Perhaps the solution is for someone to invent FRFR speakers that are directional.
I'm guessing that that is a joke.
The directionality of a guitar cab is not the thing that's missing from the way that FRFR system approximate the cab-in-the-room.
It's the very last thing we'd like to replicate.
When we play with guitar cabs we find a spot that sounds good and we usually don't move from there.
And that spot is not usually with our ears right in front of and on-axis to the driver.
It's the duplication of that sweet spot along with the greater dispersion and *lack* of directivity of an FRFR system that I'm after.
In my experience, the things that I've never been able to get out of an FRFR speaker that I do get out of a guitar cab are:
1. The attack transients of guitar cabs are less peaky and sharp and are, to me, more musical sounding.
2. The top end never seems just right from an FRFR speaker.
Most IRs have too much top end, especially for mid or hi gain tones, and when you EQ it out it ends up sounding flat and uninteresting.
And EQ'ing a dull IR never seems to work either.
And even if you do get the top end tapered in a musical way it's just a different type of top end than you hear coming out of a guitar cab.
I notice this the most when using my EMG-SA loaded Strat and going back and forth between my EV cabs and my CLRs when using a hyper clean and bright tone.
The CLRs just seem to be incapable of reproducing the same type of musical sounding top end that the EVs do.
The same is true for any other FRFR speaker I've used.
This probably has more to do with the way that horns and tweeters reproduce top end than it does with the way the IRs were recorded.
I.e. The way a 12" woofer reproduces these frequencies is just different than the way that a horn or a tweeter does it.
I thought the concentric drivers of the CLR might mitigate this issue for me but they don't.
3. The mids often seem quite scooped as well as cold sounding in most of the IRs I've tried.
There's just more mid girth from a guitar cab.
This probably has more to do with the way a guitar cab vibrates and resonates in a room than it does with the way the IRs are recorded.
4. Bass boominess from an FRFR system is more of an issue as the SPL increases than it is with a guitar cab.
A guitar cab seems to work better at both bedroom levels and gigging levels whereas an FRFR system seems to exaggerate the Fletcher-Munson effects.
5. When I play live with a power amp + cabs rig I have several amp sim types (hyper clean and bright, hyper-clean and dark, bluesy breakup, hi-gain 1, hi-gain 2) that I run into that system and they all sound good through that one speaker.
When I find an IR that works satisfactorily with one of my amp sim types it invariably sounds unsatisfactory with the other amp sim types.
I've never understood why this should be.
Even a mic'd cab signal will work with several different and contrasting amp tones.
BTW
I know I'm peeing into the wind on all of this.
I'm just thinking out loud here.