Line 6 Helix Stadium Hype Check

[Monkey Man]

Yeah, Helix Rack exists pretty much because we just... always made rack versions, not because they sold particularly well (at least when compared to floor-based units). In today's economic environment, we have to make more purposeful road map decisions.

Jury's still out. Many of us really want to make a Stadium Rack, but it's about convincing our bean counters and we need to bring receipts that we're accountable to.

Thank you for clarifying DI and for joining too... albeit 10 years ago.

The way I see it, if it is to be considered an option for "serious" recording, a rack version must be brought to market.

Heck, some extra floorboard sales could even result from peeps' seeing it racked-up in "pro" studios.

If there's anything to be said for optics and hype, it wouldn't harm that area either IMHO.

 

[JerEvil]

Plenty of advantages to having something racked; if a whole band is on IEM’s and going direct it’s a HELLUVA lot easier keeping all that shit in one rack so you’re not running cables all over a stage going to a mixer, just one or two patch ays for FOH and monitors and setup is a breeze.

Running just a MIDI cable to a pedalboard with a couple controllers on it gives a lot more safety than having the actual modeler itself on the floor where it can get stepped on and shit spilled on it.

You know how small MIDI controllers are now?

Look at that Morningstar MC6 in the center bottom-

I’d much rather have that on a board in front of me than my full on FM9 or even my FC6 board where I actually had to plan out and practice switching and making it to the expression pedals in time to use the wah/whammy. I had to add an additional footswitch to my board just to ensure I’d be able to get to the expression pedals after switching to a lead preset because the length of the FM9.

Yep. We have our own in-ear rig (X32) in a rack and yep, midi controllers are small and powerful these days.

But don’t try using logic here… it’s forbidden!

 

[Digital_Igloo]

This has been the weirdest line6 release ever.

Ouch. I'll tell ya' what Line 6 hasn't done for our launch:

• Promised—on camera—to deliver updates with new models and features every month
• Promised to deliver updates "forever"
• Promised "imminent" features that won't appear for half a decade or more
• Sent employees to openly slag [competitor's flagship] in their NAMM booth in front of their guests
• Told a [competitor's] employee visiting our booth that one of our main goals is to "take [competitor] down"
• Sent employees to [competitor's] Facebook group to falsely claim the reason why a replacement for [competitor's flagship] doesn't exist is because their braintrust left years ago to join our company and design our box
• Wormed my way up the executive ladder in part by falsely claiming I "created" [competitor's flagship] to anyone who'll listen, including dealers and distributors
• Actively sniped employees from [competitor] via LinkedIn
• Actively attempted to snipe [competitor's] artists, some of which are personal close friends of [competitor] employees

The above bullets aren't just from one company, by the way.

What has happened this launch:

• Said we'd deliver XL in the fall and we will. It's also highly likely that Showcase will get added this fall as well
• Someone at a major retailer made a mistake and shipped units too early. They're extremely unhappy and remorseful about it.
• Another major retailer shipped out units too early, but I'm not sure if it was an accident, apathy, greed, or what
• Ben, Igor, Frank, and I have collectively answered literally hundreds of questions across dozens of social media outlets on our free time when it's not our job to do so

Zero answers on by how much or even IF it’s got anymore cup power than the OG floor.

I've answered this question every time it's asked. It's considerably more, but an apples-to-apples comparison is impossible because Agoura amps eat up roughly twice the DSP as their HX counterparts and memory allocation is different from DSP allocation (same reason why Fractal limits the number of the same type of effect you can add). Plus, the dedicated coprocessor crunches numbers in a different way and we have dedicated cores reserved for future DSP and functionality.

No editor at shipping.

HX Edit dropped 6 months after Helix shipped. It took years for QC to get an editor. It took over a year for Fender. And what? Six, seven years for Headrush? Oh, and by the way, Stadium will have an editor at launch.

Sadly I think this is the one forum Line6’s Eric Klein doesn’t frequent.

Surprise!

 

[Digital_Igloo]

Thank you for clarifying DI and for joining too... albeit 10 years ago.

The way I see it, if it is to be considered an option for "serious" recording, a rack version must be brought to market.

Heck, some extra floorboard sales could even result from peeps' seeing it racked-up in "pro" studios.

If there's anything to be said for optics and hype, it wouldn't harm that area either IMHO.

Yeah, these are what we call "intangible benefits."

