Do you still tend to use some analog gear during mixing? If yes, what is it? I'm not neceserally asking about brands in particular, rather what do you still find hard to reproduce ITB and why?

I have for the last year and a half mixed primarily ITB because it's good enough now and I wanted to get better at it. I have recently after moving my studio and having a better setup started to use outboard while mixing... The most place that I find the most benefit is on the stereo sum of the mix with analog EQ and compression... it's possible to get something comparable ITB but definitely takes more experimentation

Where do you find the biggest differences lie when mixing ITB compared to a console and what are some common things you do ITB to get your mix closer to what your used to hearing?

Biggest differences are in getting good parallel compression to build up in a punchy but still open feeling way ... Saturation to be a full and smooth sounding... The stereo image is not as wide and full automatically... I would say in the end it's the mix bus that needs the most experimentation (ITB) to find a processing chain that will glue it all together compared to what the analog would be, in that I find my analog stereo bus signal chain is more flexible and able to be used more flexibly... Plugins do not allow as much change or manipulation to where they still sound as good as the analog equivalent

I totally agree with You, especially stereo image and saturation are always biggest headache ITB for me.

For example (for me) classic VCA (especially with THD) changes stereo spread a lot, however I didn't manage to get same results ITB. You already mentioned that it is a problem, but how do you workaround this? Could you give us some examples?

Use a plugin like the ATR-102 that has parameters that allow me to play with image and response curves..

Thank You Jacquire!

Sure thing