>>14081746valid conclusion. It's so personal to each of us. My working perspective is that it's always been harder to have pristine, clean sound in the past. And it's always easier to add dirt with plugins than it is to clean up a shitty sound. So I err on the side of clean sources to start, and then dirty them up after the fact ITB or by reamping through analog gear. Honestly, the disortion tape and noise plugins have gotten so good that I don't really feel a want for any outboard. I can dirty things up just fine ITB.
But the point about knobs and interacting with an instrument is also an important part and a really good reason to not work itb.
Pic related. Between this, Devious Machines' Texture, Output Thermal, IK Tapes (the Tascam tapes are lovely) and Nebula 4 for Preamps and transformer saturation, I'm pretty happy.
But as always, do your thing the way it makes sense to you
