Ok this is how I see it.

What Mr Cone is doing is offering an inkset that works well for digital negatives, that has a lot of value. He also offers curves to go with the inkset. So if you use his curves as he suggests with PDN you will have a nice smooth grain free print with a minimal photoshop adjustment curve. Essentially what he offers is an optimal colour to be used in the PDN system.

You cant tamper with his QTR curve directly, you must linearise it for your process using PDN.

However a lot of people have got used to directly using QTR at some level or other and would prefer to use QTR directly to linearise their process. Theoretically this should produce the cleanest print. This is the approach favoured by Ron Reeder. Sandy King has a QTR curve available for the 3800 and the Carbon transfer process.

There is apparently no gain in resolution in using Cone ink over Epson ink, using QTR. QTR out resolves the Epson driver, so there is a gain to be had using PDN with QTR. The Cone ink set is probably less grainy. If one wants to bypass PDN and use the Cone ink set one must start from scratch in constructing your curve. Apparently someone is producing a spreadsheet that can do this for you.

If Mr Cone made his curves human readable we would have a starting point and one could quickly make a curve that would work without a photoshop adjustment curve, it may not be up to Mr Cones high standards but may meet your requirements. Making his curves directly alterable cuts Mr Nelsons snout out of the trough but one must still purchase Mr Cones excelent inkset. Of course nobody is stopping you starting from scratch and making your own curve using the Cone inkset.

I may have the wrong end of the stick somewhere or betrayed my ignorance, so shoot it down if you like. I have no axe to grind. From my point of view following Mr Cones system requires the purchase of QTR, PDN and software, Mr Cones inkset, Photoshop in addition to an Epson printer. The direct approach requires purchase of QTR, an Epson printer and possibly the Cone inkset.

Time v Money