but listening to a ton of those and then going back to Live/Dead is a revelation.

I’ve barely listened to any audience recordings. I have seen people argue that in the early ’80s the good audience recordings are always better than the soundboard because the way Brent is mixed when you take it straight from the soundboard doesn’t gel as well as it does when you hear how the actual concert sounded. I can’t weigh in on that and it isn’t one of the eras that I’ve heard the most of anyway. I’ve listened to a bunch of 80s and 90s recordings recently, but they were commercially released and more were from the late 80s than early 80s.