Helix Audio Mix Live is a live mixing console for the Mac, with a smaller version for iPhone and iPad. It takes hardware inputs, audio files and generators, mixes them with EQ, sends and effects, and plays the result to your speakers, to other output devices, or into a recording. On the Mac it also has DJ decks.

Helix Audio Mix Live has a companion app, Helix Audio Mix Remote, for iPhone, iPad and the Mac. With Pro, it controls this console on the Mac from across the room, and on its own it controls Behringer X Air mixers (see Remote control below). Purchases in one app do not carry over to the other.

If this page does not answer your question, write to support@helixsolara.com.

Getting started

1. Open the app. The first launch asks for microphone access. Say yes: channel 1 is your microphone by default. If you said no, the console shows a banner with a button to the Microphone privacy pane; on the Mac, a permission granted there takes effect after you relaunch the app.
2. Press LIVE. The app launches with the engine off: the button at the top left is red and reads OFF, and every channel’s meter reads AUDIO STOPPED. Press it: it turns green, reads LIVE, and audio flows.
3. Choose sources. Each channel strip has a source button under its name. Pick a hardware input, an audio file or a tone generator, or the sampler or the ambient pad, which you play on the Pads tab.

The console

Channels. Each strip has TRIM (the device’s gain for a hardware input, a software trim otherwise), PAN, a five-band EQ, sends to the aux buses and to the FX rack, solo, mute, and a fader with its meter. The Mac has 24 channels in four banks of six, switched with the A to D buttons at the left of the console (a bank with a soloed channel shows a yellow dot); an iPad has eight and an iPhone four. The free version gives you four channels; Pro opens the rest. Double-click a knob (double-tap on iPhone and iPad) to put it back: TRIM to its default, PAN and the EQ to the center, a send to zero. On the Mac an Option-click does the same, and so does the knob’s right-click menu.

System Audio. On the Mac a channel’s source can be System Audio: what every other app is playing, a browser, Music, a call, mixed in like any input. The first time you choose it the Mac records the permission under Privacy & Security, asking you first on releases that ask; the app asks only then, never at launch. The app’s own output is left out, so the mix cannot feed back into itself. If the strip reads “System Audio (no access)”, allow it under System Settings › Privacy & Security › Screen & System Audio Recording, then relaunch; the source menu has a shortcut to that pane. Not on iPhone or iPad.

Pads. The Pads tab plays the sampler and ambient pad channels, each in a panel with its mute and fader; they are console channels too, with the strip’s EQ and sends. The sampler has eight pads, which start with a kit of built-in sounds. Tap a pad to play it over the mix; pads play over each other. The A to D buttons over the pads switch between four banks of eight, 32 sounds in all (on iPhone and iPad, A and B, 16 sounds); a pad keeps playing when you switch, and a bank with one playing shows a dot. Each pad has a play mode: One-Shot plays the whole sound once (a pad tapped again starts over), Hold plays only while you hold it, Loop starts looping on one tap and stops on the next, and Loop While Held loops while you hold it. Turn on Edit Pads (or right-click a pad on the Mac) to give a pad an audio file (up to 30 seconds) or one of the presets (an air horn, a siren, a riser, a sub drop, a laser, drum hits, a drum loop, a demo loop, and white, pink and brown noise), to change its mode, or to clear it; tap an empty pad for the same. On the Mac the keys 1 to 4 and Q to R play the pads of the bank showing, as they sit, and Z, X, C and V switch banks; change them in Settings › Pad Keys. An ambient pad has the twelve keys: tap one to fade in a soft chord in that key, another to crossfade to it, and STOP to fade out; its tone, chord, octave and fade time are under the keys. Each panel has a picker for the console channel it plays on, as a deck has; choosing another channel moves it there with its sounds or settings, and the channel it leaves becomes None. On the Mac the free version plays the sampler’s bank A and the ambient pad at its first settings (warm, root and fifth, the middle octave, a four-second fade); Pro + DJ opens banks B to D, and Pro the pad’s tone, chord, octave and fade.

Music Library. A file player’s source menu has Choose from Music Library…, and a deck’s Load… button has Music Library… under its arrow. Only songs without copy protection (DRM) can be played there: songs bought from the iTunes Store since 2009, imported from CDs, or added to Music as files. Apple Music songs are protected, even when downloaded, and so are some older iTunes purchases; they play in the Music strip instead. The first time you open the library the app says so, then asks for access to your media library (Privacy & Security › Media & Apple Music). The list shows the songs that can be played, and Show All adds the others, greyed out with the reason. On the Mac, songs kept outside your Music folder cannot be read from the library; add them with Choose Audio File… or Load…. On iPhone and iPad a chosen song is copied into the app once, so it can be played and reopened at the next launch.

