Line 6 Helix Sounds Terrible?

Arjailer

I have two pairs of low impedance headphones that sound very different with my Pod HD300 - Sennheiser HD380's (54 ohm) sound harsh and terrible, but cheap Sennheiser HD205's (32 ohm) sound fine - probably just the cheaper set having a duller response in general.

None of which has any bearing on the fact that it sounds excellent through the other outputs (line out / USB / XLR).

Roland

John_A said:

revsorg said:

Digital_Igloo said:

TL;DR: Make your own presets. Then they'll suck for everyone but you.

One line of thought is that if you buy presets someone else has made then you're something like 90% of the way there ... you're putting off learning how the Helix works.

How many 'presets' does anyone really need ... I have one preset based on a jcm800 that I use for 95% of our set ... a few more specialist presets for specific songs 

Two important points here. Any player’s needs change over time with changes in instruments, technique, repertoire, and ears. The only way to deal with that is to know how to manage your equipment so that you can adjust it. Buying presets can provide examples of how to do things. You’ll probably use them as a starting point for modification. Those of us with more time, and/or different approaches to learning, will build from scratch. The Helix and it’s competitors offer capabilities which were previously only available to bands who could afford studio or stage technicians, but you’ve still got to learn how to use them.

Most players use a limited number of presets. That’s partly for consistency to the hearer, and partly for ease of management. Live I use four core presets, and a couple with song specific variations. On top of this I’m constantly trying different ideas. This often leads to me having parallel sets of presets until the new idea is tried, tested, and proven in rehearsal and gig.

impmann

Digital_Igloo said:

impmann said:
Seriously, Line6... you make a product that needs headphones that are a specific impedance? And it sounds shit when you don't? FFS, who signed *that* off...

Copy/pasted from our own forum (emphasis mine):


Those ATs are 38 Ohm? That could explain it. Low impedance headphones are designed to provide ample volume when listening to devices with relatively wimpy headphone amps, like mobile phones and iPods. Another user elsewhere expressed concern with his Beyer DT990s (which come in three variants—32 Ohm, 250 Ohm, and 600 Ohm) and I'm willing to bet his are 32 Ohm.

I'm actually surprised your Sonys sound any better, as they're even lower, at 24 Ohm.

Helix's headphone amp is LOUD; it's designed to drive high-impedance studio headphones to stage volumes. Low impedance headphones distort way faster, fatigue your ears, and at a high enough volume, can damage your hearing. With Helix you could conceivably split the headphone output to two pairs of 200-300 Ohm cans/IEMs and drive both over the sound of a drummer (and adjust respective levels via MIDI CC control of path output blocks). My band does this now.

Personally, I use Sennheiser HD600s (300 Ohm), and before those, the HD580s (same). Also have a bunch of Sony 7506s around, but they're 63 Ohm and harsh-sounding already, even with an iPod. I also keep a pair of Sennheiser HD280 Pros (64 Ohm) at work and they're pretty boxy sounding, but if I can get a mix to sound good on them, it'll sound good anywhere. I treat them like wearable Yamaha NS10s, if those NS10s were powered by an Alesis RA100 instead of a Bryston. Wouldn't want to construct tones with them.


And...


A well-known recording engineer friend and I were talking a while back and he mentioned that some older professional recording gear might get worse reviews today simply because headphone impedances have been dropping steadily. Back then, there was a much better chance that any over-the-ear headphones would be high enough impedance to sound great on gear at the time. Now it's all about blowing kids' eardrums out with their $200 Beats that are designed to push enough bass from a phone's puny headphone amp.

Helix is professional gear—designed for professionals—and we weren't about to dumb down our headphone amp because everyone happens to have white earbuds in some drawer in their house. Feel free to use consumer cans, but don't expect it to sound great.

BTW, a lower-impedance doesn't necessarily mean worse specs; it simply means the cans were designed for a different purpose. There are amazing-sounding, Über-expensive low-impedance cans that sound amazing on phones but terrible on pro gear. And there are amazing-sounding, Über-expensive high-impedance cans that sound amazing on pro gear but terrible on phones.

