Was Beta as good as or better than reel to reel?

Before the car 8 track players there was a brief period of time when they made 4 track units. They didn't have the pinch roller in the tape, but it came up out of the deck to hold the tape against the head. I had the first one in my area and had to have a 12 volt battery in my trunk to play it in my 1952 Dodge.

Lol. Isnt googling something you do after brushing your teeth? I had a nasty dose of VHS once...

You must mean Goggleing! LOL, now that I'm old I can remember archaic audio crap, but I can't even spell. Now where's my house..........................

vhs hi fi was better than consumer level reel to reel; beta had better video, but I can't recall if the sound specs were as good. The reason was, that head was spinning very fast, effectively yielding a very high tape speed. I used Canon. It was difficult to keep those machines working right, esp portable ones; very complex. wouldn't recommend them for that reason.

I had an Akai hifi VHS unit I bought in an audio shop (yes audio only) that was the bomb that I fixed several times to keep running. It was the bomb for vhs hifi recording.

I still have the Sony hifi vhs that replaced it. Not bad, but I lost interest in recording to vhs hifi when recordable cd-r for music came out.

Of course you can still buy hifi vhs recorders I think. I suspect a good Sony or equivalent to sound pretty good!

Still keep the old Yamaha cassette recorder hooked up to my system but never record there anymore, mostly used to play cassettes I recorded years ago. Other than higher background noise levels than digital, the sound is pretty good.