Project Passionfruit

hey there.

at the moment i'm traveling around the world doing a collaborative arts project. we record layers of music from people from different countries and backgrounds. its been very inspiring so far. i was working on a tascam dp006 pocket studio and a sort of gopro camera. which really did the job. since a couple months i'm traveling an external sound card and macbook and a canon. this obviously gives me better quality but there was something magic in using the more 'invisible' equipment. i want people to feel 100% comfortable while recording. this brings me to my question..

"whats better? recording in less quality but with a highly comfortable artist. or recording best quality in a setting an artist might feel a bit more looked at?"