Direct 2 Disc

Oops yeah I just assumed since Sheffield made lots of D2D their website would have them but no. Go figure. Oh well, search em out, DuckDuckGo makes it trivially easy to find. The Goolag, not so much.

Its true what you said, D2D is no guarantee of SQ. Better Records is more consistent if SQ is the only goal, but even there not all are created equal and if the recording and mastering engineers dropped the ball ain't nobody ever gonna be able to make up for that. 

Still, D2D is a lot of work. Musicians have to be able to perform straight through one good take. Nobody ever made D2D to save money, its all about the sound. That tended to carry through to the pressings. So a much higher proportion of D2D are good relative to pretty much everything else.

Sheffield did some good D2D recordings.  I like a couple of their Harry James records--"Still Harry After All These Years" and "King James Version"; also
Amanda McBroom-"West of Oz" and "Growing Up in Hollywood Town";

M&K Realtime Records did some really good D2D discs, such as:
Bill Berry--"For Duke"
Earl Hines -- "Fatha"
Dukas-"Sorcerer's Apprentice," Chabrier-"Espana", Debussy-"Nocturnes"

On Concord Jazz:
LA4-"Just Friends"

There are certain labels that did terrific sounding records that are not D2D but just as vibrant and alive as that type of records.  Look for the Japanese Label East Wind, the original issues are better than the reissues, so pay more and get the originals.

The D2D that you refer to are probably from Blue Heaven Studios in Salinas Kansas and they offer up quite a few selections of seldom or never recorded artist which I have about 20 of and they are all well done. My favorite of theirs is a Pinetop Perkins recording at 45 rpm, check them out.

The albums I referred to above are D2D even the 45 rpm one by Pintop Perkins.

D2D's are somewhat hard to find, but if you live in a large city, or can get to a near by one, many of the larger record stores can and do have a fairly large collection of Sheffield Labs D2D's. Or other D2D labels for that matter. Just examine them very closely for condition. Some of the earlier Sheffield's I had developed a lot of surface noise, even though I handled them carefully and had a proper TT setup.