This seems to vary a lot. A couple of days ago I was diging through an old box of VHS commercial recordings and found "Waterworld". Amazing film, very under-rated but what made it truly stand out was the quality of the recording. Picture as sharp as my TV will resolve, no dropouts and brilliant sound quality. There's a scene where the lead character is teaching a girl how to swim. I don't know the title of the music used in this sequence, I don't even know it it had a title but it was entrancing; very good to listen to.

One difference between VHS and DVD sound seems to be that VHS does not have the extreme peaks and troughs that DVDs have. Could this be because very low audio signal levels made tape noise noticeable?

If it was recorded and played back in VHS HiFi, then "hiss" and tape noise should be undetectable.

Not prerecorded, but the bass on the Unledded broadcast I taped off of MTV in '94 just blew away the first audio CD release of the show. I don't know where in the chain this happen but the the CD sounded way flatter than the HiFi VHS. That was on a RCA / rebadged Mit compared to a Yamaha CD player through a solid state Pioneer amp on Advent Legacies.

Since I finally have my laserdisc up and running, I picked up a copy of Unledded on LD to compare it to the VHS and CD versions I have. It is being shipped.