Helix Stadium vs Fractal FM9: whch is the king of amp modelers (vs real tube amp)?

[Randalljax]

I like line6 and they have some really great folks working there but IMO
They really dropped the ball on this and frankly it was not ready , i have never seen as many bugs on an initial stripped back release , it not a good situation
And although it wasn’t timed like this ,the arrival of the basically bug free and amazing bang for the buck AM4 well it does not make it better

 

[momogris]

I like line6 and they have some really great folks working there but IMO
They really dropped the ball on this and frankly it was not ready , i have never seen as many bugs on an initial stripped back release , it not a good situation
And although it wasn’t timed like this ,the arrival of the basically bug free and amazing bang for the buck AM4 well it does not make it better

I think that it wants to do a lot of things that most of people don’t need, but you end up paying for. Lots of potentially gimmick features that the average player won’t use and very little effort put into updating the core of what and amp and effects modeler should be (in my opinion). They didn’t not update any of the effects and only a handful of amps were remodelled.

 

[Josetxu]

I bought a Stadium day one from GC and it has been returned after 3 weeks. Pretty much a let down in every aspect. A lot of hype over easy editing etc. The amp selection is meeger and they honestly do not sound much better. It does not sound bad just has maybe a little more frequency response or better resolution but nothing ground breaking.
Also the $$ is not worth it when a FM9 that has more amps and more (and better) effects for less $$.

Do you find this compared with the older Helix or with the FM9?

THIS. They didn’t even upgrade any of the effects (at least is what I’ve read) after so many years. There’s no current match to our Fm9. Quad Cortex didn’t impress me at all either. The sound is very compressed and the effects are nah.

I don’t trust a YouTuber anymore. It’s obvious they are trying to sell it with phrases like Ease of use, you don’t need to bring a computer, and nonsenses like that BUT, very few comments about the quality of the sounds, feeling and so on.

Nobody talk about channels in our units either, which is an amazing tool and very intelligent way to have a very clean preset.

Haven't tried the big Quad Cortex but bought an used Nano Cortex just for fun and with just some free captures (the new v2 ODS dumble and some amalgam Two Rock and Fuchs) I'm having a great time with it. Trying to match it with the FM9 actually... but of course they are very different products.

Me neither... I know people always say that with modelers you have to use high and low cuts, but if a modeler does what it is supposed to do, you get exactly what you expect for a chosen signal chain.

I gigged the Helix for over 200 hours the past four years before switching to the Axe III Turbo and with the Helix I always had to use LPF and HPF to make it sound somewhat good. On the Axe however I'll use HPFs and LPFs to make an already great sounding tone fit the mix - if at all. We always have the same light and tone guys for each gig and I stopped bothering adjusting the HPFs and LPFs myself, just passing the raw output to the FOH. After all people still use real guitar amps and mic them up for live shows, getting great results without being able to dial in a LPF and HPF on their own so...

After I didn't get along with the Helix (and didn't like other Line 6 products either), the Stadium is a big NO - especially considering the high price of these things which is obviously needed to pay the marketing departmend and all these influencers... I just hope they don't stick to the same terrible update philosophy like they did with the Helix Floor. The most interesting amps (which of course were available since the release over 10 years ago) never got updated and overhauled, but they rather added some niche amps no one cares about. Makes me appreciate all the free updates we get for our FAS products even more...

I'm almost not using HPF and almost not LPF with the FM9 neither, and if I do it isn't to fix anything.

I had an Helix before the FM9 (3+ years ago) and was always struggling with it. I've found that there's some missing in the low end and, if you listen to the OP video, seems to happen with the Stadium (Leo says the Helix is brighter but what I hear is less low end power). I don't also need all the addons Line 6 has put into the Stadium like the Showcase, although preset editing over Bluetooth with an iPad is something I would like to have in a Fractal unit. I prefer it to a almost iPad like screen with fancy graphics...

I'm not denying it's a good product and will sell a lot (maybe more of the non XL version), but not for me.

 

[Ledvedder]

I have to admit, the new "showcase" feature they just release seems kinda cool.

