R to R gets better every year. Look at the S/N ratio or A waited S/N either way they are really poor compared to digital. There is a whole host of problems bias, closed heads, dirty arms, magnetized heads, can't get tape, dirty tape, the wrong tape formula, they are mechanically noisy, take up reel noise, on and on.
When we changed from R to R to digital we couldn't tell the playback form the recording when we used R to R there was never a question about what was playback or not. They do have great sounding saturation distortion that is emulated better than the original on digital plug ins today.