This is the kind of thinking that tool makers like Masakuni pray for. Some fool that thinks buying a superior tool for gobs of money will somehow propel his collection of Home Depot junipers into a collection of Kokufu masterpieces.
How many years you gonna spend on praying at the alter of bonsai soil mix before you start posting some pictures of these really great bonsai that "you did"?
Now for the good part. There is not one thing in any soil recipe that could not be afforded to the plant in many ways. The "soil" is not why a tree grows well or poor. It has nothing to do why a plant or tree grows. In a container, which we as bonsai practitioners do, soil is needed for a number of reasons.
1. to provide anchorage for the plant in a pot,
2. to fill the void provided in the pot,
3. to hold the needed moisture for the roots,
4. and provide the medium in which to hold beneficial bacteria and the needed nutrients for life. ....Period! How this is accomplished is simple. The soil medium has to have ample particle size to provide the free exchange of air and allow water to flow thru and it needs to hold enough water as vapor for long enough time to get recharged with water, and it needs to have some cation exchange (CEC) to allow fertilizer to stay within the pot and not wash thru. That is it. No magic what so ever.
How this is done makes no difference to the plant. The plant is a semi inanimate object with no nervous system, no vocal chords to speak and frankly does not know if it is a juniper from Home depot or a 600 year old deadwood masterpiece from the mountains. There are asthetics involved with the soil medium placed in the void of the pot for anchorage of the tree. While perlite may just be the best soil medium for a potted plant known to man, it looks terrible in a pot, being stark white. Pumice also is light in color and not asthetically appealing on its own. Lava is good being quite dark, and porous though heavy. Akadama, being brown in color and sifted to larger sizes and being clay which is good for moisture retention is also a good component. It does break down and turn to mud, which I do not like. I don't care who you are and could frankly care less what your professional name is, I don't want anything turning into mud in my pot. I defy anyone to prove to me how turning into mud is beneficial to the root mass, possibly making anaerobic conditions which indeed cause root rot. Not water as wrongly stated by many, anaerobic conditions. For this reason alone I will be removing akadama from my show tree soil mix this year and providing sifted and graded bark in place of the clay component. A good bark particle could also add the beneficial water retention as well as upping the CEC to above average conditions while holding its shape for years and not degrading.
Plants and trees absolutely do not need soil to grow! Plants and trees get no action from the soil that will make them grow better except controlling the size and shape of the particles for increased or decreased air exchange. This is a scientific fact and proved countless times in many voyages to outer space with NASA. The closer a soil mix is to aeroponic or hydroponic conditions, the better the plant will grow.
Now, fashionable soil is for humans and bragging rights. It is for people to feel better about the plants knowing that they have spent lots of money to make something that poor people have no access to and therefore I am doing it right! .....Period.
Lots of reading here, much of it from Universities and Ag extensions
https://www.provenwinners.com/learn/dirt-dirt-potting-soil
https://extension.illinois.edu/containergardening/soil.cfm
http://aces.nmsu.edu/ces/yard/2002/121402.html
http://garden.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Can_Plants_Grow_Without_Soil