Are things being mic'd differently today?
One of the bigger differences I see is with drums. The tracking room in 4A had a reputation as a drum room, and we get some of that work. Several of the producers were using 20 or more mics on a drum kit. More than one on each drum, plus stereo overheads and three room mics, all precisely measure against each other. I expected phase issues, but the kits sounded fantastic, and of course you can phase align the tracks after recording either with a plugin or just sliding them. I've mixed some stuff where the drums were mic'd this way, and you're somewhat restricted because you have a lot of tracks with several drums on them. Levels and eq on the cymbals, for example, affect other drums to a considerable degree. My preference has always been one close mic per drum, except for kick and snare (either or both of which generally need two), and one pretty close mic (a KM-184 or 185, for example) for each cymbal. Maybe because only one of my earlier tracking rooms was as good as 4a, I didn't get in the habit of using room mics much, although they're standard for drums in Nashville. I like to have more control over each drum and cymbal in the mix with close mic'ing, and more control over ambiance with reverbs and echoes than with a bunch of room mics.