I as well use Cubase for all my demo's, before actually tracking. It's way easier, of course. I've also done plenty of rock albums at studios using Protools and if the engineer knows what they are doing, it can sound really, really incredible.
For the Park St. Trio album, I really wanted an older, more vintage sound. Since I knew somebody that liked using his tape machine, it seemed like an easy way to do it. It's also faster in the editing/mixing area, because you have less tracks to deal with and none of the musicians can say anything about "fixing" notes or changing tones, adding effects... It's just, what we recorded and that's it. We did, of course, use high quality mic's, and very specific mic placement as well as isolation for the bass guitar. The vibes, drums and guitar we all in the same room. Next time I think I would isolate the vibes a bit more.
Here's a video, you can see myself on drums and the guitar player, the vibes are on the right and the bass is actually behind the camera in the iso booth.
Doctor's Doctrine
The new Organissimo track sounded sweet!!! I love that mellow groove.