Lots of gear, especially those with transformer balanced inputs and outputs, sounds different depending on how it interacts with the gear before and after.
Finding the best order for your gear (taking advantage of good interactions while avoiding the bad) is an essential part of assembling an analog mastering chain.
Find the fortuitous gear interactions and the chain becomes more than the sum of its parts.
That's the art and science of assembling an analog chain, and it’s a strong argument in favour of a fixed chain, rather than a console swapping devices in and out, and all the uncertain combinational interactions that entails.
It also highlights the futility of trying to replicate an analog chain in emulated plug-ins, where the sum of the parts is, mathematically, just the sum of the parts.
Better to make a new chain of digital-first devices and reap all the recent advances in that realm, than chase an emulated analog simulacrum.