Oh man, at the risk of digging a super deep rabbit hole, it all depends on your definition of "good." If good means "Hey, it's perfect for boomer bends in my circa-'00 dad rock garage band full of Dumble sycophant amp builders," yeah, POD probably wouldn't have passed muster.
If good means "this sounds cool as hell I'm gonna record an genre-defying record that sells millions of copies," then yeah, along with a lot of other gear from that time period, it did, repeatedly.
But I get ya'. To this day, if I see a Reddit image with B£#®!n&£® gear in it, I downvote it.
Love your enthusiasm
.
People recorded many "genre-defying records" using LP records and analog, but that doesn't mean those methods would hold up to the cork sniffers today :).
Still, there is no debating that Line 6 was THE leader into digital amp technology. I think that just about everybody I know (and myself) owned one at one time or another. Super hard to argue with the sales numbers!
I was happy with my Kemper but I couldn’t capture dirt /fuzz pedals independently and the one time I tried to capture my 7w amp, it did a bloody awful job of it. Just ‘one of those amps’ as I enjoyed lots of other people’s profiles on there.
Proxy days from release allowed me to do both of those things and use them together…. I can still do a better capture of the amp (I just chose boringly obvious dial settings so I could see if it could actually get close rather than dialing in carefully first) but I’m more than happy with this first attempt - it has the characteristics of the original as it was set.
Exciting though this is, I’ve been sidelined by just how much I’m loving the Agoura Matchless. Not just sound quality but tweaking so easily in focus view - it’s compellingly awesome (for my taste preferences). As much as I’m looking forward to trying rare amps via proxy (which makes sense workflow-wise because of my Kemper history) I’m absolutely a fan of interacting with the controls of an amp like the Matchless (and using focus) vs choosing captures. Because of where I came from, I didn’t see that coming but here we are. I just find it easier to dial in the amp vs choosing another capture.
I think that Proxy is much closer to "perfect" than Kemper was out the gate; but the real test (as you point out) is tweakability!
The biggest advantage of digital amps IMO is the enormous library you have to draw on AND the ability to make one of those patches your own through tweaking.
I haven't the vaguest idea if my Morgan AC20 profile is accurate. Shoot, I had never even heard of the amp before. All I know is that my ears say it is a great sound.
To those who argue that a single number cannot summarize the complex behavior of a cloned amp, I would ask: what is the alternative? Endless debate about what sounds better? And if you already have a well-established personal taste, then you probably do not need advice or guidance from others in the first place.
I think the weighting of factors depends on how you use the device; however, for someone like me that gigs, here are my metrics and weighting (1-5 with 1 being of primary importance, and 5 being the least importance):
- Large library of good tones to pick from {3}
- Great raw amp tone {4}
- Ability to tweak tones to my setup and sonic preferences {4}
- Great reverbs and delays {5}
- Build quality and reliability across firmware releases {5}
- Integration features for live performances {5}
- Live usability (foot controller, readability, integration,etc) {5}
- Most accurate capture {1}
- Great GUI {2}
- Great PC Editor {4}
I think Stadium does VERY well in this evaluation. But to better answer your question, I think you need to evaluate WAY more than the accuracy of the capture. I laugh at any current NAM hardware as they simple don't fare well at all in my comparisons using this set of metrics. For someone else, the capture accuracy might be ALL that matters with all other factors listed above being a {1}.
I really wish that on-line reviewers would start using something like this so people could get a better overall view of the device to their use case.
Take an example of an EV vs Gas vehicle. Everyone focuses on range anxiety. They miss things like convince of charging at home. Cost savings of charging at home, lower vehicle maintenance, and in-garage automatic warm up or cool down prior to morning drive.
I guess it's just human to focus on the easy 1 number.