Tracks. A channel playing an audio file, and not on a deck, is a track channel. Its M button becomes play and pause (a muted track keeps M until you unmute it), and its EQ knobs give way to a list of songs, TRACKS. Tap a song to play it; + Songs adds audio files or songs from your Music Library, several at once; drag a song to change the order (on iPhone and iPad, tap Edit first); to remove one, right-click it on the Mac, or press and hold or swipe it left on iPhone and iPad. The songs play one after another and start again from the top after the last. EQ… opens the channel inspector, which has the EQ and the channel’s TRIM.

Apple Music. The Music strip plays your Apple Music library beside the mix; its songs never pass through the console, so the master fader, the meters, the effects and recordings leave them out, and OFF pauses them. Press Enable Apple Music once to allow it. Playlist opens your playlists (on the Mac in the folders you keep them in, and searchable everywhere); a playlist shows its songs, to add one at a time with + or all at once with Import All, which asks, when songs are already queued, whether to replace them or add after them. Songs adds songs from a search, and the trash can clears the queue. Drag a queued song to change the order (Edit first on iPhone and iPad), and right-click it on the Mac, or press and hold or swipe it left on iPhone and iPad, to take it out of the queue.

EQ. The three knobs are the low shelf, the mid peak and the high shelf. LC and HC switch the low and high cuts in (Pro). INSPECT opens the channel inspector, where the whole response is drawn as a graph you can drag, with a row for every band’s frequency (Pro).

Aux buses (Pro) are separate mixes sent to other output devices: a headphone feed, a second room, a streaming interface. Each channel’s send knobs feed them, pre- or post-fader. The aux strip chooses the device.

The Matrix (Pro) shows every channel’s send to every bus in one grid, with A/B slots and snapshots of the whole routing.

FX Rack. Reverb and delay, fed by each channel’s FX send, returned into the master.

Master. The output device, its volume, pan, mute, and REC, which records the master bus as 24-bit WAV, AAC or Apple Lossless to a file you choose. On iPhone and iPad recordings go to the app’s folder in Files.

Sessions. The Sessions button saves the whole console under a name and recalls it later: the channels, the master, the FX rack and the aux buses, and also the DJ decks with their lists, the crossfaders, and which channels the sampler and the ambient pad are on. The console is also saved on its own as you work, and comes back at the next launch.

Devices. The Devices tab lists your audio devices with their sample rates, and the current default input and output. On the Mac the console always runs at 48 kHz: a device at another rate is converted, so AirPods switching rate when their microphone opens no longer changes the decks, files or recordings. Settings › Audio sets the I/O buffer: 64, 128, 256 (the default) or 512 frames. A smaller buffer means less delay, and a larger one helps if you hear dropouts.

Appearance. On the Mac, the switch at the right end of the header follows the system, or forces Light or Dark. On iPhone and iPad the app follows the system.

Help. The “?” at the right end of the header opens this page’s section for the tab you are on, inside the app. The Help menu has this page on the web and the DJ Guide.

Windows. File › New Window (⌘N) opens another window on the same console, so a second monitor can show a different tab: the Matrix on one, the console on the other. Every window has the tabs at the top and keeps its own choice. Closing a window never stops the mix; with every window closed the app keeps running, and ⌘N or a click on its Dock icon brings a window back.

Quitting. Hold ⌘Q for about a second and a half; a short press only shows a reminder, so a slip cannot stop the show. File › Quit quits at once.

The DJ tabs (Pro + DJ on the Mac)

On the Mac there are two DJ tabs: DJ for decks A and B, DJ 2 for decks C and D. Deck A is free in every plan, with its tempo, loops, hot cues and scratching; decks B, C and D, the crossfaders and the headphone cue are Pro + DJ. An iPad has one DJ tab, decks A and B with the mixer between them. An iPhone fits one deck at a time, so it has two: Deck A and Deck B, each with that deck’s EQ and fader and the crossfader between A and B. On iPhone and iPad the decks are free, the list opens from the button beside Load… where there is no room for it beside the platter, and the ⇧ pad after the hot cues does what Shift does on the Mac: press it, then a hot cue or loop pad, to clear it. The headphone cue needs a second output, so it is on the Mac only. A deck is a view onto one of the console’s channels. Nothing is stored twice: the deck shows a file-player channel from the console, and everything you do on the deck happens to that channel.

The channel. Each deck names one channel through its picker. Pick a file player, or any other channel, which is turned into a file player first. The channel keeps its number, name and color, and its strip on the console reads “Deck A” while it is on a deck. The channel also takes that deck’s side of its pair’s crossfader. If you move the deck to another channel, or to none, the channel it leaves stops and becomes None. The picker shows which channels other decks are using.

