[quote name='Phil Starr' timestamp='1498119652' post='3322578']
If only there was a simple solution.
I'd love to be mixing for a bassist (or guitarist!) who came to me with all their fx sorted out along with amp and speaker sims. In practice they often come along with a collection of separate fx, don't even think about how they interact, have any idea about gain structure or even which of their interconnects was the dodgy one last week. Even with multi fx they can set thing up so the tone is what they want but the noise levels are horrendous. Not a problem with a band you work with regularly but in one of these multi band things you've got minutes to decide whether you are dealing with a sublime technician or a flaky ego.
Miking up a speaker isn't ideal, ever. Moving the mic even a couple of cm across the cone will change the tone I'm picking up, I'm not going to get much sound from the ports and the mic itself will alter the tone so it's never going to sound the way it does to you. Even once I've got the tone close I've watched the musician who can't hear the PA decide they know better and move the mic, or just trip over the stand! Every mic on stage adds to the general noise floor and the risk of feedback from some weird resonance so most engineers try to keep mic's down to a minimum.
The biggest problem though is always the human one. Drummers who will move an overhead to put in their favourite cymbal, guitarists who soundcheck with one guitar then use a different one for the gig, singers swapping vocal mics. People wandering off stage without a soundcheck. It's all a bit like herding cats.
So, if you are happy with a generic (vanilla?) bass tone you're probably best served by a DI. If you use a variety of tones tell the sound engineer and offer them a post eq DI. Most decent engineers will be perfectly happy with that. Personally if someone has programmed in all their patches I'm going to be fairly confident they know what they are doing, if they are doing it on the fly with a load of gaffa taped stomp boxes then less so.
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This is much closer to my personal experiences.