This is an interesting discussion with philosophical, theoretical and practical elements. I am not in any way an advanced thinker or practitioner on things analog. However, I don't think anyone has addressed these issues with respect to a mylar tape drive, which is essentially inelastic. I will say that I believe that unless you have perfect pitch, I would think that it would be better to have a TT whose speed has better precision than accuracy. IOW, within certain bounds, speed stability is more important than speed accuracy. A table that runs at 33.6 rpm, +/- 0.05 rpm, would be preferable to a table that runs at 33.3 rpm, +/- 0.5 rpm. I made those #s up to illustrate my point; I have no idea how audible those variations would be but I hope you get my point.