I've never had any experience with profilers whether its software or hardware, so I was very curious as to how accurate the captures could get to a real mic'd amp and cabinet.
I have two crappy amps, a Vox VT15 and an Orange Micro Crush. In Reaper I set up my Vox VT15 to get a sound I liked when it was mic'd up and recorded a passage and capturing the DI as well (easy when you have an Axe I/O)
I captured the amp in Tonex and then on that Reaper track I added the Tonex VST with my capture on to the original DI and compared to the original mic'd recording. It sounds about 98% identical. I played loud parts, quite parts, rolled back the volume in parts and then rolled it back up. All the dynamics were kept intact and identical between Tonex to the mic'd amp.
The only discernible difference I noticed was that you could hear amp hiss on the track with the mic'd amp but you don't want that anyway! There was perhaps just the tiniest ( and I mean tiny) bit more low end and high end in the real amp, but in terms of the sound i'd say it was virtually indistinguishable.
So my conclusions from this is that if anyone doesn't like the sound in Tonex it basically means you wouldn't like that recording chain in real life. Its quite comforting for me to know I'm getting an accurate sonic snapshot of the gear in question.
In terms of actually playing through the profiles, I have tried lots of the IK and the Tonenet models, and for me I think this is going to become my primary platform to play guitar on and record. The sound is there, but they feel real as well in the sense that you feel like your guitar is connected to a real amp thats mic'd up and you are listening back in a control room.
They sound great a lot of them, but obviously you have to go into knowing that the tone models are only as good as the sound that was recorded. I like the idea that some rare and obscure amps will be captured including some "undesirable" models. Some legend has captured a mono price 15w amp and it sounds amazing!
Anyway, thats my take on it, I only wish I had more amps/cabs to capture. I'm doing the Orange Micro Crush as we speak, looking forward to seeing how that turns out!