The acoustic/country album I produced was tracked on black faced ADAT's.  So digital.  Some say those models had a nice sound and I guess that is possible.  Transferred to Logic and mixed.  Now I cannot quite remember this but I am thinking I mixed it on an analog console though.  Bringing all the outputs from the interface into mixing console.  So a bit of console mojo going on there.  Mix was done to hard disc and to the reel to reel stereo mastering machine at the same time.  The album is on CD of course but I used the reel to reel masters as the source because they just sound so great!  I think the reel to reel machine just suited this music so well.
 
Tapedesk looks good except I have got console emulation sorted in Studio One.  Both their own Console shaper plus the new CTC-1. I f I were to go down that route I would only be after the tape part of it.  That is why TAPE looks good to me for Studio One.  It is also very well integrated into Studio One.  I also agree with you in that I am not a fan of putting whole mixes through these things either.  Mainly Sub buses.  Just some stuff but not all.  I do like some things going direct to the mix digitally for sure.
 
Studio One has had a further update to 3.5.  We are now on 3.5.1 which has fixed a raft of things.  For me it is stable and always has been.  We have detected a few little things in 3.5.1 but nothing major.  We think the ADSR generators in Presence XT have been effected for some reason.  But they usually jump on these things quick though.  I am in the middle of testing that though.  Often people have issues that I just don't so it may not be Studio One's fault either.
 
 

Thks alot for your feedback ...

I made a reversion of a little known Liverpool band recently using Abbey Road J37 on the master bus and on a track effects bus in tape delay mode. It worked pretty good. Bear in mind, my only experience with tape is using an older 4-track cassette with reverse playback.

Ahah ...the most incredible thing for me is beign able  to change and try tapes within a second ...and not having to set up a whole rec session  !!! priceless !!
 
With all those great era things , still people making crappy music ....

Kramer master tape? worth getting?

If you have the J37 i would say nope ...it's really a great one but just don't take cause it's cheap /..
 
It's super easy to set up and the delay is exellent ..but this can be done in J37 , test it ...if you can ...

Ok. In my heart I really want an uad apollo twin and some of those newer moog, emt and console emulations. How3her I will stick to this sort of thing until I can get a newer motherboard and pc setup.

For some reason your previous reply about DSP vs. Native is not here. Anyway the reason I want DSP as well as I native is so I can balance my load. Whether the plug-in is native or not, I suppose it's the nature of the beast. Universal Audio have always sounded good to me along with TC Electronics Reverbs which came with a DSP card I used to use.
 
For the life of me I have two missions in life when it comes to computer music production, avoid Apple Mac and Protools - the forefathers of lockdown.