1500 bucks, you say, Line6?

L6 has AES out. I suggested this for the Fractal floor unit.
I haven't checked to see if it has that.

AES is the way to go in today's digital mixer universe.
 
I see AES as giving way to MADI, but honestly either connector seems more at place in the studio environment.

This brings up an interesting point about the Helix, inclusion of AES plus the kitchen sink worth of other features would seem to indicate they're trying to make he Helix be the everything to everybody box for a digital guitarist's life, studio and stage. I'm guessing the AX8 won't have AES to help differentiate the product in the lineup. That and the AX8 sounds like it is targeted more for live use than studio. Add the fact that the FX8 doesn't have AES and chances aren't good for the AX8 having them either.
 
There is no way that thing is "tour grade". That big ole volume knob will rip off the first time it gets used at a real gig. Come on kids…...
 
I'm not a lawyer, no idea. You can goto TGP and I think it's around page 43 or thereabouts where they start discussing FAS's commitment to continually upgrading the platform and asking whether or not L6 would get on the same treadmill that FAS created, and parse it yourself. General gist was that L6 is a publicly traded company and therefore cannot comment on anything not officially released. Makes sense to me.


I'm interested in this comment too as I have seen it before. Now, I do not live in the US and am not a lawyer ... so please bear with me and I am using examples of products in areas that I am most familiar with...

How come Apple can announce the Apple Watch months 7 months before availability? iOS 9 / OSX El Capitan 4 months before availability?

Microsoft announce Windows 10 many months before availability?

Movies are announced way before they are close to release?

All publicly traded companies.

I understand that there "could" be legislation to prevent people hyping products to influence the stock price .... but .... some people do announce others do not.
 
I'm just surprised and slightly disappointed to be honest that Yamaha/Line6 seem to have wasted an opportunity to use their considerable resources take a big leap forward and develop a truly unique product that isn't encumbered or constrained by the conventional, and dare I suggest, dated approach to modelling where everything is presented as 'sounds like....(insert name of amp/cab/whatever)'.

Surely FAS have taken this old concept and form-factor as far as it can go? I suppose the target market isn't quite ready to accept anything too imaginative yet?
 
I have to say. I really like the look of that Helix. Any assumption it won't sound good is just that. Assumption.

At this time, there's no way of knowing. But if it sounds somewhat better than the 500X it will be "good enough" for a lot of people that are now still at the "not good enough" stage. In that case, it's a contender.

It has IR loading...
 
I'm interested in this comment too as I have seen it before. Now, I do not live in the US and am not a lawyer ... so please bear with me and I am using examples of products in areas that I am most familiar with...

How come Apple can announce the Apple Watch months 7 months before availability? iOS 9 / OSX El Capitan 4 months before availability?

Microsoft announce Windows 10 many months before availability?

Movies are announced way before they are close to release?

All publicly traded companies.

I understand that there "could" be legislation to prevent people hyping products to influence the stock price .... but .... some people do announce others do not.

Well I read the thread at TGP and when a few forum members stressed him (DigitalIgloo on TGP) to give feedback on future devellopments on the HX platform I got the impression that he was referring to a disclosure on his contractual agreement with L6 as an employee that prevented him to make assumptions on behalf of L6. Just a few posts later he stated something like "you should buy a product for what it does and not for what it might do in the future" ...or something like that.
 
Well I read the thread at TGP and when a few forum members stressed him (DigitalIgloo on TGP) to give feedback on future devellopments on the HX platform I got the impression that he was referring to a disclosure on his contractual agreement with L6 as an employee that prevented him to make assumptions on behalf of L6. Just a few posts later he stated something like "you should buy a product for what it does and not for what it might do in the future" ...or something like that.

Non Disclosure Agreements with a company etc makes total sense as you would not want to give your competitors any info before it is in the public domain ... totally get that.

He will probably be privy to information that his employers would not want in the public domain, same as probably most of us are with our employers or our own businesses.... you have to respect that.

it is the ".... publicly traded company and therefore cannot comment on anything not officially released." i do not understand, seen it mentioned before.

"you should buy a product for what it does and not for what it might do in the future" - absolutely... totally respect that.... still not interested int he Helix though... it has some good looks though.... might make an interesting MIDI controller with the dynamic labels ... but not at that price.
 