 

[GMGM]

I have to admit, the new "showcase" feature they just release seems kinda cool.

I watched Scott Uhl's "Showcase" video iver lunch, it does seem to be super simple to use - especially for (M)idiots like me.

But I wonder how much it moves the needle on sales. It seems to me that bands using tracks, will likely stick with their current setups. Further it seems that most bands that want to use tracks, already do. So the target here appears to be for bands that are getting started, and don't want to invest in a complicated laptop/daw/mixer/etc. Or looping artists, or teachers.

I only recently started to incorporate some tracks. I decided in favor of learning Ableton. It's the one DAW I've never used before. So far I hate it, compared to every other DAW I'm comfortable with. But it's my new years resolution to finally learn how to operate both Ableton and MIDI.

 

[Randalljax]

I watched Scott Uhl's "Showcase" video iver lunch, it does seem to be super simple to use - especially for (M)idiots like me.

But I wonder how much it moves the needle on sales. It seems to me that bands using tracks, will likely stick with their current setups. Further it seems that most bands that want to use tracks, already do. So the target here appears to be for bands that are getting started, and don't want to invest in a complicated laptop/daw/mixer/etc. Or looping artists, or teachers.

I only recently started to incorporate some tracks. I decided in favor of learning Ableton. It's the one DAW I've never used before. So far I hate it, compared to every other DAW I'm comfortable with. But it's my new years resolution to finally learn how to operate both Ableton and MIDI.

Their biggest problems right now is bugs IMO and bad ones
Enough so that you tubers like Rhett, Jerrod and a few others have said they are not comfortable using it live , that’s a concern
Especially compared to Fractal virtual bug free launch in AM4 that’s getting nothing but praise and a must have on the holiday shopping list
I really feel bad for Line6 but I don’t think this product was ready

 

[GMGM]

Their biggest problems right now is bugs IMO and bad ones
Enough so that you tubers like Rhett, Jerrod and a few others have said they are not comfortable using it live , that’s a concern
Especially compared to Fractal virtual bug free launch in AM4 that’s getting nothing but praise and a must have on the holiday shopping list
I really feel bad for Line6 but I don’t think this product was ready

To be fair, Line6 took a poll - should we release the units now with unfinished firmware? Or wait until it's ready? The community overwhelmingly voted in favor of "now". So it's difficult to feel bad for them. Hopefully the lates update will address many of the bugs (if not, they'll probably be stuck with those bugs for a while, considering how slow Line6 is with their updates).

But it must be embarrassing for them every time a YT channel utters the phrase, "I'm sure that'll be fixed in the next update".

Meanwhile, I think the worst bug I can recall (for Fractal FM9) was just recently. When a handful of users were reporting a weird boot error, that resulted in no sound - and the fix was to reboot. There are surely other examples that I didn't follow, but it's easy to take for granted how good we have it.

 

[Randalljax]

To be fair, Line6 took a poll - should we release the units now with unfinished firmware? Or wait until it's ready? The community overwhelmingly voted in favor of "now". So it's difficult to feel bad for them. Hopefully the lates update will address many of the bugs (if not, they'll probably be stuck with those bugs for a while, considering how slow Line6 is with their updates).

But it must be embarrassing for them every time a YT channel utters the phrase, "I'm sure that'll be fixed in the next update".

Meanwhile, I think the worst bug I can recall was just recently. When a handful of users were reporting a weird boot error, that resulted in no sound - and the fix was to reboot. There are surely other examples that I didn't follow, but it's easy to take for granted how good we have it.

Oh I agree
But that’s what one YouTuber was saying who was really annoyed
He said we agreed to an early release missing a few features that would come later and that was fine
But the bugs that were just in the initial release should not have been there

 

[cje]

To be fair, Line6 took a poll - should we release the units now with unfinished firmware? Or wait until it's ready? The community overwhelmingly voted in favor of "now". So it's difficult to feel bad for them. Hopefully the lates update will address many of the bugs (if not, they'll probably be stuck with those bugs for a while, considering how slow Line6 is with their updates).

