Line 6 Helix Native Guitar Amp and Effects Plug-in Reviews

This is a great plug in. I've tried other amp sim plugins and hardley found anything usable let alone inspiring. The free trial of Native sold me. Truly inspiring tones. Makes playing guitar on my laptop fun and now I don't have to bring an amp or modeller on trips. I have streamlined my rig over time and this was the next step. Thanks Mac Hatton!!! Sales engineer extraordinaire!!!

The amp and cab simulations in Helix are top notch. They sound very close to the Axe-Fx simulations for a fraction of the price. I look forward to recording more music with full, meaty distortion tones.

once i set it up the right way i found a ton of great sounds I love it

So Many great sounds!

This is an awesome plug-in glad I finally got got it! And the crew at Sweetwater are awesome to!

I love this software. I'm a keyboard player and haven't a clue about guitar processors, but just with the presets, I'm flipping out about the sounds I'm getting!!! I don't have to be a programmer, engineer or guitar guy to get these sophisticated sounds. Haven't even opened the manual yet. Thank you.

I dread using new software usually, the learning curve can be daunting. But while one could spend months figuring out everything Helix Native can do, a relatively non-techie guy like me was able to get up and running in no time flat. Auditioning tones, creating my own, importing custom tones from 3rd parties, all a snap really. Works seamlessly with Logic Pro X, my DAW of choice. The sounds are fantastic, and that's all I wanted from this software, a way to make my guitar tracks sound big and fat. Still exploring, but I got this version of Helix to start a recording project this winter, and am confident I will be able to create tracks that will take my recorded sound to the next level. That's all I wanted, and exactly what I got.

Switched from Bias Amp & FX over to Helix Native and noticed an immediate improvement in sound quality, without writing a novel here haha i"ll just say EVERYTHING just sounds better! My style is pretty heavy and i was able to dial in some great tones the first time using it. Was all excited so i tracked a bunch of stuff and right away noticed that the guitars sit WAY better in mixes too! Way less tweaking! Try it! Buy it! Rock on!

Having owned the Helix hardware and Helix Native, I can say without hesitation that the plug-in sounds identical as long as you have a quality preamp with a good guitar high-z input. Just don't drive the inputs too hard.

Pros: fantastic selection of amps and cabinets that sound like the real deal; supports third-party IRs; huge selection of effects, reverbs, and stomp boxes; very easy to create your own presets; dual-amp capability; supports DAW automation for real-time reaction in your songs; big customer base of Helix users and Helix Native benefits when the hardware updates because they share the code base; great bass as well as guitar; you can use the plug-in with vocals and other instruments; a bottomless selection of free presets and also some extra good ones being sold by Helix designers for affordable prices; active forum with helpful users; good support from Line 6. Hope I didn't forget anything!

Cons: as of this writing (May 2018) Line 6 still hasn't added direct MIDI control, so you have to use your DAW to map stuff, or use your DAW's automation to control the Helix; inflexible use of IR slots when assigning them to presets. (These Cons are not significant barriers, and easily outweighed by the Pros.)

Best modeller plugin I've come across, excepting MIDI support not being implemented yet. Does have a few unique quirks, the cabinet models require manual high & low pass adjustment to get rid of harsh high end in particular. Quite musical once you work it out. Tremendous flexibility with it's cabinet/microphone models rather than simple impulse response files--but it requires you to know a lot about what microphones at what distances with which cabinets. Reading up a bit on what the engineers/producers did on your favorite recordings helps tremendously.

Almost worth it for the Litigator amp model alone, but there's a ridiculous amount of other great models.

This is, by far, the best Guitar/Bass Amp/FX Studio Modeling software I have used. Even at $400, it is a value to any guitarist that records, or to any studio engineer/producer that ReAmps a lot of guitar/bass.

The Helix platform keeps expanding, now into territory where the competition in top-tier modelling is completely absent. The presets are completely transferable from this plugin to any Helix device, (and vice-versa) and they all sound the same. I won't talk much about how the Helix sounds, as it is covered in the reviews for the Helix hardware. They do sound the same provided you have a high quality front-end recording the dry track to begin with. I use the Helix Rack as my "front end," audio-interface, and "wet monitor." But ever since Native came out I have been doing all my ReAmping through Helix Native. Line 6 really did a great thing with Helix.

The ability to ReAmp with this plugin is so powerful. It is relatively optimized for what you get with it. (CPU-friendly)

The automation capabilities in this plugin are easy to implement (assuming your DAW has efficient automation creation) and they are quite deep. I am not sure if I have ran into a parameter that I wanted to automate, but couldn't in just a few clicks.

This plugin is even easier to get tones dialed in from scratch than the on-board interface of the hardware, and the hardware UI is in a class of its own as well.

It does everything the hardware does except for "snapshots." Though I think I read on the Line 6 forums that "snapshots" will be coming to Native at some point. So they may be coming.

I think once more models are added, and some are already confirmed to be on the way as of writing this, (even improvements to some like HX reverbs) then Helix Native will be a value that many mixing/studio engineers will be hard to ignore.

I wish this product was around earlier because the time and effort of manually trying to create "my sound" through individual plugins was an enormous task. This plugin takes you right to "my sound" in minutes - not days and hours !

Hello,

As a small home studio owner I was looking for a solution to amp guitars without the overhead on the budget and acoustics, I owned a couple of amp modeling software over the years (GTR3, Native Instruments..) etc. none of which really delivered the quality I was looking for.

I was tempted to try Helix, and I was just blown away with the quality: finally, really top notch sounding amp modeling software that will be used for years to come and a precious purchase for the studio.
For example: Try working on a clean sound passed through a fender deluxe and 12x deluxe cabinet - shear beauty. I especially liked the different mic simulations and placement for example ribbon mic simulations with proper deep low end - really done right.

Really loving it, both in sound and the simplicity of the UI.

Highly, highly recommended.

as a guitar player i like to just open an app to either practice or try out different things without open a daw so this is more a request that other might make or if any one from line 6 this software really good but because lack of standalone my goto guitar app still overloud th3 sorry line 6

The Helix Native plugin is insanely slow (10-20 seconds for turning a block on/off) and buggy on M1 Macs - CPU usage is insanely high. Not recommended for M1 Mac users.