The sound of real tape vs an emulation

I do love using retro audio formats, in fact I have draw full of sealed audio cassettes, I don't really know why but they do look pretty cool.
I have vinyl too and I love buying a record I've owned at least 5 time before in the past, I may have gone from the original vinyl release through CD and now part of my Spotify play list but I've never owned it on heavy weight 180 gram vinyl which for some reason very satisfying..

As an audio engineer I have to be quite a bit more discerning when it comes to utilising bygone formats. The advent of digital technology in music recording has been revolutionary and in my opinion has brought 'sound quality' on in leaps and bounds. The degenerative process of bouncing down tape passages and the shear time consuming nature of tape editing is thankfully no longer a necessity but that doesn't mean to say tape is a thing of the past.

I am still using analog tape in 2019 as part of my mixing and mastering set up and it's not for any esoteric reason but for the simple fact that in some circumstances in sounds great! Like any other effect digital or analog, it doesn't alway do the trick but when it does, its like magic. Here's a video I prepared with some comparisons of the 'Reel' thing vs an emulation and then digital. For me, it depending on the different parts of the song as to which format I preferred.