Here's the most hackerly way to do this: rent a 10MHz, 10-bit or better data acquisition rig and hook its probe to the head amplifier of your VTR. Play all your tapes and capture the raw tape signal to your computer. This will only require 45 GB per hour, i.e. almost nothing. Process the signal after the fact, with perfect field/line sync correction, whatever audio compression/limiting/equalization you want, etc.

VHS only has 3MHz bandwidth, let's don't pretend that a software-defined VTR is not practical.

Answering your actual question: S-VHS vs VHS deck should not make any difference for playback of VHS cassettes. Cassettes recorded in S-VHS cannot be played on a VHS deck, so that would be an obvious difference.