Usually I disagree on everything with zerocrossing. Our opinions are usually polar opposites, who knows why. He may even have blocked me, I don't blame him.

However, I also have gotten better results from modeling.

I feel like the trend is like the honeymoon period with convolution reverbs all over again, only now with amp captures and IR.

One thing is clear to me: the best stuff is yet to get here, and no technology, not even stuff like COSM is ever obsolete or useless. We'll likely see new ways of using everything, DSP power will keep enabling cleaner and more dynamic sound, and problems that right now you would be flamed for even bringing up by the head in sand brigade will be neatly solved. Am pretty floored by what devs are coming up with in other areas than sims lately.

It would be nice to have a clear discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of both capture and modeling techniques. It would also be nice to know if people who like one method are blind A/Bing vs the other using the same IR's.

You can possibly speak for yourself.
I've chosen deliberately to go digital (well, or rather hybrid).
There's still two full tube amps in my basement, both ready to roll, along with a some nice additional cabs, should I need them. And I could bring them to pretty much all gigs (there's only a little amount of "silent stage" gigs I'm playing these days). I just don't. Simply because I like my hybrid rig a lot more.

In an ideal world you'd need no capturing for any typical amp as there'd be component level models for just about everything. But as we're not living in an ideal world just yet (in fact, we're moving away from that at quite some speed...), captures are the best way to get whatever non-modeled amps crammed into a small convenient box.

And as far as downsides go, properly component modeled amps have no downsides by definition, just that sometimes either the coder or the hardware isn't up to the task, so in quite some cases there's things left to be desired.

Captures (at least in an ideal world) fix those issues, just that some things still can't be captured properly (especially true for drives such as fuzzes - but that's merely a hardware thing as they're coming with different input impedances, hence making your guitar work quite differently).
The main downside of captures however would still be that tonestacks don't work the same as on the captured amp. Kempers liquid profiling adresses some of that, but - for obvious reasons - not everything, so once an amp has a pretty complexed tone stack (think, say, Boogie) or things are kinda obscure, captures would really only represent a very small percentage of what the amp in question could do (as a result, people are usually shooting more captures).

The problems that devs need to solve have been spelled out elsewhere.

This is the last place for any kind of DSP deep dive. What a clown show, and not just the analog guys.

'Just buy X' level discussion only is the only possibility here.

That and hassling seniors that are even more unfamiliar with how modern DSP works. Even though guess what - neither do the hasslers! Boo. Whatever it takes to pad the ego I guess.

Oh well.

Out of interest: What was it causing this reply?

ping mark_iv - Re: "seniors that are even more unfamiliar with how modern DSP works "

I imagine some of that exists but certainly not exclusively among seniors. I'm pretty sure I'm the most senior person here and I've been running Linux as my daily driver since 1999 and writing code since the mid 1970s. Granted, I haven't written a line in Assembly on-the-metal code for over a decade, but I do know digital rather well, and really very few coders depend on Assembly anymore. These days a smattering of C and C++ and scripting languages are the most effective.

I'd be hard-pressed to write the entire firmware for a modern DSP, but I most definitely can alter the firmware to get what I want. I know my way around a hex editor.

I'm willing to bet the vast majority here are "point and clickers" or slaves to menues and don't even use a console for many months, if ever. Nevertheless and OTOH many here have experience with hardware and software at other levels that far surpass my meager skills and that I will never match but that's just another area of expertise in the same realm. It doesn't mean seniors are necessarily clueless about the area. It's not how many years one has. It's what one chooses to do with those years, right?

That’s great. Lately I have been enjoying this solid state amp more than my tube amps.

No worries, wasn't referring to you or any others in that age bracket with that kind of expertise and experience.

Senior with a capital S, as a measure of respect.

The conversation on synthesis speaks for itself. That's what provoked these posts. One can't have an in-depth discussion on DSP with that kind of clownage from either side. I have heard much more controversial and wild opinions from techs over the years than the most extreme take that I have read here. Some of them took a few years to really understand. I am open to opinions and some color from techs and devs, so long as they can back it up with knowledge. We should know to take some things like John's comment with a grain of sugar and move on.

