Helix - ok, I get it now

guitarfishbay

Cabicular said:

With the Helix you pick your cab and your mic and then your distance then adjust to taste
with IRs you have to load a selection on and flick through them to decide how far you wanted the mic or if a 58 sounds better than a royer etc
The dual cab puts access to 2 cabs and 2 mics in one stereo block so you can have a Marshall 4x12 with greenback 25s with a sm7b at 1" on the left and a Matchless 2x12 with Alnico blues and a royer 121 on the right
It's just a lot easier to deal with IMO

Ok watching that vid posted by Timmy I can see how the Helix speaker block is working.  

I was not aware that to load impulse responses you need to use a different block.  That explains some views from Helix users.  I thought everything was in the same block.  The speaker block looks pretty easy to use, definitely if it is the same experience on the unit itself. 

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Following just explains how stuff works on the Axe FX 2.

With the Axe FX stock cabs and IRs all get loaded in the same block.  The XL/XL+ (I have an XL) can hold 1024 user IRs, AX8 can hold 512, and the regular one can hold 100.  I can't remember how many stock IRs there are, it's over 100.  On the unit itself that will mean scrolling through menu pages to select an IR which is obviously a deal breaker for some.  From what I'm aware most people do the bulk of their setup on Axe Edit and the smart thing to do is only load in what you need into the unit so at most you're clicking up or down for your variables.

When using Axe Edit you can text search (which is why it helps if this are organised well - the OH packs go 00-10 with 00 being brightest for a specific mic/mic mix).  The Axe FX 2 also has modeled mic preamps in the speaker block.  Here's what the block looks like in Axe Edit



This is the cablab browser but it works the same way as Axe edit with the text search.  This is also handy for finding amp models as there's 250+ currently.



Many people are using Fractal use Cab Lab, which is a plugin/standalone IR loader which lets you blend up to 8 IRs with per IR options for delay, hpf/lpf, can auto phase align the starts (which helps if you're using IRs shot by different people) or you can leave the phase intact.  When you're done you can save that out as a single block to load into your unit.  It's also a plugin so you can easily blend a load of IRs in your DAW when mixing if you want.  Or you can just use it for quickly comparing a bunch of cabs you like.



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In all honesty....

For recording I don't use any of these and use Space Designer for tracking with, and print multiple instances of the Axe FX 2 track without cab sim for mixing mics using SD onto their own channels (as if it was done with real mics).  

The reason why is two fold, firstly 500ms IRs feel and sound better to me than their truncated counterparts (ultra res, and pretty much all hardware loaded IRs are about half that length), the low end is a little more natural and there's not that super dry in your face IR tone (as there's some room reflection in there).  Space Designer can load them with Logic's low latency monitoring on which is necessary for tracking.

Secondly, having all IRs on their own channels has advantages from a mixing standpoint.

If at any point a sound isn't quite right there's opportunity to switch the IR, rather than completely re-amping.  This obviously assumes you pretty much had the amp sound right to begin with (drastic changes there would need a re-amp) but I've found it plays to the advantages of recording digitally and can save time.

Clarky found the same thing and I switched to doing things the same way.  It might not be night and day in terms of sound to everyone, and might not work in terms of workflow, but that's my own feeling on it.  While I'm playing I notice it, and when I'm mixing I'd rather have the opportunity to switch IR if it was needed.

Karzog's re-cabinet is quite a cool plugin for mixing 2 500ms cabs on one channel, however it doesn't pass Logic's Low Latency monitoring mode when in a busy mix, so I don't use it for tracking.  It has pretty nice browsing though.



So basically... even if I had a Helix, I'd be doing things this way for recording so there'd be no difference to me.

Cabicular

For recording I use real amps into a torpedo load box and the wall of sound plug in to load irs
it works spectacularly well but here are some downsides (like no recall of settings) however the torpedo box allows you to re-amp
the Helix also does that really well
also have you heard they are putting the Helix out in plug in format?

Vaiai

Cabicular said:

also have you heard they are putting the Helix out in plug in format?

That's gonna be $400 but $99 if you own a Helix iirc? That's quite a bargain if it's good.

guitarfishbay

Cabicular said:

For recording I use real amps into a torpedo load box and the wall of sound plug in to load irs
it works spectacularly well but here are some downsides (like no recall of settings) however the torpedo box allows you to re-amp
the Helix also does that really well
also have you heard they are putting the Helix out in plug in format?

Yes I'm intending to demo the Helix plugin when it is available.  I'm mostly interested in it for bass sounds, especially given the upcoming bass focused update.