yeah i think it is true that most of the soundboards from the early 80s are not very good. the mixes on the couple of Dick’s picks from that time are no question the worst sounding in the series. but early 80s dead is one of my least favorite eras anyway so i haven’t really looked into The audience recordings enough to compare for myself.
by the late 80s and early 90s the sound was much better, though id like to turn vince down about 75% sometimes on those 90s shows with the MIDI synths.

i think there’s probably more interest to hearing audience chatter and whatnot on old dead recordings since it’s so long ago that it’s an interesting way to be transported through time. the quality of dead recordings has such variability that the really good audience recordings are sometimes as good or better than the soundboarda but i usually don’t want to sift through tons of versions. there are many shows that will only ever exist as AUDs though and it’s definitely good that those have been preserved in some form.

an interesting contest with phish who have a very passionate and dedicated taping community, yet their official live recordings are all studio level quality so i just pretty much ignore the taping scene completely.