I am a strong believer that incorporating the analog hardware in the process of mixing and mastering gives you an advantage when it comes to the sound quality. The studio has all the major plugin suites, but after so many years I can tell you that, while they are great, they're missing something the analog offers. I have tested many of the plugin emulations with the analog units, and there are major differences. You can get great sounding mixes with digital; there are some famous engineers that work only in digital with great results.

However, the vast majority of top engineers are using a hybrid approach. And even tough some mixes may be done only in digital - quite rare actually- when it comes to mastering no plugins are on par with the top mastering hardware. Almost without exception, all the famous songs are mastered and mixed using analog hardware. While in the beginnings, we used the digital technology, after a while we moved to incorporate the analog hardware in our mixing and mastering process. That made a huge difference in the sound quality of our mixing and mastering.

After so many years, I also found out that the incorporation of analog units made me use more my ears and feeling and intuition, instead of using my eyes looking at the screen, which decreases your focus as a mixing and mastering engineer.