Perhaps you aren't aware of the hardships that orchestral musicians face nowadays, compared to thirty years ago.

Every single film and TV show that featured orchestral music used the real thing (there were plenty of synth and dance pop scores, even then, though) back then. This is NOT the case, right now, and few orchestral musicians can support themselves (compared to the 'golden days') by playing alone.

This isn't the complete demise of the system, but it IS a substantial collapse. Ask any 60 year old clarinetist living in LA...!

The thing that has always struck me about modeling is that, the more accurately you want to model the sound, the more input parameters need to be used. A real acoustic instrument is a very chaotic system, with vast differences made to the sound from a plethora of different sources. Take your clarinet (by FAR one of the simplest 'tones' to emulate);...

To emulate a clarinet PERFORMANCE, rather than just the clarinet 'sound' (sampling can do that easily enough!), you have to model just about every performance technique the clarinet player uses. Tonguing, reed pressure, wind support, 'bite', reed angle, fingering technique (clean, slid, fluttered, etc.), a myriad of other ways to influence the sound, and how the notes are joined up and produced.

For the model to have the ultimate realism, EACH of these variables needs to be controlled independently, and what performance tool offers so much simultaneous controls...? Certainly not any keyboard. Even wind controllers are primitive in their ability to send codes for every one of these parameters. No... the best controller to be able to control a clarinet emulation model is... a clarinet!

Kind of defeats the point, doesn't it?

Not only do you have to posit a computing technology that is the stuff of sci-fi to be able to emulate more than just ONE instrument, and a modeling technique that is light years past the point where we are now (still haven't been pointed to ONE accurate model, yet), you also have to posit a controller for the model that is virtually as complicated to play as the real thing...

And, once again, with current technologies, you can see the huge leaps ahead in sampling that are being used by the major orchestral sampling libraries (and in a small way, the SA voices on the T2/S900) by switching between different samples of different performance techniques in real time. THIS 'state of the art' is already capable of fooling the listener. No need to develop something that would be MUCH harder to control, MUCH more processor intensive and has still to be determined if it CAN go the whole way (or even as far as sampling has already gone)....

But ask that LA clarinetist what he's most afraid of... modeling, or samples? I'm pretty sure I know what he'd tell you...