I agree that space is often lost in modern productions of some genres, mainly folk music. In most other cases however, I'd say loss of space doesn't happen all

I agree that space is often lost in modern productions of some genres, mainly folk music. In most other cases however, I'd say loss of space doesn't happen all that much, or isn't a concern. With the most common cases I can think of being: - You're working in a genre that involves lots of electronic sounds, and space is something that you can go crazy with. Effects that spatialize sound realistically are routinely used and abused by electronic artists. Rock music is also generally mixed with very aggressive panning and spatial effects - it's just cooler that tame realism. - In the case of soundtracks, mockups might be used instead of getting the music performed. All the good orchestral samplebanks provide a unified sense of space, giving you the choice of mixing near/far mics for example. You might loose some sense of space by mixing different samplebanks, but that's nothing compared to the loss of realism in expressive performance that you'll get anyways. - In the case of classical music, recording is usually done in a proper, old-school, realistic fashion.