I'm not saying the SSL isn't popular. I'm just saying it's certainly not the best sounding console out there. The newer ones, the J series do sound much, much better. But the earlier ones, and even the best of them, the G+/Ultimation are so full of electronics...well that's what they sound like. I've used them plenty and even gotten a some decent mixes on them. But if the goal was to work on a good sounding console it wouldn't be a first choice. Personally though I think their computer is the worst I've ever worked on...from the first ones to today's)
IMO, the SSL really started us down this path of squashing the crap out of a mix. Until it arrived with a compressor on every channel and a master compressor, few mixes were over compressed. I do give kudos to Mr. Clearmountain. He's great. But for a while there, in the first few years of SSL being the defacto console of pop/rock mixing, there was a ton or absolutely horrible mixes. People couldn't resist the gadgets. Some guys would gate and compress every channel. At least as I see it, the ability to have so many compressors so easily accessible made it hard for mixers to resist. Things got louder, harder and less musical by the misuse of this console.
I'm not blaming the SSL design team. They made a very flexible console that sounded mediocre, but was immensely successful. But, the technology did help pop music sound worse, not better. Just listen to music before SSL. Much more open, much more musical. Now again, I'm not blaming SSL for everything. There were many factors that were a part of why that happened. I'm just saying it was a major factor and had SSL not existed (and assuming no one else would have made a console like that) the sound of pop music in the 80s would have been much different.