Tangmo,
Thank you for detailed post! As you mentioned referencing audio....

I am lucky owner of Neutron 2. I picked it up at very reasonable price because I wanted couple of plugins within main VST, but never went beyond of what I was comfortable with.

Janice & Bud suggested yesterday very similar approach to what you are describing. This morning I located the "extra" plugin within the Neutron suite, which is magical. It is called "Tonal control" It analyzes reference track and shows your frequencies and how they stack up against targeted "feel". Then it lets you tweak EQ for individual channels in single VST window. I am overwhelmed with fantastic response that people gave. Most importantly, views shared many similarities which focused on couple of items that I should take more seriously when mixing.

Thank you!