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Originally Posted by MASSIVE Master  At the risk of going sideways somewhere -- Most of the time when I hear "warm up" this and "less digital" that, it's from people who are either using questionable gear, questionable gain-staging ("as hot as possible without clipping" is NOT the way to get good sounding tracks, no matter what the manual might say) and overdriving the input chain, or just bad-sounding sources.
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Absolutely. To add to Massive points, digital has come a long way since the days of very bad converters and when we didn't know that much about how to/how not to apply processing to digital recordings. We learned that transparent digital is accurate, but so accurate that any of our practices are extremely exposed. So we learned we had to use really good preamps, mikes and miking techniques, good monitoring, and conservative processing, which will get you a lot closer to "warm" than applying a soggy tape bandaid on top of bad processing and/or bad outboard and converters.
When done well, 30 IPS 1/2" should sound so transparent that it adds the most subtle enhancement to a good recording and has no obvious down sides. That's what you should look for to tape, not an automatic warmer for bad digital recording practices.
Yes, there are people who use analog tape as more than a little "glue" but as part of their attitude processing... In that case, anything goes, but hopefully not by accident, but rather by intent or design.