I'm gonna take a left turn a little here for a minute. Seems so far we're talking about guitar/bass and using plug-in amp sims and cabinet impulses loaded on the track FX in the DAW to process the dry, un-amped guitar signal. This is great and most flexible, but not absolutely necessary. Just wanted to clarify this in case some beginners are getting confused. All this can be done with external software (and I'd bet it's more common). I'll mention Podfarm because that's what I use for the most part but there are others. In Podfarm, you don't have to load cabinet IRs and preamps, etc in the DAW. It's all done in a straightforward (and almost transparent) way in Podfarm. Of course you can change amps, amp settings, cabinets, mics, mic placements in Podfarm to get your own sound (and you should because the presets are just starting points) but to me it's easier for the beginner.
Most of us can make sense of all this already but again, I just put this here for that someone just starting out.
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