[rhysesthesis]

Hi atticmike, you might like the feel of having the old AIR Distortion plugin parked on the ends of all of your channels. (It's included in… all versions of PT? I'm not sure on that, but it's been included in PT Native since 10 at least). Set it to hard clipping, lower the drive down to 0dB, raise its "ceiling" to 0.0dBFS, and it will be totally transparent up until you hit the rails in terms, which should be just like the old TDM systems in feel if not necessarily in technical terms.

That should be the easiest (and cheapest!) way to get that old school PT feel. You can also try setting it to soft clipping, which would be less true to the old PT mixer sound but could be cool in its own way, but be aware that even with zero drive the soft clipping mode of AIR Distortion adds a bit of gain, like two or three dB. If you want to try using it in soft clipping mode you would probably want to insert it at the ends of all of your channels before you start mixing, so that you can "mix into it," rather than dropping it in halfway through a mix and having to pull all your faders back to compensate for that level boost.

As someone who has spent silly money on fancy third party saturation plugins, I still use AIR Distortion maybe every other mix. IMO it is a very underrated little plug!