I've got the POD HD Pro rackmounted unit, and I've been really happy with it. You can operate it from your computer and it doesn't bog down your system. It has quite a few mic emulations (on and off axis), and lots of amp/speaker emulations. I also like to use it as a pre for my '59 Gretsch or my Class 5 head. But I agree with you MakeShift that it takes many hours to tweak the tone to fit each situation. But it's very rewarding once you get it the way you like it!

I've always been one to want all the options and not need most of them than to need an option and not have it!  Personally, I just love twiddling for hours on end.  I don't have to create any finished thing, I just enjoy the process.
 
(This approach does NOT work with relationships however...)

Danny Danzi

sharke
The in built mixer in the NI Drummer libraries is ridiculous on the CPU. There's something funny going on there because if put those same effects in the chain standalone (Transient Master, Solid EQ etc), the CPU barely notices them. Turn on the same effects in the Drummer mixers and my first core is spiking into the red. It's not sharing the load across the cores (even though I believe there is a setting in Kontakt to tell it to).

+1000 to that! That's the same thing I see. I wonder if it may be host related/resource related with the host being open? I gotta try this with a few other programs and see what happens. One thing I have noticed that may or may not have anything to do with anything....in my beta plug testing/developing for guitar sims, Reaper showed a 4% difference in cpu for the better. At that time only Sonar 8.5, X1 and Reaper were used on my end. I've not done much testing or developing with guitar plugs using anything but Sonar X2. This may be worth looking into sharke. I'll let you know what I find out.
 
-Danny

When I first started out, I was using Reaper to host my VSTi's and ReWireing it to ProTools for MIDI and mixing. I didn't see anywhere near the same CPU usage with NI drums. I've heard someone else mention on a forum that they've noticed it uses way less CPU in Reaper than in Cubase too. Definitely something going on with multicore. In a thread on the NI forum, someone mentioned that they had seen an end to the CPU spiking by turning off multicore support in Kontakt, and that the only benefits they saw from having it on was in standalone mode. However I tried this on my machine and it wasn't the case. I have it set to 6 cores, maybe I should try  5, 4, 3 or 2 to see what happens. Doesn't make it easy when you have to restart your host every time. However one thing I remember about using Pro Tools was that the performance was way better across the board when you set it to use half the number of cores that you have, so maybe it's the same with Kontakt - setting it to use all of your cores causes resource conflict with the host like you suggested. 
 
I have to say I don't really understand Kontakt too well. Like when you go into the settings and bypass all of the insert effects, they're still on in the mixer? I can turn off the convolution reverb in the send effects and that makes a change in the sound though. 

FWIW, the NI drum stuff is barely usable in real time on my Mac.
 
 
As a matter of fact, Kontakt is one of the very few plug-ins I've had issues w/ in Logic, the only one I actually had to troubleshoot besides POD Farm. Even w/ relatively lighter libraries like the Scarbee bass, it performs very poorly. I can load bigger drum kits in Superior w/o half as much problems.
 
Same was true in Studio One.

Let's say you went with Komplete 9 Ultimate and really wanted to use a lot of things. What PC would you need to get to support that AND Waves Platinum AND Sonar?
 
(For example purposes naturally.  )

 
BTW - I'm still curious about this if anyone has an opinion.

Rain
FWIW, the NI drum stuff is barely usable in real time on my Mac.
 
 
As a matter of fact, Kontakt is one of the very few plug-ins I've had issues w/ in Logic, the only one I actually had to troubleshoot besides POD Farm. Even w/ relatively lighter libraries like the Scarbee bass, it performs very poorly. I can load bigger drum kits in Superior w/o half as much problems.
 
Same was true in Studio One.

Yeah I had much better bass performance when I switched to Trilian, even though I expected it to have even more of a CPU hit than the Scarbee bass. 

From what I've read when I started trying to find a fix, its pretty common for people to experience performance issues w/ Kontakt. I guess in the end it saved me money - I refrained from buying the other Scarbee stuff which I really would have liked (the Rickenbaker in particular). Anyway, my wife bought herself a bass and I'm having much more fun playing bass than sequencing it or playing it on the keyboard.
 
I can't say that I've had issues w/ Guitar Rig - but I never used it all that much, even less as a plug-in.

MakeShift
I guess the thing I didn't really get around to saying much about is that many of these Sims have gotten really good sounding. I amp not having as many issues with the playing dynamics that I used to and, I guess what I would call the lack of sustain.

The AxFx is a little out of my price range right now, but I have been really intested in the new Pod HD's. I only wish someone had them to demo. I hate to dump that kind of money into hardware without physically playing one. If these units were good enough, I could seriously see myself leaving tubes behind.

I've wanted the AxFx for a long time but just can't justify the price either. If I were gigging I'd sure enough have one.
It's nice to have a unit (Guitar Rig 5) that leaves me not looking for something else and can keep me
entertained for a long time finding just about any guitar sound I can imagine without being interupted trying to figure out why it's not working.
If it had a Peterson strobe tuner I'd then say it was perfect...for me.

FWIW I want an AxeFX II but just can't justify the price. Of course, I will spend way over that in the next several years on pedals and tubes for my amp lol
 
I still love my amp and much prefer to play it over any sim that I have played. I am not saying tube amps are better, just saying that is what I rather play. BTW I have not yet experienced an AxeFx in person nor Guitar Rig 5.
 
I have GR4, S-Gear 2, ABG, Amplitube (the free one) and the sim that came with Sonar X2. They are not bad but if I am going to play, I am more inspired by my Carvin V3 than the sims I have. Just saying. Why? I don't know.

Max,

If you have a V3, you should try demoing the Amplitube version of it for 72 hrs. I would be curious to know if you think it sounds close to the real thing. I tried it and I thought it was a pretty good sounding sim.

One of the cool things about the sims is that I have kind of homed in on which real amps that I have never owned, but probably would really like.