1/ Yes there is a little latency in the plugin (about 2.5 ms I think but cant really remember) but when recording, monitoring is latency free via the hardware. When not recording it’s an irrelavence as the playback is latency compensated automatically by Cubase. If I ever need to “constrain latency compensation” (which is very rare) it’s usually only due to some master bus processing etc, never the Helix Native instances.
2/ I take the wet digital out off the back of the Helix hardware and the dry DI via the “buffered through” out. In all my patches output is set to Omni (which I beleive is the default on all factory presets too?) I’ve never had to re-patch a patch, so to speak. Sometimes I’ll use a DI box in front of the Helix and send the split to the hardware but thats just a cabling convenience thing .
Edit: I use Helix Rack which has a dry buffered through/out on the input side and I don’t think that’s on the Helix floor model? Of course for the floor model you could just use a DI as a splitter in front of the Helix as described above though.
I never use the Helix as an interface - no point as I have 48 channels of ins and outs available via the main interface setup of daisy chained Steinberg units with ADAT expansion.
Re. 2: What is that “buffered through” out? Is it the 1/4" output jacks? I thought they also just carry the wet signa?
I’m currently taking the processed Helix signal from the XLR outs and running those into my audio interface, and if I could just get the dry DI from the Helix as an analog output as well, that would allow me to connect that to my audio interface as well and capture both the dry and wet signals in the analog domain simultaneously.
And yeah, just getting a DI box/splitter is another solution but I try to minimize the amount of gear in the studio (and in the signal path).
Using the Helix as an interface is also not an option for me since, like yourself, I also have a lot of I/O (32 in/ 32 out) on my audio interface (TF1) that provide necessary connectivity to the rest of my studio.
Helix Rack (but not floor) has a “guitar through” output that bypasses the hardware and allows you to easily send a dry signal for a DI.
You could configure the 1/4 " outs on a Helix Floor to send a dry signal but as you pointed out in a previos post this would involve re- jigging your output configs.
Ah, that’s why I couldn’t find the “guitar through” output, I have the Helix Floor
I’m going to play around with the output configurations and see how much hassle it is to do this for every patch (according to Line 6 Support, there isn’t a global setting for this), and if it’s too much, I just might get myself a DI box.
Thank you everybody for the great discussion and your help!
I’ve settled on using @Topographic_Tim’s method of switching ASIO drivers (combined with storing different audio connection presets) for recording both the dry and wet Helix signals in the digital domain. This is a bit cumbersome (hence my ask for ASIO driver aggregation in the first place ), but it works.
I’m also planning on getting the Helix Native plugin so I can reamp that dry Helix signal after-the-fact. Thank you @tannoy71 for explaining the how-to and benefits of this!
Not sure if adding a #feature-request in the body of this thread will actually make it a feature request, but if it doesn’t, if anybody knows “the right way” of doing that, let me know so I can file this feature request in a way that makes it to the Steinberg backlog.
Yeah just to echo what has already been said, you can only use a single ASIO driver in Windows unfortunately. There isn’t any built in way in Windows to aggregate devices like there is in the Mac OS. I personally would avoid ASIO4All. It will probably work but it’s not a pro solution. Frankly I’d just plug your Line 6 device in via analog and call it a day. No one’s going to know or say… huh I bet they recorded this via analog, I wish they had recorded this digitally.
Save yourself the rat race and hassle and the time you might spend trying to work around this could likely be put to better use just making music.
Thank you Richard, I completely agree that nobody will know/care whether this was recorded in the analog or digital domain, but switching ASIO drivers (and associated I/O configuration presets) is easy enough to be workable. So - thanks to the good people on this forum I do have a workaround that works and I am, indeed, back to making music