The list. The column at the deck’s inner edge, by the mixer and behind the platter, is its list; Load… adds files to it, several at once (the arrow beside it adds songs from your Music Library), and it scrolls where it shows. The list decides what is on the platter: the highlighted row is the loaded track, and nothing else ever is. Click a row to load that track, cued at the start and paused, as a deck loads. Clicking the highlighted row does nothing. Drag rows to reorder them, and remove one with the context menu or the Delete key. Removing the highlighted track empties the platter. A file you load onto the channel from the console strip joins the list. At launch, a file on the channel that is not in the list is taken off.

The platter. It turns at 33⅓ rpm with the file, whatever the tempo, and the row under it shows the elapsed time, the track’s name and length, and the time left. Dragging the platter scratches: the drag counts by the angle it sweeps round the spindle, so up and down on the sides and left and right across the top and bottom all work, clockwise forward. The record follows your hand in either direction, holds still when your hand stops, and goes back to what it was doing, playing or paused, when you let go. With the engine off, a drag still moves the record, silently. With keyboard navigation on (System Settings › Keyboard), click the platter or Tab to it, and the left and right arrows jog it: paused, each press steps the record 1/20 second, 1/100 with Option, a beat with Shift; playing, hold one to bend the tempo 8%, 2% with Option, or press Shift and one to jump a beat.

Transport and pads. PLAY and PAUSE. CUE and the hot cue pads flash when pressed, from the pad or its key. CUE works as on a CDJ: while the record plays, a press returns it to the cue point and pauses; while it is paused somewhere else, a press sets the cue point there; while it is paused on the cue point, holding CUE plays from it until you let go, then returns. A new track’s cue point is its start, and the point shows on the waveform as a marker hanging from the top edge. PLAY at the end of a file that does not loop starts from the top. The four numbered pads are hot cues, and they behave like CUE: the first press of an empty one marks where the record is; after that, while the record plays a press jumps there and plays on, and while it is paused holding the pad plays from there until you let go, then returns. Shift-click a pad to clear it, or hold Shift and press its key; right-click works too. A plain hold never clears, so a cue cannot be lost by lingering on it. IN marks a loop’s start, OUT marks its end and starts looping, LOOP switches the loop on and off, and a new IN after the OUT drops the OUT. Shift-click any of the three, or hold Shift and press its key, to clear the loop; right-click works too. Cues and loops belong to the track and are forgotten when another loads. S and M are the channel’s solo and mute.

Keys. The pads have keys, and a key held behaves like a pad held. Out of the box the left deck of a tab is on the left of the keyboard: Q is PLAY, W is CUE, E is IN, R is OUT, T is LOOP, 1 to 4 are the hot cues, and A and S are the bend buttons. The right deck is the same keys five to the right: Y, U, I, O, P for the transport and loop, 7 to 0 for the hot cues, K and L for bend. Settings (in the app menu, or ⌘,) has a Deck Keys pane to change them: click a pad’s key and press the one you want (Delete clears it, Escape keeps it); a key already on another pad moves to the one you clicked. Single keys only, no modifiers, and the same set serves both DJ tabs. Reset to Defaults puts the layout above back. The keys work whatever was last clicked on the tab, and stand aside for a modifier key, a sheet, another window, and any text you are editing. Each pad’s tooltip names its key.

BPM. When a track loads, the deck reads its tempo from the file and shows it above TEMPO, at the speed the track is playing: move the tempo fader and the number follows. It reads “…” for the few seconds the file is being analyzed and “—” when there is no beat to find.

SYNC and beat loops. Once both decks know their tempo, SYNC sets this deck’s tempo fader so it plays at the other deck’s speed and moves the record by up to half a beat so the beats fall together. It matches once, when you press it; it does not hold the decks locked, so check the beat after a while. The 1, 2, 4 and 8 pads loop that many beats from the beat the record is on and switch the loop on; press the lit pad again to stop. Right-click LOOP to halve or double a loop.

Tempo. The vertical fader runs the file up to 50% slower or faster, faster towards the bottom as on a turntable; double-click it for zero. Holding − or + bends the speed by 8% for lining a beat up. Both change the pitch with the speed, as a turntable does, unless KEY under BEND is on: key lock keeps the pitch where it is whatever the speed, at the cost of a little latency, so the sound trails the platter by a hair.

