PaulBateman wrote:

 

.. if they didnt, its nowhere near close enough to even be announced...

i'm sure the announcement had a little something to do with the big trade show in which it was announced...

they want to keep retailers excited about line6 products...

if not for the trade show, i'm certain they would have just released it when it was done.. and announced it THEN.

they also have a big european trade show, where they announce stuff as well...

its all about marketing and promoting their products...

the fixes and features that are announced are for us users...

the announcement itself is more for the industry.

i am curious about 2.0, but personally, i don't really care for updates anymore. well, of course, i still do, to an extent, as long as they concern certain improvements to units topogy, software, or whatever it's called. etc. but not for larger herd of amps. really. when i play in a cover band,  i use 4 amp models at most. hell, i can probably cover 85% of tunes with just a bassman model and a couple of pedals. after the first firmware update, HD500 is good enough, so in my humble opinion, updates are good and welcome, but it's basically fine tuning. 

in addition to this, i believe L6 are really busy now fixing the squealing issue, as theoretically this may end up in court in case some kid fries an ear playing through the thing. hell, even heavily soiled underwear after this unfortunate accident may force some users to go  visit a lawyer as they SHOULD be also worrying about internal clipping and x-over distrortion emulation other then that, i wouuld suggest that anyone desiring (or i'd rather say, expectiong)  a major improvement upon HD v 1.4 series should rather wait for a new product, not for FW ver 2.0.

As a guitar player, first and foremost, the quality of the guitar amps simulated is the epicenter, for me, outside the computer world, there are only 3 houses leading the digital amp world, Line 6, Fractal Audio and Roland. But now there is a new comer that has really shaken the grounds of simulated tone and that is Kemper Profiling Amp.

I have been a long long time Line6 supporter, buying many products and keeping them too, but i really got disappointed when i bought my POD HD500, just a few amps, a bit less intuitive coming from the X3 platform, yeah, sound quality is better, but, compared to AXE FX it still lacks a lot.

Now the kemper is here and it has a sound like no other, really, i have not heard any other piece of outboard or software that sounds as real and as good. It has now over 500 amps to choose from, 200!!!! included when you purchase it and the rest as a FREE share format in the forums.

Fractal audio has taken notice and as you may know they are testing a new, free! feature that lets its users do sampling of real amps just like kemper does...why did they do this???  fear of market share loss... simple, every body is discovering that Kemper's quality is far beyond anything offered before it, so now i ask, what will Line6 do?

The problem i see is that Line6 is afraid to offer as true power processing monster that could deliver unprecedented tone, yeah it will cost maybe over 1K, but guess what, people are willing to pay for better sound!!

Kemper is $1,850, way less then AXE FXII and far better sounding.....Line6 was the pioneer of simulated amp sounds and i would love to have a product from Line6 that could really deliver what is expected in todays Amp guitar realism. Unfortunately the HD series is lacking the most important factor, tone, not that they sound bad at all, but sounding just like a real amp is todays requirements and many young guitar players are tuning their ears to find this tones.

So, i still have all my Line6 investments, but this HD500 could very well be my last purchased item.