Plug-ins are very good now—good enough that they’re not going to limit my ability to do good work, even if I had no outboard at all.
I find the same.
11 years ago when I left the previous studio I was working in and where I had an Hybrid mixing setup with a lot of good outboard gear involved, I was afraid that after I left my mixing would suffer because I didn’t have anymore those great tools. I struggled a little bit in the beginning to be honest, some tools I couldn’t the same result with plugins. Over the years I found solutions to most of them and then when I got UAD it was an huge step up. Nowadays fortunately I was able to get all the tools I needed inside the box to replace the outboard gear I love, and I’m quite happy with the results, it took time but it got there, at least for me.
When I set up my smaller west coast space I did make it a priority to have these things:
1176
LA2A
EQP-1A
H3000
I love all of those. Great Gear
That said, a good chamber and a good plate are two things that seem to have a little something that doesn’t really exist inside a computer—at least not that I’ve found yet.
I had huge problems with Plate sounds in plug-in format after I left the studio.
We had EMT 140 and EMT 240 plates there, and I really like the sound of those and got used to it. I missed those a lot some years ago, I even though about building my own 140 style plate.
At the present I use 2 different 140 plates inside Altiverb, and there’s also the UAD 140 plug-in which has 3 different voices inside. In a context of a Mix with the Altiverb options or UAD ones I’m able to achieve a result I like.
I still don’t have a replacement for the EMT 240 in plug-in format, if anyone has a recommendation please let me know.
Even more than plates I struggled a lot with spring reverb emulations inside the box, up to a certain point I didn’t like any of the option I had.
That was solved with GSi Type 4 plugin, and also with Line 6 Pod Farm reverbs (Fender amp spring reverb emulation)
Maybe in “solo.” But listeners don’t hear it in solo.
That’s a really important consideration that I feel we should have.
Tchad Blake said in an interview something along this lines “I like what I do but In the end of the day I want to be able to go home and have dinner with my family”
Working well and sounding good in the context of the mix is normally good enough.
And personally I take my job seriously and always want to achieve great quality but seeing my kids grow up and having time for the family is more important than being obsessed by the micro-cosmic details of a mix