OP,
I know what you mean. I was just comparing several different recordings of Shostakovich’s 5th symphony. Poor quality recording gets dismissed immediately, there are quite a few of those. But I was in a real quandary between two, one more recent (Boston Symphony 2023 I believe) very well recorded one where i felt the conductor sped things up in places and lost the impact of the piece. So, I went back to my “go to”… 1980 Cleveland orchestra version… while clearly less resolution, the performance was worth it for me.
But in general, I’m not interested in poor recordings