Sorry chap... but are you *SERIOUSLY* saying that this is a professional unit, designed for professionals but you can't use these headphones:

https://www.gear4music.com/PA-DJ-and-Lighting/Beyerdynamic-DT-100-Headphones-16-Ohm-Grey/1VB?origin=product-ads&utm_campaign=PLA+Shop+-+Beyerdynamic&utm_medium=vertical_search&network=google&adgroup=Beyerdynamic+DT100+Headphones.+16+Ohm.+Beyerdynamic+Grey&merchant_id=1279443&product_id=2423d1&product_country=GB&product_partition_id=93337911439&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIoJHZnvT42wIVirTtCh3w_wZZEAQYASABEgK5BPD_BwE

These have been standard studio use headphones for years - even the Beatles used these in Abbey Road!!! - and they come in 16ohm to suit some applictions (I need to check but I think my ageing pair that I liberated from a closing London studio are 16ohm). They *ARE* professional units!!

There are a large number of other professional-end headphones made with an impedence sub 80ohm. Also, looking at the winners of the What Hifi 2017 awards, a large number are in the same category. These have nothing whatsoever to do with "blowing kid's eardrums out".

I also take issue with this line:

Low impedance headphones distort way faster, fatigue your ears, and at a high enough volume, can damage your hearing

Evidence please, chap.

If you are using low impedance headphones and the headphone amp is designed to accept any impedance, they won't "distort way faster" because they are matched to the output of the equipment being used, nor will they fatigue your ears or cause any greater risk of hearing damage than any other headphones that are being played at high volume.

I totally agree that if there is a mismatch there can be issues with distortion, but 99% of designs (even of high end hifi equipment -and some "pro" equipment, whatever the fuck that means) don't have a demanding requirement here.

Seriously - the vast majority of owners of these units will not necessarily be the owners of "pro" headphones, will want to use the headphones that they already have and to design an onboard headphone amp that can cause problems when used with low impedance cans is... well, its daft IMHO and will just cause CS complaints and create a bad customer experience. Thats my point...

firepaulmusic

robinbowes said:

firepaulmusic said:

I can usually get a decent sound out of gear and am pretty experienced at going DI with speaker sims etc. I couldn't get a decent sound out of the Helix. AX8 was a different experience altogether, a couple of hours and all my gigging presets were done, haven't changed it since...

I find that very hard to believe. I would have to try quite hard to get a bad sound out of mine.

Don't know if the subsequent firmware updates improved it? I was gutted because I absolutely loved the UI, great fun to use! Maybe I'll revisit sometime...

meltedbuzzbox

firepaulmusic said:

robinbowes said:

firepaulmusic said:

I can usually get a decent sound out of gear and am pretty experienced at going DI with speaker sims etc. I couldn't get a decent sound out of the Helix. AX8 was a different experience altogether, a couple of hours and all my gigging presets were done, haven't changed it since...

I find that very hard to believe. I would have to try quite hard to get a bad sound out of mine.

Don't know if the subsequent firmware updates improved it? I was gutted because I absolutely loved the UI, great fun to use! Maybe I'll revisit sometime...

the very first batch did sound arse awful (yeah its my opinion before you all get over excited and say user error).

The latest version does sound a lot better, amp wise anyway. Im not sure if its as good as the AX8 as I have never played an Ax8. 

Cabicular

Wazmeister said:

To help the op and others, I was recommended these last year by someone on here, and they are very good indeed;

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0006NL5SM/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO Studio Headphones - 250 Ohm

Yup they are my go to set

p90fool

Digital_Igloo said:

That's me, but it's not just Helix's presets that suck. All. Presets. Suck.© In every box. If you just so happen to find a preset that doesn't suck, it's likely because it was created by someone with a very similar guitar, pickups, impedance load, strings, playback system, playback volume, location of their ears with regard to said playback system, listening environment (including temperature and humidity!), tempo, playing style, genre, *and* music sensibilities. And even then, that same preset will likely suck the next day when one or more of those things changes.

