So you bought a Helix Stadium and now you want to record. Maybe for a church worship set, maybe for your own stuff. Either way, the other audio interface can go back in the cupboard.
The Stadium is a full USB-C audio interface. Eight in, eight out, straight into your DAW over one cable. No analog splitting, no second box, no clock sync headaches.
I’ve built a Reaper template so you don’t have to wire any of this up yourself. Download it here, open it, and the tracks are already there and routed. The rest of this post is me explaining what each track does, so you’re not blindly trusting a file off the internet.
Record the wet and the dry at the same time
The one thing I’d never skip is recording the wet and the dry signal in the same take. When you play a part through the Stadium it can capture two versions of it at once. The wet signal is your full processed tone, amp and cab and effects, everything you hear. The dry signal is the raw guitar off the pickups, before any of that touches it.
Record both, every time.
The wet take is the tone you committed to on the day, and that’s worth keeping. It felt right in the moment and you can build the song around it. The dry take is the one that saves you later. It’s the performance with none of the tone baked in, so as long as that clean signal is sitting on its own track, the notes you played are safe and the tone is something you can still change your mind about.
If you only record the wet signal and it turns out wrong in the mix, your only fix is to play the part again. Record the dry alongside it and the performance and the tone stop being the same decision.
How the Stadium splits the signal
The Stadium sends both signals down the one USB cable. USB 1/2 carries your processed stereo tone, straight off the Output block exactly as you hear it. USB 7 and USB 8 are the dry taps, pulling your raw signal before any processing. You pick the source for each in Global Settings > Ins/Outs under Re-amp Src.
In the template the wet tone records to a stereo track from USB 1/2, and the dry DI records to a mono track from USB 7. Both arm together, so you play once and walk away with both.
Reamping
Tracking that dry signal pays off when you reamp. Reamping is sending a recorded dry guitar back out through an amp or modeller and capturing a fresh tone from it, and the Stadium does it internally. No reamp box, no repatching cables.
Say it’s three weeks after the session. The mix is coming together and the rhythm guitar is too bright, fighting the vocal. On a wet-only recording you’d be setting up to retrack the whole thing. Instead you take the dry DI track, send its output back to the Stadium, load a different amp and cab, and hit play. The Stadium processes the dry signal in real time and you hear the new tone sitting in the full mix. Nudge it until it works, then record the result to a fresh track.
You never picked the guitar up. You just auditioned a different rig against a take you already had, and you can do that as many times as you like. A different amp for the chorus, cleaner verses, a reverb-soaked bridge, all from the same dry track. The Line 6 manual has the exact routing if you want to follow along.
Computer setup
On a Mac there’s no driver to install. Plug the Stadium into a USB-C port, skip the hub, and it turns up as a Core Audio device at 48kHz, 24-bit. Select it in Reaper and you’re going.
Windows is one extra job. Install the Line 6 Helix Stadium ASIO driver so you get proper low-latency 8-in, 8-out, then point Reaper at it in your audio preferences.
The two settings the template can’t set for you
The template comes with the tracks, inputs, monitoring and master routing already done. Two things it can’t set for you, though, because they live outside the project file.
The first is in Reaper. Go to Preferences > Audio > Device, select the Stadium, and turn on all 8 input channels. Reaper has a habit of enabling only the first stereo pair, and if 7 and 8 are off, your DI and vocal tracks show no input and you’ll swear something’s broken. Nothing is. The channels are just switched off.
The second is on the Stadium itself. Set Re-amp Src (USB 7) to Instrument 1 so USB 7 actually carries your dry guitar, and if you’re recording vocals, set Re-amp Src (USB 8) to Mic. Do both once and the template lines up with the hardware.
Monitoring and click without latency
Everything routes back through the Stadium for monitoring. The template sends both guitar tracks and the Master out to USB 1/2, so plug your headphones into the Stadium’s Phones output and your recorded tracks, the click and any scratch guides all come back there.
Your live guitar you hear through the Stadium’s own hardware monitoring, which never goes near the computer, so there’s no latency on what you’re actually playing. That’s also why software monitoring is turned off on the record tracks in the template, and you want to leave it off. Switch it on and you’ll hear your guitar twice, slightly out of time with itself, and it sounds awful.
The metronome routes to the Master by default, so with the Master going to USB 1/2 the click is already in your phones. If it gets buried under the band, push the metronome volume up.
Vocals go through the same box
You don’t need a separate interface for vocals either. The Stadium has an XLR mic input round the back with switchable 48V phantom and up to 60dB of gain, all set in Global Settings > Ins/Outs. Set Re-amp Src (USB 8) to Mic and record the dry vocal off USB 8. The template already has a vocal track pointed at that input, disarmed and waiting for when you need it.
Drums go in as MIDI
If you’ve got an electronic kit like a Roland TD-17, don’t run its audio through the Helix. Plug the kit into your Mac over USB and use it to trigger EZ Drummer 3 instead. You’re recording MIDI rather than audio, which means you can fix a flammed hit, swap the entire kit, or remix the drums long after the take’s done. For a worship recording that’s worth a lot more than the module’s built-in sounds.
The template has a MIDI track set to receive from all inputs, so drop EZ Drummer 3 on it as a plugin and you’re set. Guitars and vocals go through the Stadium, the kit talks to the drum plugin, and they keep out of each other’s way.
Grab the template
Download the Reaper template here. Turn on your 8 input channels, set the two Re-amp Src options on the Stadium, and you’ve got a session ready for wet and dry guitar, vocals, click and drums. Set the tempo for each song and start tracking.