The perfect example of this is Expand D10. We will absolutely, positively lose money on it, but we're making it anyway because Products is not willing to leave Variax and Powercab+ users out in the cold. Gotta say, it's disheartening to hear how some Variax users whine about having to pay for an extra box when D10's very existence was so hard-fought. (Almost makes me regret bothering, to be honest.) The only alternatives would be saying "tough, no Variax or PC+ support at all" or forcing all Stadium users to pay an extra $100+ for a notably larger chassis. From my perspective, neither was ever going to happen.

Back when Line 6 was selling hundreds of thousands of Spider amps ($$$), we were able to take bigger risks (like StageScape M20d and Stagesource speakers) and release more passion projects (like Variax and DT50). And as long as we broke even on rack sales, cool. These days, we simply don't have the luxury to do that—every project we make (except for Expand D10) needs to be financially successful, and wasting time and resources on projects we know won't move the needle is pointless. Thanks, garbage economy, IP theft, runaway inflation, and [thing we're not supposed to discuss]!

Do I want a Helix Stadium Rack? Absolutely—a bunch of Team Helix would LOVE to make one and we'd love our growing touring artist roster to embrace it. But are we willing to lose whatever autonomy we've built here if it doesn't sell in considerably larger numbers than Helix Rack has? Not really; we like our jobs.

 

[pipelineaudio]

I've answered this question every time it's asked. It's considerably more, but an apples-to-apples comparison is impossible because Agoura amps eat up roughly twice the DSP as their HX counterparts and memory allocation is different from DSP allocation (same reason why Fractal limits the number of the same type of effect you can add). Plus, the dedicated coprocessor crunches numbers in a different way and we have dedicated cores reserved for future DSP and functionality.

I don't think this is in anyway an answer to the questions we asked though, we did ask for apples to apples: load up an OG Helix preset that was already maxed out and see what you can add to it. That is what was asked over and over and never responded to

Surprise!

You have no idea how happy I am to see you here

 

[Monkey Man]

You have no idea how happy I am to see you here

And I too. I remember him well from way back in the day when I frequented the L6 forum.

@Digital_Igloo thank you so much for that comprehensive reply mate.

I appreciate the ongoing support for the Variax. I have 2 and went through 3 years of Hell in order to acquire "units" that weren't faulty. Hopefully the pedal "power supplies" (sending DC via stereo 1/4" TRS) will always work in-a-pinch (I bought 2 or 3 just in case). I also invested in several of the proprietary "digital interface cables" so of course I always hope for ongoing support thereof as that route is preferable seeing as it introduces zero noise.

As for the Stadium rack, I guess all I can hope for is that you guys'll decide to run the product as a loss-leader. If not, it'll be a shame for those of use who've limited "studio" space.

Thanks again mate.

 

[Digital_Igloo]

I don't think this is in anyway an answer to the questions we asked though, we did ask for apples to apples: load up an OG Helix preset that was already maxed out and see what you can add to it. That is what was asked over and over and never responded to

If people specifically asked it in that way, I would've written something like this:

It depends on what blocks OG Helix is using. It's not as simple as "this model uses XX% of one DSP" or "this model equals X number of this other model." SHARC cycles are but one measurement; memory is another, where in the architecture the various parts of the model comes from is yet another. For example, Delay > Simple Delay might take up far fewer MIPS than, say, Mod > Retro Reel, but it uses way more memory, and depending on the memory usage of existing blocks, the model list filter can behave in unexpected ways.

Stadium makes things even more complicated, because it also has a burly coprocessor on top of the SHARCs with a GPU and MLA. As time goes on, we'll likely not only be optimizing existing DSP, but shuffling where the number crunching actually takes place. Or there may be types of DSP that appear that don't impact the SHARCs in the slightest.

I wish I could say "Oh, it's XXX% more than Helix/HX" but it's never been that simple. If people believe we're obfuscating, all I can say is "you don't have to buy it now—or ever. Wait until you can mess with one at your local guitar emporium or something. If it can easily build what you want, cool."

You have no idea how happy I am to see you here

Always a pleasure, amigo!

 

[Bxlxaxkxe]

I want to buy a Stadium now just because @Digital_Igloo answers every aggressive question in such a clear, calm manner. Feels almost nostalgic in the context of 2025

 

[pipelineaudio]

I wish I could say "Oh, it's XXX% more than Helix/HX" but it's never been that simple. If people believe we're obfuscating, all I can say is "you don't have to buy it now—or ever. Wait until you can mess with one at your local guitar emporium or something. If it can easily build what you want, cool."

