundonsound.com/people/porcupine-tree

Steven Wilson recorded and mixed albums like Fear of a Blank Planet in his one room studio that was untreated acoustically- he just knew the room.
Granted he's playing with some of the best players on the planet and the drums were recorded in Gavin's home studio.

What he did do was pick some really good things to do it with- decent monitors, a good A to D, Protools HD (which isn't needed these days due to how low latency is with native systems) as a front end to Logic and a couple of excellent microphones.
He used loads of plugins and a lot of the guitars on the album are actually just Line 6 Amp Farm.
This was almost 10 years ago.

Computers are a lot faster now and you can do a lot more with them.
Even back in 2012 I was able to do 80-100 track mixes with just native plugins without the computer falling over.
IMHO the place to put the money now is in decent monitoring (including monitor controller), microphones and the best converters you can afford.
A lot of bullshit gets talked about preamps- I prefer to not really worry about them, certainly not kink thousands of quid into single channel preamps, because when you AB them in a finished track against things that are £300-500 a channel you really can't tell the difference.

But you can do a hell of a lot without the esoteric stuff though.

One thing I've noticed with a lot of people is PAS- plugin acquisition syndrome.
I'm somewhat a victim of it- I've not done an audit, but I have a silly amount of plugins.
Multiple versions of the same thing too, such as Bus Compressors or EQ's that are all very similar.
People get caught up in the minutiae of what one plugin does vs another, rather than things about it more broadly.
I reckon I could strip it all down to 2 EQ plugins, 2 compressors and a few synths and do just as much with them.

Getting back to Steven Wilson, what I like about his approach is he mixed those amazing sounding albums with a relatively limited amount of gear.
A couple of stock Pro Tools plugins and he was just really creative with how he did it.
He focussed on the music, not the gear- which is something I admire and wish I could do myself a bit more.

guitarfishbay

Sporky said:

I really like the one where it's only got a bridge pickup.

Its pretty much all I use. It's one reason I like Strats because you can change the guard to whatever you like and there aren't routing holes on view. I do enjoy other pickups but I don't need anything except a bridge pickup to play the music I write.

Jonathanthomas83 said:

 Beautiful, mate. I've really bonded with my Custom 24 this year, after a rocky start - it's my fave now!

Yeah they're great guitars. Just the right combination of comfort, weight, balance, and tone. 

Heartfeltdawn

@drew_fx the new gear lust for the move next year is taking shape  

So I spent four more hours with Native this afternoon in the aftermath of my controversial declaration. I've had a lot of digital gear in the past and recently sold my FX8 to Drew. 

Helix Native versus FX8 with a bit of S-Gear mention. 

FX8 wins on the drives and reverbs. The modulation is an absolute stand-out on the FX8 for me. I'm mostly clean and jinglejangleMarrisms so the chorus is something I always look to. Utterly brilliant on the FX8. Native has some fine delays, something which has been a standout with Line 6 for years going back to the DL4. Will be interesting to see how the reverb update goes. 

That Rat model is still horrific. There's nothing in the drive section that comes close to the FX8 sounds. 

Native wins for ease of use. But I find myself liking the FX8 interface more because I do like to tweak and fiddle and to have to learn something rather than having it all simple-simple clicky-clicky. As modelling plugs go, Native whips Amplitube's GUI.

Amps: as an S-Gear fan, I still think this is the best amp plug out there.  

Now the price is something I raise an eyebrow at. As a non-Helix user, £300 is an awful lot of money for something with drives I don't like and modulation options that can be easily trumped with free plugins. I paid £100 for S-Gear. If I wanted a multi-delay, then Echoboy Jr is regularly around for $50. There's loads of reverb options out there, some excellent free compressors and EQ plugs. £300 buys an awful lot of other plugins that would suit me better. 

Overall though, Line 6 have done a good job. Native for me falls in the same bracket as the M-series pedals: a user interface triumph. The M pedals weren't the best sounding things around but the user interface was utterly superb and it was ease of use that sold them to me.  

As with anything guitar-related, it's all down to personal preference. Native gives you a bit more choice. 

guitarfishbay

octatonic said:

One thing I've noticed with a lot of people is PAS- plugin acquisition syndrome.
I'm somewhat a victim of it- I've not done an audit, but I have a silly amount of plugins.
Multiple versions of the same thing too, such as Bus Compressors or EQ's that are all very similar.
People get caught up in the minutiae of what one plugin does vs another, rather than things about it more broadly.
I reckon I could strip it all down to 2 EQ plugins, 2 compressors and a few synths and do just as much with them.

Yeah interesting article.

With regards to plugins, I've focused on buying useful plugins over recent years, stuff like Vocalign and then Revoice, iZotope RX, etc.

I try to not buy something that does the same thing as something else I have, unless it's both faster and better to use, and I guess there's a sliding scale for that.  I've done the GAS and PAS thing, not to the extent of some, but to the point where I eventually found it more of a drain on time than it was enjoyable.  

I figure there's an imaginary line for acceptable quality, and beyond that everything is subjective anyway. And to get to the imaginary line relies more on arrangement, performance, and fundamental skill levels than it does the difference between two similar sounds.

The main reason I've not bought Native is because I find it's still faster for me to stick with my Axe FX for guitars; if I can't get a sound I like within less than the time it takes me to get the sound and re-amp it with the Axe FX then it's not offering me anything regardless of how good it can sound or how many options it has.

Likewise I prefer playing in to the Fractal sims (this is the biggest difference to me), and I try to get the sound right to begin with and avoid re-amping at all, if possible, so in that scenario a plugin that isn't as good as or better doesn't offer me anything.  

