Writer is on crack. Where does he get this bizarre notion that Digital Delay units are a product of this Millennium? Or, that until the 00s, they were cost prohibitive?
Pretty sure my first DD Pedal was a Boss DD-2 I bought new in '84 for a little North of a C-note. The following year I bought a Boss DSD-2 Digital Sampling Delay that could sample an 800ms section and play it back... Along with a CV/Gate trigger In that effectively made it a looper that was triggered via voltage pulse.
I still have my DD-3 from 87/88, and it still works just as well as it did 30 years ago.
This dude is straight up whack!
I'll concede that the DL4 had/has some really great capabilities, but nothing remotely revolutionary or even deserving of historical significance. Not to mention that it's a RAGING POS in terms of build quality as was about the only accurate part of the article.
It also wasn't "inexpensive" by any stretch. Once again, that writer is a moron. I got mine for free directly from Line 6 when it debuted, and wasn't particularly impressed by it. It felt cheap, didn't really cover any ground I couldn't cover better individually with other units, and had much too big of a footprint.
Pretty sure I've mentioned the CASE of DL4s Line 6 sent to Jason Mraz. Yes, he used them for a while and with good results, but the reason he received a giant box full of the damned things was because L6 KNEW he would burn through them due to attrition. Pretty sure I posted a pic from the studio with unopened DL4 boxes scattered all about the main room. They were there as back ups for WHEN one of them failed. Within less than a year, Jason got so fed up with them that he went back to Boss and never looked back. He's been using the SAME Boss looper at every live show since 2011... Not the same model, the same unit! That thing has travelled around the globe several times over and seen hundreds of shows without a hiccup.
Moral of the story:
Fuck Line 6 in their stupid fuckin' meathead face.