It’s occurring to me what I’m missing

The new Neve MBT shouldn't be bad either.

It’s notable that there’s no consensus on what makes the biggest difference in this area. As Moose said, it’s a game of inches. I haven’t particularly noticed that my high sample rate projects have any particular quality beyond larger file sizes, but I’m not closed off to the idea.

I've mixed in 88 and 96 a bunch and I definitely think plugs sound better. But there was always the downsampling...

I hate to say it, but I remember a mix done by our old friend the Cowboycoalminer. It was just packed with muscle. It had that thing you're still looking for. He did it on his modified Ghost board. I believe it's just the board itself.

I listened to the Dangerous Music 2 bus +, and the color circuits sounded a whole lot like the effect of using a board,. The similar SSL piece didn't do it for me.

Not much unlike a formula 1 team trying to shave fractions of seconds off their lap times... those performance benefits are rarely one specific thing. 

I'll just say that to me, regardless of converters... regardless of the shop... and this is really super easy for anyone to do (or should be anyway...) 

Across the board the higher sample rates sound more like the input. If anyone's ever worked on 2" tape you know the difference between monitor input, playback off the record head and playback off the play head. They all sound a bit different. They all sound like music, but its kinda like looking at the same picture through different windows. 

The first time I heard it was producing a record at the Phish Barn. We tracked to 2" and wanted to dump to PT... Pete Carini said we need to run at 88.2 and we were all a bit skeptical. Drive space was expensive in those days. But he set up the blind A/B test... dumped one song at 44 and 88 and ya know what? 

Everyone in the room heard the difference. Full stop. No debate. 

Even here, now today... I can print a mix off the SSL and the 88.2 even through "lowly motu" converters is indistinguishable from the output of the desk. At 44.1 everything collapses inwards ever so slightly. 

I hear it. Most of the artists I work with hear it. And the mastering cats? They absolutely hear it too. 

We're chasing greatness yes? Most of this forum, especially all the naval gazing on "whuz the best ____" is about chasing greatness... seeking those small improvements... yes no?! 

Honestly I think the two things that I've learned that create more separation than anything else in the mix:

ONLY using LCR in mixing.
HPF and LPF on every single track or group.

I've recently been mixing some stuff from tape from the 80's and it's crazy how little audio is above and below the instrument in the tracks. Say if I recorded drums today, there would be a ton more above 10K and below 100Hz than exists on the tape track. It's a whole LOT more confined in the spectrum.

There's just TOO MUCH information in a modern track that people just leave in and believe that they are doing some kind of justice by leaving it in. I now cut everything that isn't massively contributing to the tone of the instrument and I'm doing a whole lot less other "mixing" because of it.

That's a great idea. Yeah you listen to something like Rumours or any of the classic tracks we love and it's rolled off and like not much below 80Hz.

Just thinking out loud...all those weird "problems" that digital has solved has made things antiseptic or clinical.

I'm still not sold on the idea that sims are somehow *that* different.

Real amp chain:
Guitar-cable-pedals-(amp-cable-speaker-air-mic-cable)-preamp-interface-digital

Sim amp chain:
Guitar-cable-pedals-preamp-interface-digital-(sim amp-sim speaker-sim air-sim mic)..

So half the physical chain is probably identical between the two and the other half is simulated similar. 

What I'm interested in is once a signal is digitized, it's never going to be "more" than what is captured.  If you capture an amp/speaker being directly played then the tone/harmonics/dynamics are all locked in digital stone at that point.  

So if you capture the tone of the amp/speaker through synthetic means and deconvolve the tones, then you're still getting an exact replica of the tone of the amp/speaker/air/cable, etc. and the digital representation is still the same set of 1's and 0's as the real amp directly.  

I have heard a difference, but then I set about adjusting things and eventually found that settings can almost always null out the differences in tone.  I currently have a Marshall sim that sounds more real and appealing than a real Marshall played in the room at this point.  It took some adjustments, but I think the discrepancy was always more about differences between the amps that are captured for models than whether the models are "accurate".

As we all know, a discerning player can play 10 of the same amps and still pick a favorite, and sometimes that favorite sounds drastically different than the others for whatever reason.  I think some of the sim models are picked for specific things, or maybe that's just the amp they had available.

Just me though.

Literally as I read this was listening to the Chain, roll off more like 40 or 50, bunch of stuff around 60hz on the Quested without subs according to the FFT.

Great topic. I could go on and on but time will only allow some random stabs.

Regarding dimension, left right is easier because there are two material speakers, um, left and right. So the lateral plane is relatively real; tangible.

But front to back, well we don’t have a near and far set of speakers to achieve that. So the impression of depth is an illusion. So the record needs to project those cues which could fool the brain. Reverbs, phase relationships, hi freq content, resolution of low level acoustic cues. Etc..

With this in mind, dimension is captured with mic technique (or not) and then must be preserved through the remaining production process. It’s not about “introducing” dimension at some later point. It’s more about not loosing it along the way (which is easy). There are too many examples in recorded history of simple, direct to 2tk records which prove this analysis. No special devices needed other than fundamentally hifi gear and good engineers. Some of the biggest, widest, deepest mega-mono stable sound stages to be had..

In that vain, plug ins or other devices which widen or ms process are the last cheat one should reach for. Fidelity is the ally.

OK - you're being obtuse. Not going to argue.