[JFreak]

One another thing to consider is the power supply of the analog gear. Even if digital is "perfect", analog is not. If you drive your analog stage to the extreme, it will sound nasty even though the digital side of the story thinks everything is alrighty.

Your final mix will likely have very much less than 24 dB dynamics so why bother taking risks? Just record lower levels, mix better, leave the hot levels to mastering.

I dare you. Next time you're tracking, prepare to record same song twice. One with hot levels and another with peaks at -20dBFS. Then mix both songs to your liking. Ask your best friend to pick which one (s)he prefers. I bet most of the time, the lower-level-tracked version is liked more.