"Telarc never made D2D records - they were the first to market digital recordings made on the Soundstream digital recorder. But it was not necessarily their recording technology that made them a standout, although it was groundbreaking at the time, it was their use of minimal miking, often using just 3 microphones to record an entire orchestra. The result was a recording of massive depth, air and imaging, far surpassing the compressed and over-miked recordings of Deutsche Grammophon and others."
RCA was doing this in 1954 when they introduced Living Stereo which at the time were only available as R2R and didn't make it to vinyl until 1958. Soon after all the major labels followed suit with their own take on how to record the perfect symphonic recordings.
"But strangely NONE of ELO's are great quality, same with the Who."
You just haven't heard good mastering's. ELO did have some very good originals. Their first No Answer is exceptional, at least the early copy I have. The 33n a 3rd Mofi Super Vinyl of Eldorado and the sound quality of the original I used to listen to in high school was one of the aspects that attracted me to them with Jeff Lynn's outstanding compositions, arrangements and his futuristic engineering techniques show on all of these albums. The Legacy Out of the Blue and New World Record are among the best recordings on vinyl I've ever heard.
Regarding the Who, the MOV remaster of Who's Next which was supervised by John Astley is outstanding which says the original engineering and production had to be good because you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Following that up with all of the Abbey Road Half Speed Masters also supervised by Astley that became available in 2022 with My Generation and A Quick One of which Generation was cobbled together with whatever pieces of masters they could find were followed up by exceptional versions of Sell Out, Tommy, Quadrophenia etc., again the sow's ear thing I mentioned.