The Axe-Fx represents the current state-of-the-art. Whether or not this is good enough for you is personal decision. Personally I find the Axe-Fx superior to tube amp solutions. In 10 years the state-of-the art will hopefully be advanced from today.
As I was telling the beta team the other day I failed a double-blind test. We were comparing a 1968 Plexi Superlead to the Axe-Fx model. I played for a while, switching back and forth, and then stopped, kind of angry and proclaimed "that's the amp". I was angry because I thought "well, algorithms still aren't there, amp sounds better". Looked up and the A/B selector was set to Axe-Fx. I literally got a bit startled and my mouth fell open. This was using the Quantum release candidate.
To the OP (Freemind), my .02...
Thought #3: "Some people" are intrinsically opposed to modeling, and will always come up with some reason (valid for them, I guess) as to why it will not replace their cherished electrons in glass tubes. My answer is: Who cares? People can believe anything they want and they are entitled to that belief. [...]
Play music, have fun, who cares how you reach musical nirvana as long as you get there?
TT
Alright, to make it clear - I believe that the Axe Amp sims are top notch with all the authentic natural and great sounding "imperfections" of real amps, with all the posibilities to sterilize them out in the settings and making the sims sound digital. But what about Cabs? I don't have experience with recording real tube amps with mics, so I can't really compare the results.
But what about Cabs?
If I recall correctly the current DSP's aren't quite up to modeling a reactive load and it's direct interaction with the amp model's output section. We're likely waiting for more powerful DSP's before we'll see any such emulation.
The Axe-Fx models the speaker as a reactive load and its interaction with the virtual power amp. Always has.
What are your thoughts?
It's wrong settings 100%! Use the same settings and you sound just like the real amp. F.ex. check my video:
Most people don't have experience A/Bing real vs Axe-Fx. I have a lot of that experience. They can easily be made to sound identical without going into advanced settings and sometimes the same exact EQ settings give me the same result like in that Mark IV video. That's a real mic up vs my IR shoot method. Pretty damn identical. High five me!
Some records have been recorded live in the same room. Not sure if that's the case with RATM in the OP but it kind of sounds like that so it could be that there's some amp bleed in the overhead mics etc. which sure is a bit harder to recreate. I haven't been successful with farfield IRs trying to recreate that effect. It all has to do with the "bad mic placement" because drum overheads were not placed to sound good for guitar. It just helps tie a guitar sound into the drum sound when they're coming in through the same mics. It's a subtle thing but it does sound good.