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Hd500x?


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Maybe this is why they are saying the regular ol' HD500 is discontinuing. Hopefully there is an upgrade path for us HD500 owners if this turns out to be true. 

That would be great but I doubt it would happen; if that's really an hardware upgrade as it seems to be, I guess they could only offer a discount to the existing users, but at that point I'm sure we could make a better deal by selling the HD500 on the used market.

 

Anyway if there are no improvements in the modeling technology or at least the chance to load external IRs, I don't think I'll upgrade. I pretty much learned to live with the other drawbacks of the unit...those are the only changes that would make a real difference for me.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm at the What's Next conference in London right now, and they've just demoed it. The HD500X is going to be a hardware upgrade, new foot switches with improved surrounds and an improved DSP unit which will allow for more effects to be used simultaneously.

The price will be the same, so it looks to be a complete replacement for the ordinary 500

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I'm at the What's Next conference in London right now, and they've just demoed it. The HD500X is going to be a hardware upgrade, new foot switches with improved surrounds and an improved DSP unit which will allow for more effects to be used simultaneously.

The price will be the same, so it looks to be a complete replacement for the ordinary 500

so the price for the 500 is coming down

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I'm at the What's Next conference in London right now, and they've just demoed it. The HD500X is going to be a hardware upgrade, new foot switches with improved surrounds and an improved DSP unit which will allow for more effects to be used simultaneously.

The price will be the same, so it looks to be a complete replacement for the ordinary 500

any interesting feature apart from the DSP power enhancement and new switches?

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Any idea if there will be an upgraded POD HD PRO as well?   I'm still sitting on a backorder of that and have been considering canceling the order given this possibility.  

the pro usually comes sometime after the pedal. i'd hold off if you can

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I don't know who invented patience, but whoever it was never gave me any ;)   5 weeks on backorder so far, now this change, no clue if the PRO will be upgrade soon because Line 6 wont tell us anything and if I have to wait months I don't know if I will be able to keep this cash in my pants.   I'm stir crazy and the doc said if I don't snap out if it, he might have to sedate me.    I've even gone to an extreme of rationalizing if I sold my first born, ate Ramen noodles for  a month, I might just order the Axe FX II and be broke and happy.   LOL.      

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so the price for the 500 is coming down

Paul Foeckler didn't say specifically, but I'm assuming if the price of the 500X is going to be the same as the current 500, then either the 500's price will come down, or it will be discontinued

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any interesting feature apart from the DSP power enhancement and new switches?

Not that I could see, you should only have to wait one more week for the full specs guys, Marcus Ryle said it should be officially announced by the end of next week, if not the week after for sure.

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From a product marketing point of view a new HD is unlikely as the existing units are already up there with Fractal's Axe II and the Kemper's Profiling Amp. The Axe II beats it the FX dept and the KPA beats it in the Amp modeling if you stick with the original profile'd amp. 

 

All of these are not better tone wise than the real amps in a real room mic'd with a real mic thru a real vintage pre amp and real FX pedals in the chain.

 

Each of these multi FX units implants their own sonic signature and it is this that one tires of. (After a year I am still happy) It is true too for the same real amp and same pre amp and mic, you tire the sound after a while. 

 

Variety of tone inspires

 

If a new HD model did come out with even more advanced modeling and FX and unlimited or a huge looper memory as well as the   hardware upgrades mentioned  it would be worth upgrading to if Line 6 keeps the cost around the same amount. It would be successful

 

I really don't think just a hardware/memory upgrade is going to be as successful but as a model replacement it'll continue to entice the next up  coming over what Roland/Boss/Zoom/Digitech put out unless they outdo in the modelling dept.

It is a possibility to stay on top of the game.

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Just want to remind everyone that all the major concerns and complaints people have with the HD500 (frequencies as percentages, lollipop EQs, etc see all the relevant threads) are NOT addressed by the release of the HD500X.

if those are the final specs, I definitely agree...this seems like a good but partial fix of the old unit; at this point I would have waited some more time and released a brand new POD generation

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I can understand why they've done what they've done; it's exactly the same as when Boss replaced the RC20 with the RC20XL.

 

Processors and memory get so much cheaper so quickly that within a couple of years of releasing a unit, it actually becomes cheaper to manufacture with a faster processor or more memory as the older (in decreasing demand) parts lose the benefit of economies of scale.

 

So what do you do? Make a few basic cosmetic changes and flog the new, improved version for the same price.

 

I can't imagine many 500 owners (myself included) will see it as enough to upgrade, but it'll keep the product fresh for new customers - I bought an RC20XL when they came out, as I'd always seen the limited memory in the RC20 as a bit of a weakness so I hadn't bought one.

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if those are the final specs, I definitely agree...this seems like a good but partial fix of the old unit; at this point I would have waited some more time and released a brand new POD generation

 

The really disappointing thing about this is that, if they had plans to fix things like the EQs in the near future, you'd have thought they would've got it sorted in time to be on the spec sheet for the 500x.

