It's totally different! In the first case you're using a violin instead of a viola, you have something that is physically doing something different. in the second case you're trying to make a viola play like it's a violin. You're manipulating a signal, and no matter how good you do it, you degrade the signal to some extent, especially if you're clueless of all the technicalities involved. Of course especially in mixing, you gotta do the best you can with what you have, if someone delivers you a turd, well you gotta try to put some make-up on and try to make it look like a cake. Just last night I had to make a reverbered iPhone recording sound like a studio recorded SM7B, I had to use AI to remove the space via a tool that costs a fortune, de-essing, corrective post-eq and so long and so forth, people listened to it and where ecstatic: omg this seems like magic! Yeah sure I prefer the edited version, but I hate all the artifacts that *I* can hear. Want a recording to sound like a SM7B in a recording studio? Use a SM7B in a studio, easy!
As for the reverbs Al Schmitt used: yes he used many, lexicon and emt 250 are delightful (he had the real emt), there's also the capitol chamber uad plugin they went to sample the responses of the chamber, I never used it, bricasti also great, keep in mind he would never send more than 1 thing to each, and he was very parsimonious with echoes, the role was to give size and body to the different parts, very difficulty you'll find some songs he did with tremendous tails and spaced out. For the outboard, sure early days was very limited, the man started when eq and compressors didn't even exist! But he always used top notch outboard, his late selection was outstanding, when he died they auctioned all his outboard, I was so sad, luckily all the rare microphones were kept by the family.
For the sound: it's not necessarily mixed wrong, as for the balance pretty much everything is either pink noise contour (3db/oct slope equal perceived energy) mixed or 4.5db/oct (more bass heavy), and more rarely someone delivers something a bit brighter. The density instead we're going towards bricks of sound to no end. Yeah it's crazy town, pop music gets mixed mid heavy and hyper compressed, people do U curves because they like the sound, but what they're doing is boosting the overall signal and adding transient again basically, and most people don't level match, because otherwise they would calm down and realize yes they're boosting low and highs but also at same loudness they're making the midrange disappear. Midrange is where the content is, low and high is where the emotions of the songs often sit. So it's a cycle of crazy yes hehe
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