The only thing I can really add to this is that dealing with frosting is a tricky issue. Sometimes I have to ask myself, "does having a gazillion options really make me sound any better than Brian May did with a treble boost slamming the front in of an AC30 with all the top boost guts ripped out?
Its fun to play with presets and try to get as close as a record as I can, but I've also been in a band for the better part of 10 years that has to play covers mixed with originals and my 2 channel Mesa DC3 with a Tube Scream set drive off and mids slightly up for a mid/lead boost was never a problem in playing as well as I ever needed to play, or in playing music with all the proper emotion and energy it might need.
This is where knowing the product as described from the factory becomes very important. I know going into this that I can't mix 4 amps, and rout the sun back through the moon and for all I know throw a legit Neve preamp at the end of the chain (just throwing that out there for the sake of assumers everywhere lol). I'm going from a tube amp on stage to being prepared to get myself used to going direct to the board (I haven't actually seen how many people are micing full range speakers) for the first time in years. The last time I did this I had a POD 2.0 and ran some pedals to make up for the limitations in the effects. While this sounded better than anything that had preceded (I had used a Korg AX30G which had definitely come a long way for direct guitars, but boy to listen to it now used that way... whew LOL) I wasn't really nailing any sound I was after, but I at least felt like I had a basic amp sound.
Needless to say, the idea of being able to basically have a very realistic sound like I'm used to in the Mesa models, and add the headroomy sound a 100 power amp would have (I have EL84s so, the only thing I can't really do is that big punchy thing) and then even hearing some of the patches in the patch page of the Van Halen and Pink Floyd stuff... WOW.
Something else I have to keep in mind is that 9 times out of 10 we're going to be mono live. In fact, I don't think we were run stereo when we opened for REO Speedwagon, and that was a pretty massive production over all, and I don't think REO even ran stereo. I think where the things were discussing in this thread really come into play are in the studio in most instances. Maybe some layer a whole bunch of amps live, but anyone who's ever played a clubs knows that the sonics in most of them don't lend to hearing such fine tuning. Sometimes we're eqing our guitars at the board in such an ugly fashion just to cut that we wonder why we bothered spending so much money on our tube amp in the first place. LOL
The good news if someone did get the AX8 thinking it would do all the extras an AXE FXII does is that we can always layer tracks and we can always record with the AX8 and then reroute it through an aux for its effects, and of course there are some definite professional plugins out there... even for home studios.
Convenience in the matter is personal, but I would encourage anyone to remember that the AX8 in any weakness is still better than any other processor on the market. They've passed TC and Lexicon for effects. At the end of the day, make music with what you have because yesterday is gone... both for the good (better gear now) and bad (we're not getting any youth back). So definitely redeem the day, and put that AX8 to use because you can do more with that than 99% of all history could do in making music. Thats not a corrective comment to people who've posted, its an encouragement to keep in mind when you get fired up about things. Get fired up about making music instead.