I recently ran the hx stomp through the cortex cabs and it was kind of sad moment. I really wanted it to sound good but it painfully didn’t. It wasn’t god aweful but it was easy for me to tell which one sounded, felt, reacted, and easy to dial better.
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There is/was an issue with having to “tame” the high end on Helix presets. If it weren’t for “Jason Sadites” excellent YT videos (look him up it’s worth your time), I would not have kept my Helix as long as I did.
Throwing my two cents into this discussion, I have been a massive Line 6 fanboy for years. Before I owned the Helix, I owned the HD500x and to this day, that thing is still going despite the beating it has taken. I bought the Helix on launch and my first observations were that it sounded like my HD500x, it just had more options, support for IR’s, etc. The Helix looks great, but I remember being kind of disappointed a lot of the amp models sounded like my HD500x. The added DSP was a welcome addition though.
Line 6 over the years has turned the Helix into a refined product. Several artists use the Helix including the guitarists in Jinjer and Dustin Kensrue of Thrice. They’re all getting solid sounds out of the Helix. Personally, I always struggled to dial my Helix in. For the Helix to sound good, you have to buy IR’s and you’re continually tweaking your sound.
I sold my Helix and got the Quad Cortex instead. It might not be as fully featured (yet), but I have to spend less time dialling in my QC than I ever did with the Helix. I was blown away by how good the stock presets for the QC sounded. It sounds more natural, how everything responds and decays. Decent amp selection, growing cloud library of captures and presets. I have my ideal setup for the next few years, Neural hit it out of the park.
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This is inherently the problem with Helix in my opinion tho. You have to watch 30 hours of Jason Sadites video’s giving you tips on setting up compressors and split crossover eq’s etc etc to get what you want. On the QC you just put a few things together and they sound good. At least for me.
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The QC is missing some features for sure but I think you’ll find they might come all at once in an update (hopefully sooner). I think you have to take into account that the price of the unit is going up so you basically haven’t paid for future features which other people will. I think that in terms of updates there is a difference between improvements / features and actual issues.
My issue is how frequently they update the unit for known issues. The recording bit crushing thing you get with windows makes it unusable basically as a recording interface which might be the primary reason why some people might purchase the unit in the first place. Been waiting 3 or 4 months now and they’ve known about the issue for so long. Every update that comes out I get excited that it’s been fixed and nada. In the last forum thread they acknowledged the issue and said “that some users are experiencing” yet I think anyone with windows would experience this and it should be so easy for them to test it. Then they just shut down the forum topic after tons of people are having the issue and bring out an update which only fixes the problem for Mac users. Anyway, just annoying and I’ve seen similar posts on Reddit.
The bitcrush type of sound you are hearing isn’t experienced by everyone (including me) but I have heard others indicate to disable safe mode and tweak sample size on the NDSP ASIO driver control app to resolve. I personally have never experienced any issues using as USB interface. I play backing tracks, record dry, wet and re-amp with ease and the QC replaced several components in the studio for recording.
less time tweaking, more time enjoying.
Helix has a lot more features, its more mature, its from 2015 so it makes sense.
Give time to the Qc and more features will be added
If you really want a Helix, just wait about six more months, time for Helix-2 to be announced. You will be able to pick one up real cheap then… 
Hah, good point. After the last Helix firmware release Line 6 just said next they would be “working on their modeling approach” or something like that. They are a smart company and probably very aware that they are falling behind in the tone department for premium modelers. I fully expect a new platform, and it will probably not run on my HX Stomp… But that’s just speculation.
If u want more customization go for the helix, if u want a better sound go for the quad cortex, from a owner of both units, cheers.
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