But it must be embarrassing for them every time a YT channel utters the phrase, "I'm sure that'll be fixed in the next update".

Meanwhile, I think the worst bug I can recall (for Fractal FM9) was just recently. When a handful of users were reporting a weird boot error, that resulted in no sound - and the fix was to reboot. There are surely other examples that I didn't follow, but it's easy to take for granted how good we have it.

Line6, in their infinite wisdom, put the timing of a major product launch in the hands of their user community? If that's true, that's egregious.

 

[danrussell185]

So I had a 15 minute go on a Stadium on Launch day and the ease of use on the unit itself with the sound quality was enough to convince me to sell my Fractal FM9 and buy one. The new amp tones sound great and are super easy to dial in but I’d say the Fractal feels better and sounds more articulate. The UI made it worth it for how it sounds in a band context. Now after a few weeks with the Stadium I’ve sold it and bought another FM9.

Whilst the device UI is very easy to use, the unit is way too under powered and is almost embarrassing for the new next gen device from the company I would say pioneered amp modelling. On a single chain I tried to run 2 of their new amps (Fender for clean and 5150 for dirty) in parallel to get around a volume spike bug and a cab. Already a reverb was greyed out because it didn’t have enough power to run it. I added one of the available reverbs and now 80% of the delays were gone. I reached out to line 6 support to ask if this was right and they weren’t sure and wanted to investigate as it seemed like a basic thing I was trying to do… Eric confirmed to me on Facebook that it was right, the new amps are intensive on memory and several users started pointing out work arounds to spread out the DSP across paths… spread out the DSP and use workarounds on a simple chain like that. The work arounds then caused more issues that required sacrifices. Lots of surprised users and people saying they’d already returned theirs.

It’s great that you can run a light show, play back tracks and touch the screen… but can you get the modeller to make a simple chain with their latest amp models that other units now years old handle with ease? No.

I’m not even talking a the bugs because they’ll fix those. Lesson learned, if you don’t try you don’t know and all that stuff.

 

[sprint]

To be fair, Line6 took a poll - should we release the units now with unfinished firmware? Or wait until it's ready? The community overwhelmingly voted in favor of "now".

I find it bizarre that a company would even ask its product users such a question with intention to proceed depending on the answer. Significantly unfinished products should never be released imo, regardless of what users want. There must be more to this story.

 

[momogris]

So I had a 15 minute go on a Stadium on Launch day and the ease of use on the unit itself with the sound quality was enough to convince me to sell my Fractal FM9 and buy one. The new amp tones sound great and are super easy to dial in but I’d say the Fractal feels better and sounds more articulate. The UI made it worth it for how it sounds in a band context. Now after a few weeks with the Stadium I’ve sold it and bought another FM9.

Whilst the device UI is very easy to use, the unit is way too under powered and is almost embarrassing for the new next gen device from the company I would say pioneered amp modelling. On a single chain I tried to run 2 of their new amps (Fender for clean and 5150 for dirty) in parallel to get around a volume spike bug and a cab. Already a reverb was greyed out because it didn’t have enough power to run it. I added one of the available reverbs and now 80% of the delays were gone. I reached out to line 6 support to ask if this was right and they weren’t sure and wanted to investigate as it seemed like a basic thing I was trying to do… Eric confirmed to me on Facebook that it was right, the new amps are intensive on memory and several users started pointing out work arounds to spread out the DSP across paths… spread out the DSP and use workarounds on a simple chain like that. The work arounds then caused more issues that required sacrifices. Lots of surprised users and people saying they’d already returned theirs.

It’s great that you can run a light show, play back tracks and touch the screen… but can you get the modeller to make a simple chain with their latest amp models that other units now years old handle with ease? No.

I’m not even talking a the bugs because they’ll fix those. Lesson learned, if you don’t try you don’t know and all that stuff.

That what I said about it, plenty of features that are going to be unnecessary for the majority of players but you end paying for them. I can’t believe it took them so many years to release a product with a handful of new amps and that’s it. They did not upgrade any of the effects. Instead, they put all the effort in things that might be useful, but right now are gimmicks.

