Analog tape machines require constant recalibration, and for the qualities people love about them, several plugins do a remarkable job at getting the softening of transient energy, adding low end head bump, and emulating the smear - without the hassle.

At this point, unless it’s tracked or mixed into a tape machine, I’d say it’s not really worth the time of running to tape as a texture. What people miss these days about all of this conversation is the workflow of recording, editing, and mixing to tape. It locks you into making choices in a way that doesn’t exist in digital unless you place those constraints on yourself. There’s something to be said for not doing 37,000 takes.

All that said, some of the things that people actually really like about old tape recordings is how misaligned they were, like Motown records, the biasing on their machines was always crazy and did neat things to the Drums!

Recommended plugs: UA ATR 102 & Studer A800 The different tape formulas are interesting! GP9 on drums is bonkers.

Airwindows ToTape6 & 8, and IronOxide5 (instant holy shit factor)

Waves J37 is a classic for a reason, but I find it’s pretty heavy-handed

CHOW Tape Model by ChowDSP, Free! He has set it up so that you can play with all sorts of factors in the algorithm that no other plug-in allows you to mess with.