ITB Vs OTB? When Is OTB Really OTB?

[Beyersound]

I hear people preaching all the time about summing OTB through an analog console. Is it really that important? To play devil's advocate in asking this question, people also sum OTB into digital consoles. I have spent thousands of hours mixing on large and small format digitals, and they sum beautifully. But isn't this type of digital summing pretty much the same as summing ITB? An example of this is Steely Dan's "Everything Must Go". It was recorded into Nuendo and mixed on a Yamaha DM2000 digital. This is a reference quality record if there ever was one. Was this truly OTB? Your thoughts on this and the summing thing in general...........