Peter,
 
Thanks for your thoughtful reply, and respect the depth of engineering involved in IK effort, as far as I can understand. Amplitube is cool, and navigate to Amplitube 2 for some subjective aesthetics hard to achieve in ver 3 for whatever reason.
 
My point that the real life, rubber meets the road end point delivery of a specific amp is too far advanced for us to do a decent job on the interaction between amp and cab. Amp tubes heated up for several hours to a sweet point. Interaction with cab hysterisis bouncing against melting nalgahyde. Real world complexities versus attempting to recreate some semblance of the real thing with a limited digital software program
 
Nothing does the task digital by any developer yet, IK or anyone else. Pending for what it is worth years up the line, but not yet. We are getting better thru time, but still neandrathal in our efforts to deliver the real thing. Cannot be done, period. Mortal endorsements have no weight or claim when the end product falls short of the glory. Just where we are at. Will get it worked out in this lifetime however (if you are younger than me...)
 
John
 

Depends on the developer.  Personally, I don't like the whole T-Racks approach.  I have multiple amp sims and have demoed many others. I've settled on Guitar Rig for now after using a PODxt for several years.  In my opinion, all of them have their merits. If you take the time to tweak them  and learn them well, you can get some very useable sounds that sit well it in a mix.

IK_Multimedia
Well, it isn't just slapping a brand name on it - there's an arduous process as these are no slouches in the industry and they have all be very particular - MESA has been a very hard process and I understand the reluctance to believe that there's more than just a business deal behind all of it - but there is.  MESA was the toughest and frankly I'm surprised this is even coming out since it was that tough to please them.  Orange and Fender were also very picky and we were poised to actually get something out on time in the case of the latter but they had a very big issue with what was a near-inaudible (actually inaudible in almost every conceivable and tested case) issue and we went back to the drawing board to get it exactly right.  But opinions are opinions, sound quality is subjective, and all that and I admit that most of us here obviously still drool over the best hardware / tube amps / etc.   But if you want the most accurate version of the companies we model officially, even they say (and genuinely so) that it comes from AmpliTube.
 
Anyway, I really just came here to point out that I've stressed that there are a lot of you on forums, social media, etc, that would love to see a demo available before the preorder pricing is over.  I can't make any guarantees but I did my best to make the point that it was a legitimate concern being voiced.

Wow. You make me almost want to buy it now. Asking your team for a demo is really awesome.
 
Thanks!

razor
Wow. You make me almost want to buy it now. Asking your team for a demo is really awesome.
 
Thanks!

You're welcome but asking is easy, let's see if I - actually it is you guys that asked so if you - have some extra persuasive pull and it happens. That would be pretty cool.

I would say, just from my perspective, when so many people are critical of am sims (myself included) vs. mic'ing a real amp with a great mic (I use tube mics in many cases), a demo would seem rudimentary. I can back the comments regarding the difficulty in modeling the Mesa/Orange/Fender amps judiciously. Consumers have been burned by cheap imitations in the past vs. what real sims sound like today, so many mouths are tainted by damned efforts. There really is a LOT of work to sim something faithfully.
 
With that said, amp sims are probably the most difficult to produce, even more than consoles, mics, EQ's, etc.
 
I've not heard a tube amp sim that can faithfully reproduce real tube breakup. Not one.
 
I still record the real amp in a room with a real mic (usually a tube and ribbon mic), because there's just no way a sim can estimate the environment the amp is in, the age and bias of the tubes, nor the tube breakup the guitarist is used to and has rehearsed with. Then, there's the vintage year of the amp and the pairing of the amp and cab.
 
 

Would I buy a plug-in without a demo first?
 
I try not to, but there are some instances where I'd make an exception. Like if your company is called Spectrasonics and your product is called Omniphere. But mostly, I strongly prefer to have a demo first. All the demos and tutorial videos in the world cant confirm where or not the product will be to your liking and whether it fits with your music. But once in a while you have to take a chance.
 
Having said that, try Bias Desktop (as others have mentioned). It does have a demo, and in my opinion it blows anything Ik Multimedia has ever produced. It's not perfect, but it's reasonably priced, extremely versatile, and has a great community for sharing tones. But again, it might not work with what you do.

AmpliTube allows demoing of all gear - it is merely this upcoming MESA/Boogie collection that does not and only during the preorder period.  This is an exception, not the rule.

IK_Multimedia
AmpliTube allows demoing of all gear - it is merely this upcoming MESA/Boogie collection that does not and only during the preorder period.  This is an exception, not the rule.

But, isn't that defeating the purpose? What better way to bring in more/new customers in allowing them to Demo it during the pre-order period?
 

Gotta hand it to Mesh 

Fleer
Gotta hand it to Mesh 

Another happy graduate of FSOSA?