I
guarantee that if I replaced every plug-in in the last song I posted with equivalent plug-ins from Waves or Slate, the emotional impact on the listener would be identical - and that few, if any, people would be able to tell any quantitative difference
whatsoever. People who expect to re-capture the "magic" of vintage gear better have the talent, experience, and ears of the people who used that gear. You can't buy that or engineer it into a plug-in. Anyone who thinks the emotional impact of their music depends on the plug-ins they use needs to study music, not plug-ins. Yes, I want the best sound quality possible. But what's
vastly more important to me is to write the best music possible and plug-ins have nothing to do with that.
What made classic tracks magical wasn't the console, tubes, Pultec, or any gear. It was that musicians played together in a studio, often after months of honing the songs on the road, with engineers who had the experience to capture that magic and producers who had an instinct for making the right judgement calls about what was a great performance.
The late, great John Simonton once said it best: "Give a real musician a couple spoons, and they'll make great music. Give someone who's not a real musician a Synclavier, and they'll never make great music." To which I would add anyone who would spend hours on an internet forum promoting spoons from Lakeland Incorporated as being superior to all other spoons would likely be dismissed as having nothing of substance to contribute.