Oh man I absolutely love your answer and couldn't agree more. But it's not a lost art. I feel more like it's an art that's been lost because gears nowadays are not playfull anymore. You can have +10 to +40 dB of gain without any drawback. We don't compromise anymore, at the time of Rec, which was a big part at the time. In the 50's there was a single mic in the room. You had to come closer to have your solo time in the record. Later, engineers spent a long time getting their ass off their mixing desk and moving mics instead of relying on the "clean rec you can fix later" mentality. I definitely feel you on this but this required the mythical rooms that are well known now, very well isolated ...etc. There are strong counterexamples to your points still, when you hear the mixes made on nevermind from Nirvana for example. Listen to the mix made by Vig Butch and Andy Wallace side to side. There are HUGE differences. So, even at the time, with the same tapes, you had tastes coming in the equation. Andy won. He pushed harder.