Eric
November 6th, 2009, 05:35 PM
I recently bought the Line 6 Guitarport, because I couldn't figure out from their website what the difference was between Toneport, Guitarport, Pod Farm, Gearbox, Pod Studio, or anything else. Guitarport seemed to be what I wanted.
I previously downloaded/'purchased' Pod Farm when they had it for free (thanks to Robert's FYI), but was not able to use it until I had a Line 6 hardware device.
Now that I've installed all of the Line 6 software and updated everything twice, I finally have some working software. Pod Farm standalone and VST plugin both work, and Gearbox standalone works. Little did I realize that to get Gearbox as a VST plugin (which IMO should be free), it's more $$.
I'm starting to realize why you can't get the straight story from Line 6: their goal is to get you to buy all of their upgrades, but they don't want to tell you that the actual products don't come with any features. It's like they've taken GAS and turned it into a systematic marketing approach. Clever, but almost diametrically opposed to my views on vendor-user interactions.
So here's the question: 1) what do you think of all of this, and am I way off base in my assessment of Line 6, and 2) should I return the Guitarport? I just bought it, so I could still return it. If I want to use the free Pod Farm (which, admittedly is pretty cool), I have to have a Line 6 hardware device, so I'd need to eventually get a cheap UX1 or Guitarport interface off of Ebay.
The issue is that I've learned that what I paid for software-wise (i.e. Gearbox) is obsolete crap, so I'm paying $100 for a below-average USB 1.1 audio interface. I'm not sure if my own indignation is clouding my common sense, so I'm throwing out to all of you.
I previously downloaded/'purchased' Pod Farm when they had it for free (thanks to Robert's FYI), but was not able to use it until I had a Line 6 hardware device.
Now that I've installed all of the Line 6 software and updated everything twice, I finally have some working software. Pod Farm standalone and VST plugin both work, and Gearbox standalone works. Little did I realize that to get Gearbox as a VST plugin (which IMO should be free), it's more $$.
I'm starting to realize why you can't get the straight story from Line 6: their goal is to get you to buy all of their upgrades, but they don't want to tell you that the actual products don't come with any features. It's like they've taken GAS and turned it into a systematic marketing approach. Clever, but almost diametrically opposed to my views on vendor-user interactions.
So here's the question: 1) what do you think of all of this, and am I way off base in my assessment of Line 6, and 2) should I return the Guitarport? I just bought it, so I could still return it. If I want to use the free Pod Farm (which, admittedly is pretty cool), I have to have a Line 6 hardware device, so I'd need to eventually get a cheap UX1 or Guitarport interface off of Ebay.
The issue is that I've learned that what I paid for software-wise (i.e. Gearbox) is obsolete crap, so I'm paying $100 for a below-average USB 1.1 audio interface. I'm not sure if my own indignation is clouding my common sense, so I'm throwing out to all of you.