Why no interest in reel to reel if you're looking for the ultimate sound?

sdrsdrsdr134, I am so into R2R that I haven't posted on this thread in regard to R2R, but that was in response to "Raul" always commenting on distortion and noise.

I agree that R2R is a great format.  My 1980s recordings are really low noise and have the breath of real life. 
I have dozens of 1950s pre-recorded 2 and 4 track 7.5 ips tapes that are super dynamic and open sounding.  
I also have about 100 1960s 3.5 ips pre-recorded 4 track tapes that are okay, not great.  Especially classical music where all sorts of shenanigans occurred (e.g. Bruckner Sym. 5 with Klemperer-the 4th movement has a sudden lower volume at tuttis versus the LP and CD versions).  I suspect little effort to make the 3.5 ips tapes was done.  Hiss is also prominent.  The 7.5 ips 1960s tapes are pretty good and dynamic but mostly pop music.  With over 500 pre-recorded cassettes, they do not sound wonderful to me on my Nakamichi ZX7, especially classical.  My own non-Dolby recordings made on a Tandberg 310 sound wonderful played back on the ZX7 with very very faint hiss.  Tape quality and live source makes a huge difference.

"As much as I can appreciate the best quality pure analog, today’s digital is so so-oooo good that I can’t spend $450 for the tape."

Indeed that would be true if the digital file is as good as the master tape. I can testify to that, having archived many 15IPS master tapes in my collection in a straight zero level transfer with a professional Prism Sound A2D converter. The digital file sounds pretty much indistinguishable.

The problem is that many modern digital files are not just transferred, but remastered from the tape, and are often made worse. This is particularly true if compression is added after the transfer to make the sound "better" on a phone, rather than on an audio system.

I purchased a TEAC 1000R in 83 when I was in Germany in the Army. It has been stored since the 90’s. It is not that I didn’t like it, but I never used it. CD was the new kid on the block and I bought a nice Dbx player and built a collection. The few years that I did have the RTR in the system it was more for show. I had 3, six hour reels that I recorded and played back once or twice. The unit has well under 100 hours of total use, again at that time I was all in on CDs. One of these days I will dig it out of the closet and service it and prolly sell it to someone that will use it.