i don’t think any dynamic range manipulation is being done, beyond the slight variations as a consequence of the other processing.

generally 0dBVU is mapped to -18dBFS with VU style RMS metering being used on the digital side as well. but that isn’t some kind of physical translation, it’s rather arbitrary and more a convention.

So no tape saturation? That would be to me one of the most interesting bits of the tape sound, at least for musical applications.

seems so, but there are thousands of good tape sat emulations, both paid and free. and i think some chowdsp ones might be open source.