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

Beta had very good audio recording quality. Sony positioned Beta for more than just the video market, but since it never went anywhere, they didn't develop it further.

Sony did develop 8mm to offer 8 hours of extremely good 16/48 PCM audio. They had a few machines in the early 90s that worked a lot like ADAT, but again, it never went anywhere.

Now there is Blu-Ray....will it go anywhere? It's Sony....who knows.... ;)

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

I very much doubt it, Mitch. Also, btw, I think you mean to refer to "Beta HiFi," not to the plain Beta format.

The main reason Beta HiFi was able to CLAIM top-notch performance as an audio recorder was its specified dynamic range of 80db or so, together with excellent wow and flutter specs. However, as noted in this Wikipedia article:

Despite initial praise as providing "CD sound quality", both Beta Hi-Fi and VHS HiFi suffered from "carrier buzz", where high frequency information bled into the audio carriers, creating momentary "buzzing" and other audio flaws. Both systems also used companding noise-reduction systems, which could create "pumping" artifacts under some conditions. Both formats also suffered from interchange problems, where tapes made on one machine did not always play back well on other machines. When this happened and if the artifacts became too distracting, users were forced to revert to the old linear soundtrack.

I have one of the near top-of-the line Beta HiFi vcr's, btw, an SL-HF750, which was built like a tank and still performs very well playing back tapes I recorded in the 1980's. I think I remember trying it in my main audio system at one point in those days, though, with considerably less than stellar results.

Best regards,
-- Al

How about VHS Hifi?

I have tapes I recorded back in the 80s also in that format. Haven't played them in awhile though.

It was definitely better than cassette in regards to noise levels and dynamic range. Not sure if it matched reel to reel or not.

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I had a vhs hifi machine back in the mid-80's. I used it to make audio recordings. It did an excellent job, but it sounded nowhere near as good as my Dokorder reel-to-reel machine. I'd heard so much about how good beta was supposed to be for audio back then. Admittedly, most of what I read was what was in the Sony advertisements.
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As Al's research references the carrier buzz was a problem. I recorded many a Beta HiFi tape at the fastest speed and all suffered from this buzz.

I'd have to say when it worked it worked well, but not as good as reel-to-reel or any high end cassette deck for that matter.

Now DAT is something else.