 

[suhrmajesty]

I was going to get a Helix Stadium but have changed my mind, it doesn't have enough power. Sounds nice, I love the navigation but the lack of power and having to fight to lay down two amps plus effects is not going to fly. FM9 Turbo is still king that I'm happing to have.

 

[Lolo-G]

I was going to get a Helix Stadium but have changed my mind, it doesn't have enough power. Sounds nice, I love the navigation but the lack of power and having to fight to lay down two amps plus effects is not going to fly. FM9 Turbo is still king that I'm happing to have.

It's surprising this lack of power for a new product... the algorithms will perhaps be optimized over time... when I see the crazy things you can do with an FM9T which seems to be the direct competitor.

 

[BobXX]

I think FM9 and FAS products are and remains a higher perceptual brand/product map position than Line6.

To me FAS is clearly more focused than Line6 on professional use.

About this comparison and mostly any other comparison with FM9,
the only big objective (and strange) point is that FM9 allows only 1 Pitch Block, whereas the Helix Stadium theoretically allows up to 4 Poly Pitch/Poly Capo (two per processor) and even more if mono.

But this is not so much a strength of the Helix... as many other cheaper products allow multiple pitch blocks by design, but rather IMO a great current weakness point of the powerful FM9.

Hope at least new gen won't have that limit in the flagship floor unit and maybe something will happen in FM9 too.

 

[guitarplayer1969]

So I had a 15 minute go on a Stadium on Launch day and the ease of use on the unit itself with the sound quality was enough to convince me to sell my Fractal FM9 and buy one. The new amp tones sound great and are super easy to dial in but I’d say the Fractal feels better and sounds more articulate. The UI made it worth it for how it sounds in a band context. Now after a few weeks with the Stadium I’ve sold it and bought another FM9.

Whilst the device UI is very easy to use, the unit is way too under powered and is almost embarrassing for the new next gen device from the company I would say pioneered amp modelling. On a single chain I tried to run 2 of their new amps (Fender for clean and 5150 for dirty) in parallel to get around a volume spike bug and a cab. Already a reverb was greyed out because it didn’t have enough power to run it. I added one of the available reverbs and now 80% of the delays were gone. I reached out to line 6 support to ask if this was right and they weren’t sure and wanted to investigate as it seemed like a basic thing I was trying to do… Eric confirmed to me on Facebook that it was right, the new amps are intensive on memory and several users started pointing out work arounds to spread out the DSP across paths… spread out the DSP and use workarounds on a simple chain like that. The work arounds then caused more issues that required sacrifices. Lots of surprised users and people saying they’d already returned theirs.

It’s great that you can run a light show, play back tracks and touch the screen… but can you get the modeller to make a simple chain with their latest amp models that other units now years old handle with ease? No.

I’m not even talking a the bugs because they’ll fix those. Lesson learned, if you don’t try you don’t know and all that stuff.

This was my fear and why I didn't buy the Stadium. I moved on from a Helix Floor in 2024 after 8 years of use, because it was having DSP issues. Sold it and got an FM9, which is now starting to show DSP limits with the newer firmwares. With the Stadium not offering anything yet other than the few new amps and it not handling two Augora amps, I am going to stick with what I have, and I am also playing around with the AM4, which is alot of fun.

 

[Ellumpo]

So I had a 15 minute go on a Stadium on Launch day and the ease of use on the unit itself with the sound quality was enough to convince me to sell my Fractal FM9 and buy one. The new amp tones sound great and are super easy to dial in but I’d say the Fractal feels better and sounds more articulate. The UI made it worth it for how it sounds in a band context. Now after a few weeks with the Stadium I’ve sold it and bought another FM9.

