Good stuff... thanks, confirms most of my suspicions. (I have an Axe FX II, by the way, which I can't seem to go back to after using my Kemper so much. The Axe was super cool & awesome at first, but now I find myself WANTING to find the amps in there as appealing more than I actually DO like them.)
Your comments open up the question: Why not more DI profiles where the amp tone is profiled separate from the cabinet? I realize you lose a lot of the power amp character, but you could get better cabinet isolation thus:
Just a thought that if the Kemper could profile with a two-step process -
1) Do a DI profile (taking the output of the preamp into the Kemper instead of mic'ing)
2) Do a full stack profile where you do mic the cab
And then have the Kemper "subtract" the two to get the cabinet character. (+ power amp, yeah.)
Obviously this is a whole new level of software and programming, but it would be an interesting approach - and I'm just thinking aloud here.
Another interesting thing I've tried is - since I'm looping my KPA through my AXE right now - I can try out the cabinets in the Axe with the amps in the Kemper. (insert evil laugh)
I get some decent results, but nothing really useable. As you might expect, they sound a bit flat and uninteresting.
This leaves me a bit let down since I love certain amps, and I also dig on certain cabs, so finding someone that's profiled that combo can be pretty tough. Looks like I need to get the graveyard shift at a music store, huh?
Another statement/question: I guess this is why all the cabs made with cabmaker seem a bit lifeless when I take an IR and convert it...(?)