Alan,

I do want the opportunity to try adding some of those old echo chambers I
have to to some of my tracks, just to see how they sound against my plugin
echoes.

I don't even have to ask what type of old echo boxes you have to know how
they differ from a plug-in! Again, add some grit and roll off the highs, and
you'll have the same basic effect. And you'll never have to change a
lubricated tape loop. I'm not saying you shouldn't experiment! That's the
best way to find out for yourself. In the end I presume you'll agree that
the vintage stuff really wasn't so good after all.

I might be able to do some nice final detailed tweaking ON THE FLY of my
mixes, as well as being able to hear any changes I make in the EQ instantly,
versus the delayed time that it takes working on the PC.

Wow, you shouldn't have any noticeable time delay. My PC isn't even very new
(2.24 GHZ) and I can get the latency down to 1.5 milliseconds with my Delta
66 sound card. I usually have it set in Sonar to 10 to 20 ms, depending on
the song complexity. But even 50 ms isn't long enough lag to make a big
difference to me when mixing.

Not to editorialize here :-) but I could never go back to the old method of
riding faders manually. I've been using DAW automation since SAW Plus was
the hot DAW, and I find it infinitely better than riding faders. You stop
the music, adjust the volume envelope, check it and adjust if needed, and
never deal with it again. When I used to do this professionally 20+ years
ago it was always a huge hassle to make all the level changes needed on
multiple tracks while a song played. I even built my own console with two
faders per channel, and a toggle switch to select one or the other, to make
it easier to bring up a guitar solo or whatever on the fly. Even with the
extra fader the process was a nuisance compared to what we have now. IMO of
course.

--Ethan