My boss and I are trying to start a moderate project studio. He has the question of why all major studios use big digital consoles? Is it for the pre's, for the digital control, ease of use? Is there some digital console secret that we are not seeing? Can you not do the same thing as someone with an icon board and protools, with logic pro, apogee converters, a nice array of preamps, and something like the euphonix controller? I understand the differences between logic pro and protools. He just dosnt want to invest alot of money, and down the road realize why everyone else uses a console.
to answer your question: sure. you're views are right on and sensible.
Boards like the ICON itself act as a giant mouse and inherently have no preamps and really end up serving 2 genereal purposes in the studio:
1) It's layout, by design, brings the "ol school" engineer a surface he's used to. It sounds silly but, there are engineers who are completely allergic to mixing inside the box, especially issues concerning automating giant mixes and sifting through enormous sessions. When you've been used to automating with flying faders and actually doing the motions of running up and down the board for so many odd years, it becomes difficult to stay stationary in one spot 80% of the time. It brings a streamlined work flow for medium to big business, as well as a familiar medium for most veteran professional engineers.
So the large format digital console is really a combination of marketing tact and consumer demand.
and
2) this is really gonna sound silly but, the look. Most people react favorably to the giant boards. To the client, the legitimacy of seeing a large format console sets in the reality "this is a studio". Luckily, for most artist it's not as important as a good product. So essentially it's a luxury, not an absolute.
Having a board like the icon won't make your mixes sound better, it's just designed to make things easy and flexible.
At a project studio level, that all doesn't matter. In fact, it's more cost efficient to cut out all the bullshit and get right to the core. As long as you have a good mic, good pre-amplification, and good A/D...you're all set.
I personally opt for combo consoles, the ones that actually combine analog with digital, because I feel like the money is put to practical use at that point. Unless you're mixing these giant 120 track sessions, large format consoles are overkill.
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