The mixer between the decks. Per deck: the three EQ bands with the inspector, CUE, and the fader with its meter, the same values the console strip shows (TRIM stays on the console strip). The crossfader fades between the pair’s two channels; double-click it for the center. Its curve is Smooth, a steady blend, or Cut, which keeps both decks at full level and cuts each off only in the last tenth of the travel, for scratching; REV swaps its ends, and the labels at the ends swap with them. CUE OUT picks which aux bus is the headphone feed: a deck with CUE lit goes to it before the fader at full level, whatever the fader and crossfader do, unless the deck is muted. The aux bus’s own strip chooses the headphone device. CUE MIX under it is the headphone blend: at CUE you hear only the cued decks, at MASTER only what the room hears, and in between both, so you can line a deck up against the room before fading it in; the slider is grayed until a cue output is chosen. The master fader, meter and MUTE at the bottom are the console’s.

What is saved. The deck assignments, lists, selections and crossfader positions, curves and reverse switches are saved with the console and in each session. Cues, loops and tempo are saved with the channel.

Remote control (Pro, on the Mac)

Turning it on. With Pro or Pro + DJ on the Mac, open Settings (Command-comma) › Remote and turn on Allow Remote Control. It is off until you do, and while it is off the Mac neither shows itself on the network nor accepts a connection. The pane also sets the name remotes see, which is the Mac’s own name until you change it.

Pairing a remote. Open Helix Audio Mix Remote on an iPhone, iPad or another Mac on the same network, choose Add Device › Mac, and press PAIR beside this Mac. The Mac shows a six-digit code with Allow and Deny; the remote shows three codes. Choose the one the Mac shows on the remote, then click Allow on the Mac. A paired remote comes back later without a code; Settings › Remote lists the paired remotes, each with Forget, and while one is connected the header shows a remote symbol you can click to open that pane.

What a remote can do. It moves the console as you would at the Mac: faders, mutes, solos, knobs, the EQ, sends, the master, LIVE, the decks, the pads and sessions. It records too, into a folder you choose once under Recordings from a Remote in the same pane. Files stay on the Mac: a remote plays the songs already in a deck’s list or on a pad, and cannot open new ones.

Behringer X Air mixers. Helix Audio Mix Remote also controls a Behringer X Air mixer (XR12, XR16, XR18) directly, with no Mac and no Pro: choose Add Device › X Air, and it finds the mixers on the network or adds one by its IP address. A mixer is not paired. An X Air takes commands from any device on its network without a code, as it does from Behringer’s own apps, so keep the mixer on a network only your team uses. Helix Audio Mix Remote is not made or endorsed by Behringer.

A remote cannot find the Mac. Check that both are on the same network and that Allow Remote Control is on. If Settings › Remote says the Mac is not being found, allow Helix Audio Mix Live in System Settings › Privacy & Security › Local Network.

Plans and purchases

Free gives you four channels, the console and deck A. Pro opens all the channels, the aux buses, the Matrix, the EQ cuts and the channel inspector. Pro + DJ adds decks B, C and D, the crossfaders and the headphone cue.

Pro and Pro + DJ are subscriptions, monthly or yearly, with a free trial on the yearly plans. Pro + DJ is also sold as a one-time lifetime purchase. The upgrade sheet opens from any locked feature (the Unlock button on a locked channel, the Matrix or a DJ tab; Unlock Pro… on the Pads tab; INSPECT; the LC and HC switches), and on the Mac at any time from Helix Audio Mix Live Plans… in the app menu, which also shows the plan you have. Moving from Pro to Pro + DJ is an upgrade in the sheet; Apple charges the difference for the rest of the period.

Subscriptions are billed to your Apple Account and managed there: to change or cancel, use Manage Subscription on the upgrade sheet, or open System Settings › Apple Account › Subscriptions on the Mac. A canceled plan runs to the end of the period you paid for. Refunds are handled by Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com.

Restore Purchases on the upgrade sheet brings a purchase to another Mac signed in to the same Apple Account, or back after a reinstall.

iPhone and iPad have no paid tiers; every feature that exists there is free, the DJ decks included.

Troubleshooting

No sound. Check that the header reads LIVE, not OFF. Then check the channel’s mute and the master mute, the fader, and, for a hardware input, that its device is connected: a strip whose device is unplugged reads “(not connected)” and stays silent until the device returns.

The microphone strip is silent. Microphone access was refused. Use the banner’s button, or System Settings › Privacy & Security › Microphone, then relaunch the app.

Bluetooth headphones. Opening a Bluetooth headset’s microphone switches it to its headset profile, which lowers its sound quality; that is how Bluetooth audio works. Use a different input if you want the headphones at full quality.

A deck’s controls do nothing. The deck has no channel: choose one in the picker, or press Load…, which makes one for you.

“Not available from the App Store right now”. The App Store could not be reached, or the product is not on sale in your region yet. The message includes what the App Store answered. Try again later.

Something else. Write to support@helixsolara.com with what you did, what you expected, and what happened. The app’s version is in the About panel.