Expecting any factory preset to sound good across more than a tiny percentage of literally trillions of permutations is a lesson in futility. 

That's a total cop out, sorry. I run a pair of Mackie HR824s, some Samson Resolv 65s and a very nice JBL PA system and every digital modeller I ever try sounds like utter shit straight out of the box. 

I'm not claiming I have super high end gear, but it's good quality, neutral-sounding stuff, through which I'd fully expect to have to make a tweak here, a 3dB rolloff there, but no. They all sound horrifically unusable until you spend hours deep, deep editing. None of them ever sound like ANY amp, in ANY realistic environment. 

I'm not talking about the effects of "temperature and humidity" here, I'm talking about everyone's "Plexi" sounding like a 1990s Zoom pedal plugged into a phone, thrown into a metal bucket. 

I too have heard many others get great sounds out of the Helix, and like others I will click Add to Basket when I hear a single user get sounds I know I can use out of a piece of gear.

I've been a continuous user of digital gear since the 90s, but get a grip guys, the first manufacturer who is capable of programming decent, real world sounds into their OWN EQUIPMENT will clean up. 

Yours, a grumpy long-term Line6 user and fan. 

gearaddict

I think you just totally agreed with the post you claim to disagree with. ☺

dindude

p90fool said:

Digital_Igloo said:

That's me, but it's not just Helix's presets that suck. All. Presets. Suck.© In every box. If you just so happen to find a preset that doesn't suck, it's likely because it was created by someone with a very similar guitar, pickups, impedance load, strings, playback system, playback volume, location of their ears with regard to said playback system, listening environment (including temperature and humidity!), tempo, playing style, genre, *and* music sensibilities. And even then, that same preset will likely suck the next day when one or more of those things changes.

Expecting any factory preset to sound good across more than a tiny percentage of literally trillions of permutations is a lesson in futility. 

That's a total cop out, sorry. I run a pair of Mackie HR824s, some Samson Resolv 65s and a very nice JBL PA system and every digital modeller I ever try sounds like utter shit straight out of the box. 

I'm not claiming I have super high end gear, but it's good quality, neutral-sounding stuff, through which I'd fully expect to have to make a tweak here, a 3dB rolloff there, but no. They all sound horrifically unusable until you spend hours deep, deep editing. None of them ever sound like ANY amp, in ANY realistic environment. 

I'm not talking about the effects of "temperature and humidity" here, I'm talking about everyone's "Plexi" sounding like a 1990s Zoom pedal plugged into a phone, thrown into a metal bucket. 

I too have heard many others get great sounds out of the Helix, and like others I will click Add to Basket when I hear a single user get sounds I know I can use out of a piece of gear.

I've been a continuous user of digital gear since the 90s, but get a grip guys, the first manufacturer who is capable of programming decent, real world sounds into their OWN EQUIPMENT will clean up. 

Yours, a grumpy long-term Line6 user and fan. 

This was what I was trying to say, but you put it better than me. Also, there seems to be a consensus with bought presets like MBritt or whatever his name is. Just pay him to do it for you if you can’t, you’ll sell a lot more units.

John_A

There's obviously in-house capability, loads of demos from Paul Hindmarsh sound great, I haven't tried them but someone else's presets never seem to work fo me

welshboyo

Those Hindmarsh sounds I posted earlier have now made their way onto my Helix and with a little tweaking (as you would with different player, touch etc) they are sounding excellent - a real revelation actually and the way he has routed stuff is also an education.

John_A

welshboyo said:

Those Hindmarsh sounds I posted earlier have now made their way onto my Helix and with a little tweaking (as you would with different player, touch etc) they are sounding excellent - a real revelation actually and the way he has routed stuff is also an education.

