Speaking of snobbery, I totally held back in an exchange with a guy at the shop. I mentioned I use Fractal and he is a Kemper user. My first comment, was 'cool!, i haven't tried Kemper but I hear great things..." and in about the next 2 minutes he was going on about how If I tried Kemper it blows Axe Fx /Line 6 out of the water'. It was here I bit my tongue haha. I had asked if he'd had an opportunity to try Fractal but it was clear he hadn't really. To be fair, I've never tried Kemper et al so what could I really say anyhow. No need to poo poo anyone's gear just be happy we all have what makes us happy and enables us to make music. I chuckled to myself afterwards.
IMO, Fractal and Kemper are both very good at what they do....they just don't do at all the same thing (you know, except for making guitar sounds). I tried a Kemper for a while and seriously considered it, but....it came down to not really
knowing that I could find profiles of amps I wanted to play set how I'd end up wanting them set after hearing them in person, and that I'd be happy with. If I could somehow be guaranteed of that, I'm sure I'd be happy playing it. With all due respect to MBritt and others....that wasn't a gamble I was willing to take for that amount of money.
Fractal, OTOH, seemed like it would give enough flexibility in the deep editing that even if I wasn't totally happy with an amp, I could probably tweak it into something that I really liked. And that has been the case. And, at least so far, there's always been at least some small thing that I ended up tweaking that "improved" the amp to my ears so that a great Kemper profile (for me) would end up being not just of an amp I was interested in set the right way but one that was modified in a specific way that I wouldn't have known to look for until after I got to play with my Fractal.
It's really a difference in philosophy as much as technology. And I get why so many people like the Kemper way of doing things....it's just not my way.
I think I'm relatively confident in saying they both blow Line 6 out of the water....but almost all of my experience of it comes from Helix Native. So, I'm also willing to admit that there could be other factors at play. But both of them sounded much better, much faster than Native ever did to me.