Confusing replay quality with recording quality is classic audiophile stuff.
Recording quality has nothing to do with the hobby of high fidelity replay where the idea is to replay as accurately as possible to what is on the recording whether it was made at the finest state of the art facility in the world or by a mate of a mate on a 4 track Tascam tape deck in his dad's garage.
I can understand Classical music fans discussing which version of a performance is better, both from a technical point of view (noise and other flaws, the microphone techniques used etc; or from an artistic interpretation or quality of musicianship angle.
But with popular music (excluding cover versions) we are talking about original composition rather than multiple different interpretations of someone else's' work.
There's also a big misunderstanding amongst audiophiles as to why popular recordings sound like they do. The Oasis album 'Definitely Maybe' is often criticised as a 'poor recording' but in fact it is what it is intended it to sound like:
''The sessions were unsatisfactory and Bonehead recalled, "It wasn't happening. [Batchelor] was the wrong person for the job... we'd play in this great big room, buzzing to be in this studio, playing like we always played. He'd say, 'Come in and have a listen.' And we'd be like, 'That doesn't sound like it sounded in that room. What's that?' It was thin. Weak. Too clean.''
''Morris worked on mastering the album at Johnny Marr's studio in Manchester. He recalled that Marr was "appalled by how 'in your face' the whole thing was" and would question Morris' mixing choices, such as leaving the background noise at the beginning of "Cigarettes & Alcohol".
I have a Steve Wilson remix of Tull's 'Songs From The Wood.' It sounds excellent, very clean with crystal clear highs. It sounds like it was recorded yesterday. It does not sound like it was recorded in at Morgan Studios in 1976, which it was. (Not that the original is in any way a poor recording). But the remix just sounds inauthentic and 'wrong' to me, even though it is clearly better from a 'sound quality' point of view. It's 'Too clean.'
Someone earlier in the thread mentioned that The Ramones' 'End Of The Century' sounds a bit 'muddy'. Maybe it does. But that's part of what that recording is. With modern tech you could remix, clean it all up, make them sound like Dire Straits on speed. But who wants that? Not me.