Tape sound with real hardware sure introduces delay, because you cannot beat laws of physics. But have you considered real tube hardware sound to warm up your mixes? Something like
this. Only takes DA/AD converter delay when you set up a hardware insert (and that would be automatically compensated if you have Digidesign/Avid interface).
And by the way, tuning the sound is as simple as changing tubes. open the box, remove old tubes, replace with new ones, you have different tone. There is also 8-channel version available (I own one and use occasionally) but of course the good and bad point here is every channel is unique because every tube is unique. Then again, isn't that why you'd want "analog sound"