 

This suggests to me that a fix is probably not forthcoming. Maybe it's time to have a closer look at the 11R.

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In fairness the HD500 has been around a longer than a year, and the X looks more like a minor hardware upgrade. I would hope that this will extend the life of the HD series, with more firmware features in the pipeline. 

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what I hope is that there will still be some firmware updates and support for our HD500, frankly I can live with the few hardware limits as I did till now

 

I'm pretty sure they can still do something to optimize resources..

for example, giving the ability to completely disable the looper, which at present is always ready and available using continually precious resources that might be available for other things

 

That would be really good. Freeing up resources from something I never use. It shouldn't be done globally though, but on a per-preset basis, otherwise, turning the looper back on and trying to call up a heavily loaded preset would result in failure to load due to lack of free resources.

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The problem with turning the looper block on and off is that the way that it's set up is that it exists outside of the preset. So even if there was some way you could turn it off globally to free up DSP resources, it could cause problems with presets that were near the DSP limit when it was turned back on.

 

I actually would be surprised if the looper used much in the way of DSP resources, though. It's not really doing anything that would be processor intensive.

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Several of my major problems with the unit don't appear to be addressed (we'll see, once an official announcement is made).  There are some technical issues that Line 6 seems to refuse to acknowledge (see: anything Meambobbo has ever written on here) that bug the crap out of me.  I'm keeping my HD500 and considering non-Line-6 upgrade paths....I know that's a controversial topic, and I don't wanna get into it, I'm just saying that I'd rather stay Line 6, if only they fixed some glaring problems.

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I don't think that disabling the looper would return much if anything in the way of useful DSP. The looper uses memory - not processing power. When recording it simply writes the output of the DSP processing (or the dry input in PRE position) to its internal memory - the recording is a very light processing load. On playback it simply routes an existing audio stream directly to the device outputs (if recorded in POST mode), or to the signal chain input for DSP processing (if recorded in PRE mode). On playback in POST mode It is analogous to the AUX input but a little faster and less demanding because it recalls the audio stream from its internal memory rather than from the external media. On playback in PRE mode the audio stream is simply added to the physical inputs - the DSP happens as the input signal goes through the chain.

 

Neither the record or playback activities of the looper use a noticeable amount of DSP, imho.

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probably future developments will be available only for the new hardware coming out

 

As such it sounds like there's very little difference between the 500 and 500x, so I would imagine (or at least hope) that any future firmware upgrades would still apply to the 500 as well.

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As such it sounds like there's very little difference between the 500 and 500x, so I would imagine (or at least hope) that any future firmware upgrades would still apply to the 500 as well.

So I hope too

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video talks alot about the led and the switches upgrade

increased processing power

Using the switches for 8 switches assigned to FX and getting out of a patch by bank change.

The dream rig sounds good

Okay, the stereo Amps and FX modeling is impressive.

The unexpanded looper is a big dissappointment.

 

Alright, now it seems much of a muchness. The memory or processor upgrade.

I wonder if it can be done on an exisiting 500? 

I bet it can be!

But for me I rarely go wild on the FX but 

hearing it I'd like to be able to.

Man shoulda sold my HD 500 when I had the chance.

Now it'll take a price dive so good time to get one on the used market.

I'll just have to keep it.

Thanks Line 6 for a gentle upgraded version so as not to break my 1year in HD500 purchase heart.

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As such it sounds like there's very little difference between the 500 and 500x, so I would imagine (or at least hope) that any future firmware upgrades would still apply to the 500 as well.

hope it too.

 

Glad to see better footswitches and more DSP power, but honestly I still can't see a real reason to upgrade.

In my opinion, even if it's an update to the previous unit, this version seems much more addressed to new users than old ones, which is completely ok from a marketing point of view. To me they should just be careful about the way they'll handle all the HD500 users regarding firmwares and stuff like that, because if they cut out all the existing owners from future upgrades in the long run they could hypothetically risk to lose more users than the ones they'll hopefully gain with this new product. Just my 2 cents anyway, I always wish the best and expect great things from Line 6! ;)

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My bet is the X model is an interim release mainly like you say to keep the new buyers purchasing. 

My guess is with even newer processing power there will be an even better model released in about a year or the next NAMM or two.

It'll be everything we have hoped for and more and be the model to own surpassing all other's in multiFX stakes.

Aside from all that has ever been desired in a new model the

next will have a built in multi track recorder operated via the current looper controls and the length of a single song is an amazing 45mins of total time.

Audio files can be imported and exported via usb or the new high capacity usb sticks from the inbuilt upgradable flash drive. Slots for cabinet IRs and the the means to IR any amp or chain of FX similar to profiling.

Totally possible and hopefully still in a similar cost ballpark.

 

Because of the new model being developed there will be an early upgrade for current models as part of the development. We get to test the next prior to its higher definition modeling.

 

Okay, a lot of wishfull thinking and you only get what you ask for so we better ask what we want in a friendly supportive non threatening manner over on the feedback page and we will be successful!

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