Heartfeltdawn said:

Now the price is something I raise an eyebrow at. As a non-Helix user, £300 is an awful lot of money for something with drives I don't like and modulation options that can be easily trumped with free plugins. I paid £100 for S-Gear. If I wanted a multi-delay, then Echoboy Jr is regularly around for $50. There's loads of reverb options out there, some excellent free compressors and EQ plugs. £300 buys an awful lot of other plugins that would suit me better. 

For drives, if you like tube screamers, check out Cytomic's The Scream.  It's in public beta still, you can try it for free.  IMO it is better than the Tubescreamer in Native, and the Tubescreamer in TSE's X50.

There's still tax to pay on top of the price of Native, so it's more expensive still.  Same thing to me - I do really like it for bass, but the cost of admission puts it up against other things I want more.

Despite having an Axe FX I still generally use Echoboy, and Valhalla for reverbs, for anything post amp.  I do think the Fractal sounds are on par with the plugins but if I need to change the mix level or settings it's easier to handle on the plugins on a separate bus.

I did the same thing when I recorded real amps and cabs too, any post distortion delay or reverb I just used plugins.

octatonic

guitarfishbay said:

octatonic said:

One thing I've noticed with a lot of people is PAS- plugin acquisition syndrome.
I'm somewhat a victim of it- I've not done an audit, but I have a silly amount of plugins.
Multiple versions of the same thing too, such as Bus Compressors or EQ's that are all very similar.
People get caught up in the minutiae of what one plugin does vs another, rather than things about it more broadly.
I reckon I could strip it all down to 2 EQ plugins, 2 compressors and a few synths and do just as much with them.

Yeah interesting article.

With regards to plugins, I've focused on buying useful plugins over recent years, stuff like Vocalign and then Revoice, iZotope RX, etc.

I try to not buy something that does the same thing as something else I have, unless it's both faster and better to use, and I guess there's a sliding scale for that.  I've done the GAS and PAS thing, not to the extent of some, but to the point where I eventually found it more of a drain on time than it was enjoyable.  

I figure there's an imaginary line for acceptable quality, and beyond that everything is subjective anyway. And to get to the imaginary line relies more on arrangement, performance, and fundamental skill levels than it does the difference between two similar sounds.

The main reason I've not bought Native is because I find it's still faster for me to stick with my Axe FX for guitars; if I can't get a sound I like within less than the time it takes me to get the sound and re-amp it with the Axe FX then it's not offering me anything regardless of how good it can sound or how many options it has.

Likewise I prefer playing in to the Fractal sims (this is the biggest difference to me), and I try to get the sound right to begin with and avoid re-amping at all, if possible, so in that scenario a plugin that isn't as good as or better doesn't offer me anything.  

I've adopted the same attitude with plugins that model hardware that I do with modellers that attempt to replicate hardware amps- I don't care how close they are to the original, how good can I make them sound in X situation.

To a degree I have to keep up to date with different plugins tyes- so yeah I have many different version of some plugin types.
Like the SSL Bus Compressor.

I did a bit of a test the other day, comparing them with similar settings:



I have The Glue, Duende, UAD SSL, Slate VBC Grey and Waves SSL.
I forgot about the Waves one for doing the test, but I know it really well- I used it for years before getting VBC and UAD.

The test was done with the same attack and release values with 4:1 ratio and the controls set to peak at 5db of compression on a drum bus.
For plugins that are a copy of a hardware unit they were all quite different sounding- there wasn't a clear winner, although the UAD sounded the most 'finished' in this particular test. It had that 'glued together' things that the hardware unit is known for. I'm fairly certain in a different mix situation I would have preferred a different one.

I grab the Glue quite a bit because the sidechain is so good (I used the Waves version a lot for the same reason)- I can use any input/track/bus to key the compressor, which is great for getting bass out of the way of the kick drum.

Fairly soon I'll be able to compare them all to the hardware unit they are based on but of course I won't be able to comment publicly anymore.

ruoma

For a very very very very good SSL bus comp, you should definitely try out Acustica Audio SAND.

guitarfishbay

So further playing - the Essex 30 model is nice, I assume it's a Vox?

Have decided that the Soldano is the best feeling high gain amp to play, and it sounds good but doesn't quite do the sounds I want (more aggressive 5150/Mesa type stuff).  The Archon probably sounds the best for what I want but I keep wanting to tweak things to change the feel on it. Similar story with the 5150. Can't get much I like out of the Mesa models to be honest.

All this scrolling for parameters is quite frustrating, especially when I can't see bass and depth/resonance at the same time on certain models. Hopefully the resizable windows can sort that.

---

Further thoughts on S Gear - the Sag control strikes me more as a depth/resonance control. I think the amps sound better with it run higher than standard, at least with my guitars and the IRs I'm using. Similarly I find the stock high cut settings a bit too smooth for my liking. But it's easy to tweak with all the controls being visible at once.

All it is missing is an outright metal amp, but I've found TSE's X50 good for that 

Cytomic's The Scream (Tubescreamer sim) is really excellent though. It's noticeably nicer than the one in Native or X50, at least for my tastes. So for the past couple of days I've used that instead of other TS models - has made all the amp models sound better for boosted sounds IMO. Will be buying. Works nicely blended with bass too

octatonic

ruoma said:

For a very very very very good SSL bus comp, you should definitely try out Acustica Audio SAND.

I've heard about Acustica but I haven't bought anything of theirs yet.
I'll give them a go.

ruoma

octatonic said:

ruoma said:

For a very very very very good SSL bus comp, you should definitely try out Acustica Audio SAND.

I've heard about Acustica but I haven't bought anything of theirs yet.
I'll give them a go.

Incredible sounding, but quote a messy company organizational and installation wise. Just try the demo's first!