I get that it’s not super easy to be sure but it really seems like someone could take a maxed out preset and attempt to add something. Say swap out simple pitch for a poly pitch. There has to be some concrete way of measuring this in a way that is meaningful to the end user.

For instance in my case, I’m happy with the amps and all just would like to be able to ad one more poly pitch to one of the paths. Can I do that? Should be ,if not easy to answer, at least answerable at this point in history

I’m building a computer based pedalboard right now and have a live stream playlist going with it. And of course, I’m running three instances of Helix native and likely to add a fourth (really just to keep the switching clock free and hapless and for the most awesome spillover delay ever! Pretty cool stuff. Trying to duplicate the stadium showcase features too.

I’m sure I’m getting a stadium sometime and hoping I get to test one soon

!

 

[Chronic Narnia]

Lots of high gain sounds starting around 19:30 under his favorite presets section including some poly pitch usage.

@Digital_Igloo I didn’t realize the Badonk is an Agoura amp or is it just the old Helix version?

 

[japetus]

I still use the same Pod 2.0 Bean I bought 20+ years ago lmao, I still love it

 

[JerEvil]

Lots of high gain sounds starting around 19:30 under his favorite presets section including some poly pitch usage.

@Digital_Igloo I didn’t realize the Badonk is an Agoura amp or is it just the old Helix version?

Nope. That’s the current Helix version.

Here’s (I believe) all the Agoura Amps and corresponding channels

Full Agoura amp list:





• US 5W Tweed (Champ) (Low, High)


• US Tweedman (Bassman) (Normal, Bright, Jumpered)


• WhoWatt 103 (HiWatt DR 103) (Normal, Bright, Jumpered)


• US Princess 76 (Princeton)


• US Luxe Black (Deluxe Reverb, blackface) (Normal, Vibrato)


• US Double Black (Twin Reverb) (Normal, Vibrato)


• Essex TB30CC (Vox AC30) (Normal, Top Boost)


• Brit Plexi (Super Lead 100, Model 1959) (Normal, Bright, Jumped)


• Brit 2203MV (JCM-800) (Low, High)


• German Xtra Blue (Bogner Ecstasy 101B Blue)


• German Xtra Red (Bogner Ecstasy 101B Red)


• Solid 100 (SLO-100) (Normal, Overdrive)


• EV Panama Blue (EVH 5150III 100 Blue Channel)


• EV Panama Red (EVH 5150III 100 Red Channel)


• Revv 120 Purple (Revv® Generator 120, Gain 1 Purple)


• Revv 120 Red (Revv® Generator 120, Gain 2 Red)


• Ampeg SVT 50th (Ch1 Normal, Ch1 Bright, Ch2 Normal, Ch2 Bright, Jumpered)


• Ampeg B15NF 66


• US Dripman Bass (Bassman, Drip-edge silverface) (Bass, Normal, Jumpered) [confirmed by u/thebishopgame]


• Agua 751 (Aguilar DB 751)


• Mandarin Plus 200 (Orange AD200 MkII) (Passive, Active)


• Brit Megabass (Marshall Super Bass [thanks u/thebishopgame]) (Normal, Bright, Jumpered)

 

[Chronic Narnia]

Nope. That’s the current Helix version.

Here’s (I believe) all the Agoura Amps and corresponding channels

Full Agoura amp list:





• US 5W Tweed (Champ) (Low, High)


• US Tweedman (Bassman) (Normal, Bright, Jumpered)


• WhoWatt 103 (HiWatt DR 103) (Normal, Bright, Jumpered)


• US Princess 76 (Princeton)


• US Luxe Black (Deluxe Reverb, blackface) (Normal, Vibrato)


• US Double Black (Twin Reverb) (Normal, Vibrato)


• Essex TB30CC (Vox AC30) (Normal, Top Boost)


• Brit Plexi (Super Lead 100, Model 1959) (Normal, Bright, Jumped)


• Brit 2203MV (JCM-800) (Low, High)


• German Xtra Blue (Bogner Ecstasy 101B Blue)


• German Xtra Red (Bogner Ecstasy 101B Red)


• Solid 100 (SLO-100) (Normal, Overdrive)


• EV Panama Blue (EVH 5150III 100 Blue Channel)


• EV Panama Red (EVH 5150III 100 Red Channel)


• Revv 120 Purple (Revv® Generator 120, Gain 1 Purple)


• Revv 120 Red (Revv® Generator 120, Gain 2 Red)


