I just listened to the three profile types (Studio Direct and Merged from a Mesa Triaxis pack I bought with and without Cab for Merged and Studio obviously). The Merged and Studio sounded nearly identical with the cab on. However, there were actually MASSIVE differences between the three types with the cab off. I was actually shocked by how diffident they sounded ?
How can a direct amp profile have a cab?
If you load a real direct amp profile, this is the "authentic" sound.
Deactivating the cab in a studio profile: The Kemper automatically uses CabDriver algorithm to separate the amp part from cab part. It is a guess. And sounds different.
The amp part of the merged profile schould sound the same / very close. I do not want confuse anyone, but it seems the merge process does also slightly influence the amp part. Sinmix has comparison sounds between direct amp profiles vs merged on real cab and saying using the direct amp profile is the best. Also had the idea to use the original direct amp profile and copy the (more precise cab) from the later merged profile and save it as a new profile, but now without merging
To make the confusion complete, some known sellers (that also have official Kemper Rig Packs) do not make real merged profiles. They just copy any cab to any profile (often direct amp profiles, sometimes studio profiles) without ever hitting the merge button. Still call the profiles (just saved with another cab) "merged".