Whilst the device UI is very easy to use, the unit is way too under powered and is almost embarrassing for the new next gen device from the company I would say pioneered amp modelling. On a single chain I tried to run 2 of their new amps (Fender for clean and 5150 for dirty) in parallel to get around a volume spike bug and a cab. Already a reverb was greyed out because it didn’t have enough power to run it. I added one of the available reverbs and now 80% of the delays were gone. I reached out to line 6 support to ask if this was right and they weren’t sure and wanted to investigate as it seemed like a basic thing I was trying to do… Eric confirmed to me on Facebook that it was right, the new amps are intensive on memory and several users started pointing out work arounds to spread out the DSP across paths… spread out the DSP and use workarounds on a simple chain like that. The work arounds then caused more issues that required sacrifices. Lots of surprised users and people saying they’d already returned theirs.

It’s great that you can run a light show, play back tracks and touch the screen… but can you get the modeller to make a simple chain with their latest amp models that other units now years old handle with ease? No.

I’m not even talking a the bugs because they’ll fix those. Lesson learned, if you don’t try you don’t know and all that stuff.

I think this comes down mostly to user error and a misunderstanding of how the Stadium is designed to be used. The manual actually explains this pretty clearly.





The Stadium has two signal paths with separate DSP. You can run two amps on the first path and then move all your effects to the second path, which gives you plenty of headroom. Used that way, DSP really isn’t an issue, and calling the unit “underpowered” doesn’t reflect how it’s intended to work.





The examples you’re referring to sound like people expecting it to behave exactly like an FM9 instead of adapting to a slightly different workflow. Every platform has limits, but they’re usually addressed by using the routing and features properly rather than brute-forcing everything into one path.





Also worth noting: the volume spike issue you mentioned has already been fixed, so that criticism is outdated.





At the end of the day, both units are powerful, but they require different approaches. Hitting a limitation because you’re not using the available routing options doesn’t really say much about the hardware itself.

 

[ocaptainjr2]

If you're going to copy/paste AI at least remove all the white space...

 

[sprint]

The Stadium has two signal paths with separate DSP. You can run two amps on the first path and then move all your effects to the second path, which gives you plenty of headroom. Used that way

Strange to me that HX gets so much praise for UI usability when it breaks one of the golden rules of system development - a UI's design should not be dictated by the architecture or configuration of underlying physical cpu processing hardware. But this is what HX does with it's dual path preset design that forces users to consider the underlying processor configuration of the device which is totally unrelated to the business of creating / designing a guitar modeller preset well within available system resources. Thankfully, Fractal does not place this type of burden on users with their devices which have excellent overall ease of use.

 

[Ellumpo]

If you're going to copy/paste AI at least remove all the white space...

If that’s your takeaway instead of addressing the actual points, that kind of says it all.

Strange to me that HX gets praise for usability when it breaks one of the golden rules of system development - a UI's design should not be dictated by the architecture or configuration of underlying physical cpu processing. But this is what HX does with it's dual path preset design that forces users to consider the underlying processor configuration of the device which is totally unrelated to the business of creating / designing a guitar modeller preset well within available system resources. Thankfully, Fractal does not place this type of burden on users with their devices which have excellent overall ease of use.

That “golden rule” you’re referring to isn’t a real thing, it’s something you’re presenting as fact without any basis. Exposing aspects of system architecture in professional tools is extremely common.

Fractal literally shows CPU usage to the user. By your own logic, that would also be “bad UI,” which obviously isn’t the case. It’s a deliberate design choice to give users transparency and predictability. Helix does the same thing, just in a different way with its dual-path approach.

At this point it feels less like a technical discussion and more like people protecting an identity tied to a brand. Both platforms are strong tools. Treating one as untouchable and everything else as inferior doesn’t make the argument stronger, it just makes the conversation pointless.

“Excellent overall ease of use” is pretty debatable when you’re talking about a device that can’t really be edited on the fly. Ease of use depends heavily on context and workflow. For some people, deep editing on the device itself matters a lot, for others it doesn’t.

You can prefer one approach without pretending it’s universally superior. If a workflow fits you, great. If it doesn’t, that doesn’t make the other device bad. The amount of hostility toward alternative tools in this forum is honestly more confusing than any UI decision on either platform.