Am I wrong to not care what is what?
I like the sounds I get from my gear.
Absolutely not.
That's how I feel about most of my stuff.
I get why Cliff is obsessed with making Fractal stuff respond/sound like an amp; it's apparently a passion for him. And he (and I assume other people at Fractal, but IDK) does it extremely well. And a lot of guitarists do have the experience to make direct comparisons, even if they can't do it back-to-back well enough to really conclude anything....but it plays into how much they enjoy what they're playing, so it also makes business sense for Fractal to continue developing, however close they already are.
I don't understand the technical side of modeling nearly well enough to really appreciate it, but I do find it at least reasonably fascinating, mostly because it all boils down to math. And I just think that's cool.
But for a lot of other things....I really don't care. I just care about the result. I think it's cool that the Brainworx plugin of the Dangerou Bax EQ has been praised non-stop by people who do or used to own several of them. But, I like it because of the weird curve/shape of the high-cut. My favorite compressors aren't modeled on anything....they just work like I want them to, and I've had the opportunity to use a real SSL 4064G (with its bus comp) and several real vintage Urei 1176LNs, among others. Those are great compressors. But, so are FirComp and Pro-C2.
It's kind of hilarious that for basically the entire history of recording, engineers wanted more high end, tighter bass, lower noise, more headroom, less (or at least more selectively controllable) distortion...and for many years (at least since floating point PCM was adopted), we have insane degrees of
all of those things. The digital noise floor might as well not exist, and you have to go ridiculously out of your way to unpleasantly clip a DAW (or something like a Fractal) with the sole exception of your only required ADC....and half the world is obsessed with adding noise and distortion so it sounds like the flaws inherent in the older analog designs.
I worked with an engineer who strongly preferred one of the studio's 1176s over the others, absolutely convinced it sounds better "because it's older." I never understood that. And, I never bought that as the reason.
It's really confusing sometimes.
