Agreed said:
I don't think you're the arbiter of tone,
Straw man here. You're attempting to refute an assertion that I never made.
and I and others quite like his IRs,
Good.
To put it another way, using a real amp instead of the model of it in an AxeFX unit always produces more authentic results.
To put this another way, it's called a
cab block for a reason. As an Axe-Fx purchaser, one could reasonably expect that a
factory sim labeled "4x12 V30" actually had something to do with a 4x12 speaker cabinet loaded with Celestion Vintage 30s.
User IR slots are there for a reason. If you want to use a recording of a fart in a user IR slot, you're welcome. However, when the factory manual describes the sim as "A “vintage” 4x12 30W cabinet model," my interpretation of that assertion - and apparently Cliff's as well - is that there was an
actual 4x12 cabinet involved in the creation of the IR. Regardless of how "good" that IR may sound to your ears, you can't make an argument that it is a reasonable simulation of the sound of that cabinet. Hell, you may well like the IR
better than the sound of the real cabinet. It is not an IR of a Framus cab loaded with V30s, however, it is the result of someone's tinkering around with data that looks sort of like an IR to make it sound - to their ears - sort of like that cab. The filenames used by Alu are actually quite misleading. Given all his lip service to ethics and honesty, he should at least name them consistent with how they were generated, e.g., "Alu's interpretation of a Framus 4x12."