Now that we have all these great tools like SONAR, does anyone miss working with tape?

It felt like more of an exclusive club when you had to lay out serious money and then actually learn stuff in order to make a record. It wasn't easy. You had to have confidence to hold a razor blade in your hand, ready to perform surgery on your hard work and knowing that you could be about to destroy many hours of effort. No un-do key. There was a certain satisfaction in holding your work in your hands, gently threading the deck, cleaning the capstan, calibrating the bias oscillator, rocking the reels to find the punch-in point. Coming home with a fresh new 10-inch reel of tape and imagining what wonderful things you were going to do with it.
 
Then again, I used to repair my own appliances and work on my own car and drove a VW bus with no heat. If I wanted to learn something I had to go to a library or a bookstore. When I was away from home/office nobody could get hold of me until I returned. I could only pack around a music collection in the trunk of my car, not my shirt pocket. 
 
So yeah, I am nostalgic about many things, but would not voluntarily return to most of them.

Although for a LONG time I swore I would never completely leave tape, there's not much now that I miss about it. For a LONG time I couldn't get as good of a sound out of digital, now it's not only possible, it's pretty easy. Now, I did not say that digital now sounds just like tape but, (to me, anyway) it sounds as good (if not better)!!!
Nope, not missing tape here. 

I miss having three band mates standing around the mixer, to do the mix down and "mixing" as you recorded if you had to bounce tracks.  Making decisions before the final mix.
I just recently sold my last multitrack tape deck but still have a 1/2 track in case I want to destroy some 40 yr old+ tapes trying to play them back some day.  I've been getting silly money selling empty metal reels and the like.

The fact that it takes seconds to reverse a delay trail and put reverb on it, makes me actually seem to do that stuff less. 
 
I remember back being nervous, like Bit mentioned about cutting tape...especially 2", in front of others.  I also ran a 1" MCI tape machine that had horrible unpredictable brakes, and once every rare moment, you'd streach the tape..usually at the END of the night and you were getting too casual in fast transport speeds. 
 
However... I enthusiastically look forward to new technology and find it a tad hard to relate to analog purists and even get a chuckle out of the PC console emulators and all this other old gear software emulations.  WHERE'S the new stuff that's going to be around in 50+ years?  Is it going to be those esoteric mastering pieces?  Why is everyone and their uncle making an 1176 clone?  Thank God for a *Distressor* or something built within the last 20 years....but that's hardware.
 
Also, will we be able to play our mixes in 15 years? ...meaning will there be .wav files and the like?  I've already got a DAT and a pile of tapes, that I'm figuring I'll never listen to again.
 
All that said, I just got a new computer, X3e and some other software, and am enjoying a lean, clean machine, with some meat.  For now, VERY little 3rd party garbage, and love using X3 and what it can do.

I don't miss aligning a 24-track machine, or paying $150 for a reel of tape. I don't miss warning the client over and over again that he is running out of tracks, only to eventually run out of tracks because the client can't decide which take to keep. I don't miss riding levels, setting up the machine to +6 and trying to sweat more level out of the tape. I don't miss the hiss and distortion of magnetic tape. My studio didn't have automation (too much money), so I also don't miss every mix being a "live" mix and every mistake making us start over.
 
I'm pretty happy with the new way, although I admit I kind of miss editing quarter-inch tape. I don't know why. Maybe because it looked and felt kind of like magic.

I miss absolutely nothing about tape.

No , I can't say that I miss anything about tape ...
 
I was very glad to have come up in that era ...
it certainly makes me appreciate  what I have today as far as what can be done at home with the tools I currently have now ...
 
 
Kenny
 

I'm looking ahead to when I can simply plug a small wire, or wireless xmitter into the back of my head and relay a finished song, as heard in my head, directly to a computer or the cloud. Not in real time either.
 
Making music will no longer take any effort, or be much fun, I s'pect.
 
But to be honest, I miss the old wax drums. You got one chance to get everything right and it still sounded like.... well.... a wax drum. Apparently there ARE people who miss it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVTMPbMrU_0
 

I can't think of a single thing I preferred about working with tape. Although I can, at times, wax nostalgic about that era in general, comparatively, working with tape was a right PITA.
 
Regards, 

While I don't miss the age of tape, I do bless the years I spent amassing the knowledge and experience of that time. I still use some of the old school tricks to this day. I try to stay in the school of thought that even though the capturing process has changed the end result should be the same. At the end of the day, how good was the song and was that really the best take we could get.
I know the older crowd of which I am one often thinks, " If I had these tools when I was 14,..................".

I miss making tape delays....Thats about it really.

+1 to the "No"s

Another massive downside of analog is that everything is done in real time. Life is only so long, so processing anything in analog has little appeal when a computer can turn hours into seconds.

One word - No.
 
Cheers,
Jerry

robert_e_bone
I think that those of us who came of age in the world of tape have a deep appreciation for the incredible horsepower we have these days, whereas my son has NO CONCEPT of what a 'cassette' is.
 
I would say that the ONE thing about that whole era I TRULY miss with all my heart and soul is 'Album Art'.  I spent MANY evenings lost under the headphones while quite stoned, staring deeply into the beautiful imagery of Roger Dean and listening to Yes or Jon Anderson's Olias of Sunhillow.
 
Now, all you get is a mug shot of a snarky, smirking, Justin Doodoo.
 
Bob Bone
 

To be fair, what you've lost in not being able to sit stoned under the headphones gawking at trippy album art, you've gained in being able to sit stoned under the headphones gawking at an almost infinite supply of wonderful artwork on the internet.

I appreciate the convenience of digital as much as the next guy.  Tape did have a nice sound, tho, a certain fat roundness.  even my 1/2-inch 8 track Tascam 38.   You can get most of that w/ a nice front end channel or stack, however.
 
@

I got my first tape recorder for Christmas when I was 8 years old. (My dad had a WIRE recorder when I was a toddler.) I used tape recorders professionally in studios and radio stations for decades. I don't miss them. 
 
The OP asked for specifics, so...
Although I became a pro at editing tape with a grease pencil and a razor blade, the occasional bad edit was difficult to piece together and try again without a blip in the sound. Similarly, if a razor blade became magnetized, (which would happen naturally if a blade had been used a lot), every edit would have a blip. Knowing how to edit well with tape certainly informed my ability to edit digitally, but I'm glad I don't have to buy splicing tape, blades and grease pencils. Also, the Undo button is a blessing. 
 
I like what tape did for the sound of certain instruments, but the hiss was always annoying. Today's tape emulations do a great job, including X3's built-in emulation. UAD's Ampex ATR-102 with 456 tape sounds exactly like the real deal to my ears. And I can turn off the noise!
 
When I'm working on a project alone, I don't miss rewind time. I must say, tough, that rewind time was always a moment for the band to have a quick discussion on how to improve the next take. I keep that thought in mind when recording others, so even though all I've got to do is return to zero and start recording again immediately, I usually give talent a little bit of time to get their heads together before saying, "Here we go again" and punching Record. 
 
There are plenty more reasons to not want to go back to tape...like keeping heads aligned, making sure bias is set correctly for each individual tape formulation (you couldn't just swap to a different kind of tape without resetting bias), keeping alcohol & q-tips handy for cleaning heads...and the high cost of tape. The rock station I programmed was the first in my town with digital multi-track in the commercial production studio, and my main selling point to management was that we could quit spending hundreds of dollars a year on tape, eventually paying for the new digital studio. 
 
I miss the tape recorder like people missed the horse-and-buggy after cars were invented. It was fun, but this is WAYYY more fun.