I have a Fender Cybertwin I purchased about two years ago, and I'll disagree with you here. If I were to record off the XLR, TRS or s/pdif out then yes, the room, environment and atmosphere completely goes away and is never recorded, however if I were to mic this amp, all that is back in the mix.
The obvious advantage of the Cybertwin, Pod Pro et. al. is simply this - why house 10 amps, 10 cabinets, of which are loaded with speakers in different ways, when one of these fancy gizmos can at least create a close enough approximation to the amp/speaker/cabinet you're trying to simulation?
I don't know about you, but I have dollar and space limitations in my home studio. A decade ago plus when I had a pro studio, we had in a large walk-in room area many amps/cabinets ranging from Ampeg to Peavey to Marshall to Fender, and a lot of stuff in between. It was an awful lot of money tied up in amps and such, and getting them in and out of the room was a real pain in the ass (the room was about 10'x10', jam-packed with amps and cabinets, and the one we needed for any given day was always in the far back corner! you know how that goes!).
Anyway, I'm glad I have the Cybertwin. I have to admit its not a perfect simulation, but its darn good. One of the things I particularly liked about the cybertwin, and primarily why I chose it, is that it really is an analog amplifier, and it has multiple preamp circuits, multiple tone circuits, and multiple post-tone circuits, and as you select different presents, the amplifier rewires those analog circuits using relays. So the Cybertwin actually rewires the audio path to match the amplifier its simulating. Then after the effects loop (if its patched), there is a series of DSP's that add flanging, chorus, delay, etc, and the s/pdif out is tapped right there, and the audio continues to a D/A converter that feeds the power amp for the celestian speakers, as well as the XLR and TRS analog outputs.
That other bit of "glitz" that is cool though utterly not too useful, is that the knobs are powered - as you change presents, all the knobs short of the master volume, rotate to their "patch" position, so you have visual as to how the amp is set.
Anyway, I like this amp a lot as you can tell. When I purchased it, I was really in the store to buy a Pod-Pro to do as you described - guitar to pod pro, pod pro via s/pdif out to the console. I happened to see this while wandering the floor, waiting for the pod pro to be pulled out of the back room, and I changed my mind in about 25 seconds.
The analog circuits being rewired by relays, is what I considered the "key" selling point.
