What if the Bassrig had a clean balanced line out? Then you could blend your perfectly clean DI with the Bassrig analog amp sim in the box however you wanted. And what if the clean and amp sim line out were in phase and time aligned coming out of the pedal straight into the DAW. I don't know if that's possible, but that's what I'd like.
I would still rather have an external, high-end DI box for the clean signal, for the reasons I explained above. Another reason is that I wouldn't want a DI box to be "bass only". A separate DI box can be used for other instruments in my studio too.
Amp sims will only ever be an emergency backup solution for me though. Unless the situation prevents it I always prefer using real tube amps. And no, I don't want my amps to have a balanced output either, and when they do I generally don't use them. I much prefer using an external DI box.
I recently realized that it's basically the same argument as console gamers vs PC.
Sort of, yes. And just like with the console vs PC comparison, the specs of the PC will definitely matter.
The key word here is latency.
If you're using a plugin amp sim and monitor your playing through the DAW/amp sim (rather than direct monitoring your dry signal and adding the amp sim later) there WILL be latency. If you have a reasonably powerful PC/Mac it shouldn't be a problem, but you don't need much latency before it affects the "feel" of you playing.
The lowest latency your system can handle will of course also be affected by how many plugins you are running. If you record the bass early in the process, with few or no plugins involved, you can get away with much lower latency settings that if you record onto a nearly finished mix with tons of tracks with lots of plugins/soft synths.
The quality of the audio interface will also matter. A couple of years ago I got one of those dirt cheap Behringer U-Phoria interfaces for my home studio. I thought it would be sufficient for mixing/editing and doing overdubs on stuff I had recorded at my proper studio. It wasn't. With a "work-in-progress", that already had a large number of tracks/plugins, the Behringer interface couldn't deliver the low latency I needed to be able to do overdubs with soft synths. I replace the Behringer with an RME interface (using the same laptop). Problem solved. You get what you pay for I guess.