Wow this thread has gotten huge; I was going to add my 2 cents however the political side got dark very quickly and I didn't want to get involved. So here is my 1 cents instead... :devilish:

In my view the Helix is an acknowledgement of the company to say that their past products are definitely not 'pro' standard, but the Helix is their first attempt at entering the big stage arena. The guy from TGP even says that for the PODs they had to cut back/down in certain areas of the amps so that the POD could handle the load; which is fair enough given the low price. I've tried many of their products and have returned them all, the Axe-Fx is basically the first time I have ever been at peace with my sound. If the Helix ever reaches that level (and I did not like the sounds I heard on the videos as they still had that strange 'frequency' or something weird going on) then I doubt it will be with this first release.

But I do like the fact that they say they are not trying to come up with the exact same solution as the other mainstream products (Kemper and Fractal), they said they want to do it their own way. I'm happy with that because they are already trying to put so many eggs into one box, and this worries me that they might end up focussing on quantity of features rather than quality of tone.

Fractal are continuously improving the quality of tone, which to me is much better than a colour screen interface; that is the reason why I use an Axe-Fx.
 
.....

it is the ".... publicly traded company and therefore cannot comment on anything not officially released." i do not understand, seen it mentioned before.

"you should buy a product for what it does and not for what it might do in the future" - absolutely... totally respect that.... still not interested int he Helix though... it has some good looks though.... might make an interesting MIDI controller with the dynamic labels ... but not at that price.

I think it's the excuse for not making promises you will inevitably have to break in the future. DI kept answering "Not at launch" to feedback on features just as if it would be possible to have them later on but when he was asked to give a timeframe to some of them he just dumped all that "....publicly traded company and therefore cannot comment...." BS.

As per the Helix itself, I'm not interested but I'm curious.
 
HD500 has most of the capabilities and doesn't sound nearly as good. AND iPad support ;)

Well, Fractal doesn't pay me (and as you let us know in your long 'good bye thread' they do not pay you either) so I am excited that there may be a product that has a much much more convenient form factor and will sound close to as good or maybe... gasp... better than what I have now. Why on earth everyone wouldn't be I have no idea.
 
This has been in the back of my head since this was announced. They say that their amps were rewritten in a new hx or something like that format. Just because you rewrite something doesn't mean that it's better, it just means that you rewrote it to work on a different type of processor. As far as the interface goes, my Axe sits behind a stage, I really don't care what it looks like. People who buy this thing should realize that it may never get any better than when you bought it. Fractals commitment to sound is unparalleled. I was initially excited to hear that the Helix was coming out. I thought briefly what if. Then I read everything I could find and after a ton of discussions about it. I was like, where's the clips how does it sound (proofs in the pudding after all ) I have heard maybe two clips of the whole thing. I wasn't that impressed with what I heard just yet. Good enough is just not good enough for me. I'm 48 yrs old, I want Cadillac of sound, not a Hyundai. (nothing wrong with Hyundai's, so don't write me letters)

I am definitely in the market for something smaller. I think I'll go for an Ax8 when they are released. Sometimes I just want to unplug after a service and go home. Now I wait around till the service is done to get my huge pedalboard off the stage.

Another thing that is unique that has got me, is that fastlink connector, my axe fx is in another room backstage, they just setup an xlr cable for me. It has to be at least 50ft or so away. No latency at all. I know that has nothing to do with the Helix, it kind of does with the rack mount version. Does it connect with an XLR? It doesn't matter of course. I'm kind of loyal to the brand, that continues the great service after I buy the product.

Fractal, has never steered you wrong. What they say, they do consistently. Thats all I need.
 
Last edited:
I don't understand this...there may be a product smaller than the MFC that has most of the capabilities of the AXE and costs half as much and you aren't interested? Really?

Yes, really not interested. I'm not a pro, I don't need anything smaller but I could do with less. I use a MidiMate as a floorboard and I'm happy with it. If I were to ditch all my setup and go the HX route it would be somewhat of a trade (supposing this new HX system doesn't end up narrowing my chances of getting a good value for my Gen1 AXEII and who would want to buy 10+ year old my MidiMate?).
Besides this I have already invested a sh*tload of time getting the unit to work for me and guess what... my quest for tone is over (long before firmware 19 dropped).
If I ever need to replace it I'll probably look at all the options on the market but for the moment I just don't feel the urge.
 
Back
Top Bottom