With regards to Line 6, I think that competition is already on. From my own personal experience with the TMP, out of the box, I think the TMP already sounds better than the Helix. I don't like the Helix effects and with a Tonex pedal in the loop of the TMP, it beats it hands down. Albeit, I think the TMP compressor is not very good.
I think the Helix, especially the LT and Stomp, are still very favorably priced in comparison to other units on the market. Helix Floor, QC and TMP are roughly in the same price category even in the EU, but Helix Floor is still the most "all in one" out of those with its integrated expression pedal, more I/O and footswitching. That said, the QC still seems to be the top seller.
I fully expect that next gen Line6 won't be just a "QC/TMP made by Line6". I think they will actually be far more forward thinking, possible making the QC and TMP feel like the "Nintendo Wii U of modelers" - devices in between the old and new generation.
The other major players are a different story and are purely speculation on my part as below.
-I'm not sure how long Cliff will stay interested with retirement as a possibility. I've sensed his frustration on the Fractal forum and eventually he has to relax sometime. Deep down I've been wondering why he's been blasting so many firmware versions in the past 6 months. Is this the end game? I have no idea.
To me Cliff seems like the kind of guy who has the most fun when he's working on amp simulation and effects. It's like a puzzle he has to solve. I can totally understand that, because that's kind of the part that I love about my own programming work - there's a lot of satisfaction to be had when you figure out a hard problem or manage to make something you feel works great and is elegant code.
He's probably not too far off from having the amp modeling stuff pretty much nailed, and the next gen processing power might get there. Maybe next gen will also have him make fuzz effects that are dead on accurate to their analog counterparts, including interacting with your guitar pickup impedance.
He's not the guy who cares so much about how the unit is to operate, how easy Axe-Edit is to use etc. That's why I've been saying Fractal needs designers and developers who are as passionate about usability as Cliff is about modeling.
Maybe developing on the Axe-Fx 3 still allows him to focus most on the actual algorithms without worrying about architecture or UI. Then they can figure out how to port that to a new architecture that is probably in development for the next gen units because they probably want things like having various switches and channels all in one model instead of spread to several different models. I'm sure there will be a ton of Axe-Fx 3 code behind the scenes on the Axe-Fx 4.
-Doug Castro's head, as far as I've seen, has never really been in the game. Early on he was quoted that if he had to do it all over again he wasn't sure he would release a modeler at all, not really words of encouragement. Perhaps he can sell the company off or be a silent owner but where is the goal line for NDSP? All of this reminds me of a Lee Anderton video where Christoph Kemper was plugging a carrying case. Christoph was quite relaxed and satisfied with his product even though it was about 9 years old. I have a lot of respect for Christoph. He put out a fantastic product and for the most part has enjoyed quite a ride with minimal adjustments.
Doug Castro is now probably purely business management and not involved in day to day development operations at all. His days are probably built around figuring out how to make the company more valuable, possibly work with parts supply chain management etc. NeuralDSP appears from time to time in Finnish business magazine articles and the people interviewed tend to be Doug Castro or Francisco Cresp.
The end goal may be the same as many tech startups: get bought by a bigger player, and the top brass get a good payday and people who joined early and own company stock get a decent payoff as well. But with Fender making their own competing product, maybe the brands that might buy NDSP could be e.g Gibson or Zound (who own Marshall).
IMO Christoph Kemper's problem is that he's too happy to sit on his laurels and believe in the superiority of his solution. It took 10 years to get USB audio support on Kemper, to the point people thought the hardware was not there. Similarly the Liquid Profiling seems like something he's experimented with but didn't want to push out unless there was competition.
Kemper Stage and Player are both products that were released years after they should have been, so both feel dated right on release. I imagine they would be far more popular if Stage came out in 2017 instead of 2019, or Player in 2020 instead of late 2023. At this rate, the "Kemper 2" will release in 2028 when everyone else is already ahead of whatever Christoph's idea of a "Kemper 2" might look like if they started developing it in 2024.