John should practice what he preaches and use concise language to avoid provoking the clown train however.

Ideally.

In an ideal world, DSP does what it claims to, all circuits behave perfectly according to math, cheap components behave the same as military grade, and so on...

No problems here, mark_iv, I'm just singling out the "broad brush treatment" collectivism so common ... I was gonna say "these days" but I suppose it has always been that way.

Funny story, in 1963 I actually attended the March on Washington where Dr. Martin Luther King delivered possibly his most famous :I Have A Dream" speech exactly on the subject of judging individuals by association. The funny part is that I wasn't there because of my social or political awareness which was essentially non-existent back then. I was there to accompany my GF who was more aware of such things. The funnier part is she drove (she was a year older than me) and we parked outside of DC and took a bus in. We marched down Constitution Ave to the Lincoln Memorial and she said we should leave to get back to the cvar so she wouldn't be driving after dark....soo... I missed the speech!

Sometime later I saw it on TV and the "content of their character" part hit me hard, resonating deeply. I became aware after that. It's hitting me again especially this week seeing the irrational hatred and violence once again coming to a head in the Middle East. All I can say is I hope de-escalation happens again, soon.

"clown train"?!?
So you're a member of that when you call nonsense out?

Have you ever improvised or played with people who are pretty skilled in their own niche style, but due to style and personality clashes it always ends up being an annoying cacophony?

The clown train are the posts, not the people.

IRs are usually tuned for studio monitors, not for FRFRs. With FRFRs becoming more and more popular we will see FRFR IRs as shown in this video as well as tools like UA´s OX Stomp very soon.

Sim at last,
Sim at last,
Praise God Almighty, we have sims at last.

Interesting. I didn’t know that an IR could be “tuned.” I just assumed it was captured as accurately as possible in a studio. I imagine they’d do it in as dead a room as possible, for best results. I have a theory that the weird mush you hear in a lot of captures happens when room reflections creep in and cause phase interference. I think the chance that an average person is going to do a good amp-cab capture is going to be fairly low, which is why most Tonex and Kemper captures (probably Quad Cortex too, though I never owned one) sound a bit dead. I almost always find that the captures I find the best are done straight out of an amp’s line level out or though some load box, and then put though a good IR.

Have you been to the mountain?

There are a few reasons why there are a lot of bad captures.

1. Cold bias
2. Filter caps causing ghosting
3. Mic picks up a rattle in the cab etc.
4. Too much low end

Usually unless the person is a complete moron, the room won’t cause problems in a capture.

With a loadbox you drastically change the sound of an amp. If taking a direct capture you really want the amp to see a proper speaker.

That makes no sense. Any reflective room is going to possibly cause a recording have issues. Room resonance too. A close mic and a quiet volume will help a lot, but good sound proofing wall treatments are a ubiquitous feature of recording studios for a reason. Also, many guitarists use amps that require loud volumes to really sing. My advice is to record or capture in as dead an acoustic environment as possible, and make sure the mic and amp are as physically decoupled from the floor and walls as possible. If there’s a room that’s got a great ambiance that you want, run a DI send into that room and capture the space separately from a FRFR speaker-mic setup. I’ve gotten excellent results using this method, but that was before convolution loaders made it unnecessary.

You have that backwards, surprise, surprise (thanks to Gomer Pyle)... The first part, anyway. It only holds if your beliefs are solid, crystallized, not subject to alteration by any scientific truth. You DO,however,have to have learned enough (not advertisements or paid "reviews" in commercial magazines/websites) to understand what iS truth and what is BS. Hint- the easier to understand stuff is usually BS.

However, the second point's pretty spot on.
Evaluate the veracity of the poster before choosing. Some people post opinions. Other people post FACTS. Often the latter may be something you'd prefer not to hear. That's YOUR problem.

My suggestion: find people whose experience agrees with you. Don't annoy other people with stupid claims.