• Ampeg SVT 50th (Ch1 Normal, Ch1 Bright, Ch2 Normal, Ch2 Bright, Jumpered)


• Ampeg B15NF 66


• US Dripman Bass (Bassman, Drip-edge silverface) (Bass, Normal, Jumpered) [confirmed by u/thebishopgame]


• Agua 751 (Aguilar DB 751)


• Mandarin Plus 200 (Orange AD200 MkII) (Passive, Active)


• Brit Megabass (Marshall Super Bass [thanks u/thebishopgame]) (Normal, Bright, Jumpered)

So in theory has anything changed on the non-Agoura amps or in the software that would make them sound or feel different even if they aren’t the newer component modeling?

 

[JerEvil]

So in theory has anything changed on the non-Agoura amps or in the software that would make them sound or feel different even if they aren’t the newer component modeling?

Not as far as I know. I’ll do an “amp to amp” comparison for sure but as far as I know, Stadium is basically current FW Helix w/a lot more room to grow and will do lots that previous Helix units won’t. The effects and cabs outside the ones that fall under the Agoura models are exactly the same as the current FW standard Helix ones.

With that said, I’ve already seen some ridiculously huge signal chains. Allegedly the Agoura Amps are currently very resource intensive so hopefully that will get fixed with FW updates.

 

[romanianreaper]

I thought this video was a great demonstration of the improvement in tone. I've never owned a Helix and don't even know what it is, but sounds better even on my phone.

I think i've figured out a bit more of what makes modelling sound more "real" after watching that clip. There is a rise and fall in volume that happens naturally with touch. That is why we all love certain guitar players and their feel.

When I listened to that guy play the legacy Helix models and then switch, I immediately heard a certain bloom and dip as his fingers were playing certain parts. The only thing I can compare it to is when you hear someone play a keyboard without weighted keys, then hear it sith weighted keys. You still hear the notes and can still sound great but not as great as those details.

 

[Digital_Igloo]

Stadium is basically current FW Helix w/a lot more room to grow and will do lots that previous Helix units won’t.

I'm sure you didn't mean this, but just in case someone misunderstands your statement: Stadium is a complete rewrite from the ground up. All new hardware platform, entirely different system architecture, file system, everything. Agoura represents a completely different approach to capturing real gear, at least for us.

Generally speaking, existing HX amps and effects sound better in Stadium because of both the hardware platform and system architecture.

 

[Simon Dorn]

I watched a few clips. And none of them sounded good.

 

[JerEvil]

I watched a few clips. And none of them sounded good.

Oh do tell!!! Honestly I think Jon Symons vid was solid. I won’t watch Jason Sadites or a few others because I just don’t like them as people and I’m fine not giving them a click.

I’m certainly looking forward to getting mine in. I’ll definitely be making some 1:1 comparisons of the amp and cab models and sharing those. You may also not like the sounds I get but it is what it is.

 

[geetarmikey]

All the YouTubers that got sent one for free say it's awesome so I'm getting two!

 

[rsm]

I still have my Helix Floor and HX-Effects, both still do what they do and sound the same. I sold my FM9 MkII Turbo. I still use my SY-1000 and SY-300, but...

I made a computer rig a couple of years ago, and it worked out so well that I made a second one using a refurbished Dell Latitude Rugged Extreme Tablet with a touchscreen, KMI SoftStep2 and Arturia miniFuse:1 audio interface. Small and compact.

I have and use several guitar plug-ins, and to manage them I use Blue Cat Audio's PatchWork. I organize sets of PW patches into MIDI maps for my KMI SoftStep2. Load a MIDI map into the SoftStep2, gives me up to 10 patches, or I can use fewer patches and dedicate switches to MIDI parameter changes. I have around 6 MIDI maps IIRC.

If you want a small stage footprint without needing an expression pedal though it can support one, but with a little practice, the SoftStep2 footswitches are pressure sensitive, and have 4-directions (up, down, left, right) which can be assigned different MIDI parameters. The SoftStep2 is 17.7" x 4.1" x 0.94"

The KIMI SoftStep3 is out now, I don't know what it adds or improves over my SoftStep2 which is working just fine for me.

If Boss releases a successor to the SY-1000 that does everything it does, and more, with new additions and improvements, I'd buy it. For everything else, my computer rig is more flexible and cheaper.


Frankly, I'd get one of the newer handheld gaming PCs if the had one more USB connection (I need 2: one for the audio interface, one for the SoftStep2).