Grabbing them is on my to-do list

Fiftyshadesofjay

p90fool said:

Digital_Igloo said:

That's me, but it's not just Helix's presets that suck. All. Presets. Suck.© In every box. If you just so happen to find a preset that doesn't suck, it's likely because it was created by someone with a very similar guitar, pickups, impedance load, strings, playback system, playback volume, location of their ears with regard to said playback system, listening environment (including temperature and humidity!), tempo, playing style, genre, *and* music sensibilities. And even then, that same preset will likely suck the next day when one or more of those things changes.

Expecting any factory preset to sound good across more than a tiny percentage of literally trillions of permutations is a lesson in futility. 

That's a total cop out, sorry. I run a pair of Mackie HR824s, some Samson Resolv 65s and a very nice JBL PA system and every digital modeller I ever try sounds like utter shit straight out of the box. 

I'm not claiming I have super high end gear, but it's good quality, neutral-sounding stuff, through which I'd fully expect to have to make a tweak here, a 3dB rolloff there, but no. They all sound horrifically unusable until you spend hours deep, deep editing. None of them ever sound like ANY amp, in ANY realistic environment. 

I'm not talking about the effects of "temperature and humidity" here, I'm talking about everyone's "Plexi" sounding like a 1990s Zoom pedal plugged into a phone, thrown into a metal bucket. 

I too have heard many others get great sounds out of the Helix, and like others I will click Add to Basket when I hear a single user get sounds I know I can use out of a piece of gear.

I've been a continuous user of digital gear since the 90s, but get a grip guys, the first manufacturer who is capable of programming decent, real world sounds into their OWN EQUIPMENT will clean up. 

Yours, a grumpy long-term Line6 user and fan. 

Totally disagree, I've never even bothered doing any deep editing on my Kemper and I've used it for 100's of gigs. 

I could easily stick an SM57 in front of your real amp, profile it and you'd be most of the way there within minutes. 

Glaw343

Response From Line 6

I explained the problem I encountered and asked if there would be a difference in sound between Helix Floor/Rack/Native (so I can test helix native to get a better Idea of what the helix hardware can do with headphones that will work with them) I also asked about the compatibility with lower impedance headphones and the recommended headphone impedance.

L6 - Hello, you should get identical tones with Helix Floor/Rack, Helix LT and Helix Native. First, please make sure the LT is updated to the latest firmware version 2.54. See the following link for update instructions: https://line6.com/support/page/kb/effects-controllers/helix/how-to-update-the-helix39s-firmware-r776/ Perform a factory reset afterwards: power up the LT while holding the footswitches 9+10. Now test it again. If still not OK, I'd recommend creating a patch in Helix Native, save it, then transfer it to the LT via HX Edit. It should sound identical. Regarding phones, please check out our Helix FAQ: https://line6.com/support/page/kb/effects-controllers/helix/helix-support-faq-r756/ I hear some distortion/clipping from my headphone out. Why? Helix's headphone out is designed to drive even high impedance studio headphones. If you use low impedance headphones, you may hear a bit of distortion when cranked all thew way. This is normal. If still not OK, I'd recommend testing it with another (higher impedance) pair of headphones. Please let me know the result. Best regards Olaf Schildt Technical Support Line 6 Support Europe

Me - thanks a lot, unfortunately I wont be able to do that with the updates as I was trying the units in the shop, I will however try to source some higher impedance headphones (my current ones are either 20 or 40 ohms I can't quite remember, what sort of value should I be looking for?, some people have recommended 250 ohms, is that correct? thanks again

L6 - Hi. 250-300 ohms sounds good - but unfortunately I cannot give you a specific recommendation, this is something you have to try. In general, headphones with 150-600 ohm should work fine. Please also see our Headphone FAQ: https://line6.com/support/page/kb/general-faq/headphone-faq-r428/ Q: What is the recommended headphone ohm rating for use with Line 6 products? A: For devices with a 1/4" output, we recommend headphones rated between 150-600 ohm (pro or semi-pro level) studio headphones for best results. For those with an 1/8" output, headphones designed for MP3 player usage are usually a good match. Results may vary between headphone models and manufacturers. I hope that helps.