I'm sure that sampled stuff sounds great. What puts me off is the amount of stuff I have to download to keep up and the cost...
 
The only soft synth that I use that uses any kind of sample is Absynth.
 
Oh, and Iris 2, of course, but I only use my own samples in that, so it doesn't count...
 
Oops... Forgot about Battery and BDF eco but since going all beat-less ambient I don't use them anymore.

one of them there double post thingies

gswitz
People who think they know it all really annoy those of us who do.

How arrogant.

I looked up the difference a while back, and one of the advantages that physical modeling has is that thru the mathematical algorithms you can have more variation in tone, expression, and many other audio results. The reason is that there are so many ways a player can articulate, with varying physical pressure, etc. The math accounts for this and "predicts" the sound based on what the player is doing, whereas the sample is the sample, and other than loud or soft (to over-generalize) it will never sound different. So if it's an excellent sample, it will sound excellent, but not as "real" as a great modeled instrument because you'll have more variety in the sound based on the player's actions at the moment. While I love both types of instruments more or less equally, modeled instruments also load more or less instantly and take very little room on your hard drive than sampled instruments. 
I will never really understand the math, but I like the results. I use AAS products, Pianoteq, but I also LOVE OrangeTree Sample's Evolution Rosewood Grand, as well as their guitars, flute, and well, everything else they make. Your ears and playing style and other preferences are probably what matters the most.

I believe that we will eventually abandon the idea of sampled instruments entirely, at least as they're approached today. Remember that samples were born out of frustration with the limitations of even the most complex synthesizers, which ultimately offer only a small subset of the many variables that comprise a musical instrument's timbre and behavior. I've always felt they were an interim solution.
 
In the 60's, students at MIT replicated the sound of a grand piano so believable that when played behind a curtain alongside a real piano, audiences could not distinguish between them. However, that experiment required no less than 80 oscillators and could play only one note. Not one not at a time, one note, period. It simultaneously demonstrated both the potential of synthesis as well as the enormity of the task. I wonder if anybody then considered the possibility of what could be done with unlimited virtual oscillators created completely in software.
 
Of course, we're not quite there yet. We can't yet create an unlimited number of oscillators with today's consumer computers. But projecting the trajectory of computer development over the past 60 years into the coming decades, it's clearly just a matter of time.
 
And it's not just hardware holding us back. Equally important is software modeling technology, but it'll get there, too. This morning it snowed here in Seattle. Most would not have seen it coming, but the National Weather Service's models did, and correctly predicted it. Now if you and I could only afford the computers that the NWS has...

eph221

gswitz
People who think they know it all really annoy those of us who do.

How arrogant.

Only someone who thinks he knows it would say that.

My favorite modeled instruments are my JTV-69 guitar and my Variax Bass. The Alembic bass in Variax is damn close to my real Alembic bass.
 
Oh snap, I just gave away that I own an Alembic bass.

I thought an Alembic was an emulation of a bass.

jude77
Lee, I checked out your music.  You got some good stuff there.  Vocally, I think you sound a bit like Bowie or Ian Hunter.

Thanks Jude, most of the time my vocals remind people of Dylan, or that east coast nasal sound.  Sometimes people say Tom Petty too.  But I never heard any Bowie or Ian Hunter comparisons before.  I guess that's a step up from Dylan, vocal-wise. ;)

BassDaddy
I know I really like AAS stuff, modeled. And I loved NI B4II, modeled. Though I have some sampled bass guitar libraries I am curious about IK's Modo Bass. But I'm a guitar player, mostly, so what do I know?
Great thread though, and I will be glad to hear what others have to say.

I have MODO bass, and at first I really liked it (I still do), but in the end I find myself returning to my old go-to bass, the Scarbee Rickenbacker Bass (a sampled based bass), which is played in Kontakt.  It comes with about a dozen different tones, and to me it sounds more like the real thing.
But MODO Bass is quite good too.  It gives you a LOT of different kinds of basses to choose from and dozens and dozens of variations and features.