Why go FULLY itb, rather than hybrid?

Yup.

What if there were PCI-e cards or the like, with transformers, etc. in them? There could be repeatability and yet some out of the box flavor. Maybe this is the future.
It seems that Wes Audio was heading in this direction with the Titan 500 series rack and 500 series units, but I believe that is USB operated. A PCI-e type arrangement could be more powerful, perhaps with a 500 series rack that connects to it. With so many going itb, it seems that hardware manufacturers need to think outside the box - pun intended.
Just thinking out loud here! '

That's exactly what I said, you're adding junk back into a very clean medium. Without a bit of additional distortion / harmonics etc. it can be extremely difficult to get a mix sounding wide, dimensional or loud.. Whether it be tracking boxes with a bit of colour, summing mixers or ITB summing consoles it's all there to achieve the same goal.

However at this point IMV it isn't an ITB vs. OTB debate, it's one of general quality. Plugs IME are just as hit and miss as the clone HW market, I've had a few 2A HW clones and plugins alike that sound nothing like the originals (or variations of).. 

I have had way more than a decade comparing my ITB vs OTB mixes.
OTB always is much better to my ears.
Wider stereo image / more punchy and powerful and more separation.
Tubes / inductor EQ's / vintage console modules / class A gear / Bricasti and spring reverbs / tape delays / passive mix busses + tube preamp make up gain. All items together blow ITB away.
I'm lucky that I have slowly collected an amazing array of the best of the best over 3 decades.
And I LOVE my plug-ins too

If I was only doing electronic / sample based music, then maybe I would change my mind and find ITB better?

The great exodus to ITB mixing allows me to differentiate what I do compared to others - so it is a good business move too.
Keeps me working.

And I'm going to go back to.. I mixed almost entirely OTB for almost 15 years. I used the DAW and converters as a *tape deck* and very little plugins up until about 5 years ago. Since then I gravitated towards a more hybrid ITB/OTB approach and then within the last year, entirely ITB.

In that time I learned one important lesson, one that people already know but for some reason don't apply to this situation..

The people (including me) who hear that OTB sounds better than ITB are doing so because they are mostly OTB and have gotten used to getting the best out of it. Just switching to ITB and not learning how to optimize but still trying to compare is not a genuine reflection of how ITB sounds. You don't just buy a compressor and put it in the rack and expect to get the best sound out of it right away, right? You want to try to find the best (sweet spot) settings, right?

It's taken me a while to get things optimized and figure out what works best and I'm finding it's MUCH better than OTB in many ways.

And also learned one thing while doing all this.. Customers might be wow'd by some gear but ultimately they don't care as long as it sounds good.

Definitely deja vu. But times have changed a bit since I last waded into these waters.

If I had to guess, I'd say it's pretty rare at this point for someone to be 100% ITB or 100% OTB. It seems like, while there are some purists, most OTB people are actually OTB-Leaning Hybrid and most ITB are really just ITB-Leaning Hybrid especially when you factor tracking in (and excluding electronic music styles).

All very interesting. For a long time the idea must have been that while you could mix ITB, there was no way to make them sound the same. Mr Holmes says he just dials in now. So perhaps it is possible, just the methods to get there aren't as straightforward. ITB is a very open world and everyone has their own style with the gazillion plugs out there.

However, like I said before in some thread, I'm still waiting for the plugin that can do what a real tape machine does. That's not a knock against software necessarily, either. I am getting used to these new RND 542s and while they are nice, they still aren't much like my tape machine. I've yet to hear a plug or other hardware give the musicality and tucking in of that machine. Could I achieve it ITB? Maybe so. But maybe they aren't thinking that way with plugs yet. And maybe it would be difficult/more time consuming (until a template comes into play)

As a for instance, if you throw the UAD Ampex ATR-102 in plugin doctor, you'll see a dead accurate EQ curve of L/R. It appears as only one line. Perhaps that is indeed how that machine can be aligned, but I think IK did a good job with their true stereo and transport modeling. I feel like their tape plugs get a little closer to that "je ne sais quoi" because you can see there's a little movement involved as well as both channels not being dead nuts accurate curves to one another. Even my brand new RND 542s can't match *exactly*.

I think we are getting there but can you imagine having 10s of thousands of tools to choose from if you were opening a studio in the 70s? You had API, Neve, whatever consoles and machines there were. Then you worked with it. Finding that workflow and set of tools is just so much more open ended and not a given towards a specific result in the digital world...

I’ve probably posted this before, but two things I noticed specifically - using unlinked or dual mono where you can helps bridge the gap quite a bit.

Second, if I start OTB and try to match it ITB, I usually fail. If I start ITB and try to beat it with analog I usually fail.

There are just so many decisions piled on top of other decisions, it’s very hard to interrupt that flow with an abrupt turn.

MJH

I'm sorry but this is not true.  You an have an APPROXIMATION of everything ITB.  And really, not even that.  Not "everything".  There are a lot of analog pieces I love that are not modeled as plugins.  If you want to mix ITB - Go for it!!  Don't call it an equal to analog.  It's not.  Just as analog is not an equal to digital.  Use both for what they are best at and be happy.  To prove your way is best when others disagree is not helpful.  Use BOTH and get further faster.

This thread is tedious.....

I'm probably in a crappy mood, as I've got Covid and can spare no empathy right now. LOL  Be safe all....

The best digital things are decidedly not emulations! The emulations are a joke compared to stuff like Presswerk, DC8C3, Kotelnikov, and Molot. They’re mostly horrible.