Back in the 1990s, compact disks would show a so called SPARS code. A series of 3 letters that could either be “D” for digital, or “A” for analogue. “DDD” indicates digital recording, digital mixing, and digital mastering.

My late mother in law had a huge classical music CD collection and I would browse it to find a CD to play, when given a choice “DDD” would be my preference since it was clearly a recording of the highest quality.

My mother in law would answer that this was actually totally irrelevant. What matters is the conductor and/or solo artist that delivered the performance. A poor quality AAA recording from the 1950s might have been the best rendering of a particular piece of music ever.

There is an interesting parallel here with presentations: the actual performance and the supporting slides.

Image By Attosaur - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, source.