I don't disagree with you of course but I have heard excellent recordings done with PODS.
The sound engineers from these good POD recordings must have been masters in what they are doing. 
I am not saying that the sound would not be good once they are post-processed correctly.
I much prefer to have a very good base to start with and minimize post at least for the core sound I'm trying to get across.
Display MoreWow... I have HD500 for midi control with KPA or backup if i'm having troubles with KPA and need to send it,
I hope i'll never have to play again on that Pod , differences with KPA are amazing but even without compare , that pod HD is the worse digital unit i've ever played.. No dynamics , no definition , nothing.
Oh yes one thing , very nice midi controller, that's it.
Probably because you have never played the original POD, POD 2.0, Pod XT, Pod X3 and Behringer V-Amps 
By the way, my opinion having each of the units i have mentioned, plus the HD and obviously the Kemper: Pod HD has some nice sounds, which can be used in specific situations (Clean and crunch are ok, Lead and heavy lead are terrible IMHO).
But don't ask it to be a good reproduction of a specific amp since it fails. And that's where other very good modellers fail too, like the FAS 1st gen that i have owned.
KPA is just in another league in amp reproduction.
Full stop.
I did,
And that's probably why i'm so negative with POD HD 
Huh. Very odd. I found he HD500 to have some excellent tones available and acceptable dynamic response, I just thought it as very hard to get them. I've since sold it but I do plug up my GSP1101 once in a while and the difference for most tones is not night and day, more of a small hop than giant leap.
I just thought it as very hard to get them.
My problem is probably here , anyway I've planned to give it a new chance sooner !
I can't stay on that fail and that feeling , I want it to sounds "playable" (at least).
Huh. Very odd. I found he HD500 to have some excellent tones available and acceptable dynamic response
I am sure that if I would have never heard, played, felt, searched or known about the the Kemper; I would still think that the POD line of products would still be awesome.
Unfortunately or fortunately I have bought a Kemper. There is no going back really...
Still I found that my VG-99 is still a pretty decent unit.
But honestly, no gear (apart from a couple of guitars) have made me happier than my Kemper for so long (almost a year now already).
Marc.
Me too! Over a year and a half and not longing for missing amps
The funny thing is that since I don't play live or anything, my KPA is sitting quietly in the same location all the time. When people come over and see it they are curious but no one, I mean no one is expecting what will come out of that thing.
Every single time I get something like this when they first see it: "This is thing is weird, looks like an old radio but with lots of lights and colours. You mean this an amp? Seriously dude!"
Then I basically crank up the volume, pass them one of my guitars and ask them what style they would like to play, I pick an appropriate profile and the magic happens.
Everyone that came to my house and that is somewhat a guitarist was in awe about what they were hearing and feeling.
These episodes could last for hours but usually the wifes will come down soon enough to ask us to go back and join their company.
When I get this sort of reaction, every single time, I know I have something special.
Imagine C. Kemper knowing that he has something special, he must smile all day, every day (It must hurt after a while to smile so much all the time though) 
Marc.
Display MoreI am sure that if I would have never heard, played, felt, searched or known about the the Kemper; I would still think that the POD line of products would still be awesome.
Unfortunately or fortunately I have bought a Kemper. There is no going back really...
Still I found that my VG-99 is still a pretty decent unit.
But honestly, no gear (apart from a couple of guitars) have made me happier than my Kemper for so long (almost a year now already).
Marc.
Display MoreI am sure that if I would have never heard, played, felt, searched or known about the the Kemper; I would still think that the POD line of products would still be awesome.
Unfortunately or fortunately I have bought a Kemper. There is no going back really...
Still I found that my VG-99 is still a pretty decent unit.
But honestly, no gear (apart from a couple of guitars) have made me happier than my Kemper for so long (almost a year now already).
Marc.
Funny, I thought the GT-100 wasn't as good as the HD500. Of course I like the Kemper best...
I'm playing PODs since day one and I started with the first Rocktron G.A.P. 1 long ago. For sure the Kemper is the best digital amp at the moment, the funny thing about the Kemper: Christoph Kemper noticed that all companies produced only inexpensive digital-amps while guitar-players spend a fortune for tube-amps, guitars and effects.... So he decided to develop something better for a higher price.
I'm still owning the HD500, it's not a bad tool (for the price) and in the mix it can sound very well, too. I recorded half of my solo-album with the HD500 (I didn't own a KPA yet) and with a little help from some excellent outboard-gear (compressor, eq) the difference between the "old" POD-sounds and the new KPA-sounds is not THAT big.
The biggest difference for me: playing the KPA is like playing a real amp.
i wrote an extensive high-gain guide on the Pod HD: http://www.foobazaar.com/podhd/toneGuide/
and patches:
http://www.foobazaar.com/podhd/patches/
Most of the good recordings you hear done with the Pod HD were by turning off its onboard cab/mic simulation and using external IR's. That said, I found the onboard cab/mics weren't horrible if you used "dual cabs", which means using dual amps with the same amp and virtually same settings but different cab/mics. However, each cab/mic has a different latency, creating phase issues on some combinations. So you really had to experiment to find combinations that worked. What I did is I panned them each hard L/R and sent them to DAW as separate tracks where I could alter the latency on them to determine how much delay was necessary to remove phasing. I did this with all the cab/mics against one cab/mic that served as my reference point, from which I derived the latency required to acheive phase coherency between all possible combinations. Then I put that in a spreadsheet and highlighted the cells where the latency was easy to acheive (EQ effects would introduce latency, although I preferred combinations that didn't require any effects).
Needless to say I'm dreading the eventual A/B comparison I'm going to make between the units. It's already quite clear the Kemper smokes the Pod in EVERY regard. The Pod doesn't even have an on/off switch. The things I've noticed that really stood out to me are that the KPA has a much higher resolution display, all parameters have much more liquidity and tweakability, the interface is very intuitive and well-thought-out, the ability to roll the guitar volume back to clean up the tone is MUCH better, the distortion tone is much better, the feel/dynamic response is definitely better, the tuner is way better and has much faster tracking, and everything feels more balanced and natural whereas with the Pod it's difficult to get notes and chords to get bite while still having palm mutes that can chug - you have to choose one over the other.
That being said, the Pod HD is not a piece of garbage. For its price, it does what it does very well, even if many aspects of it are unintuitive. It is a clear improvement over older generations of cheap modeling gear.
