In the world of jazz this is especially true; many life changing, essential records have been essentially dumped from their master tapes to CD with no essential mixing, compression, mastering, etc. Didn't someone on this list once drop an anecdote about the drums being ENTIRELY erased from one Miles disc, because the brushes were incorrectly identified as "tape hiss"? Terrible!
The recent series of Blue Note remasterings by Rudy Van Gelder has mostly resulted in better-sounding reissues, although the stuff with a hammond B-3 on it sounds kind of brittle to me. Infinite Records, who seem to be out of Spain, are making amazing-sounding mid-line price reissues. Their issue of the Ellington FARGO CONCERT will be my Christmas gift to pretty much everyone this year. It's beautifullly improved (although they could not increase the piano levels, but that's what you get with a remote live recording from 1940). Likewise, their Slim Gaillard and John Kirby packages each sound miles better than anyone else's anthologies of those artists. They're not much for liner notes, but I'll forego that much. They go for complete label canons (ie all the Kirby for Columbia & RCA etc, and the stuff just sounds fantastic. BTW, for punk CD issues, nobody commented on the fantastic job Rhino has been doing with the X albums. Also was told that Rhino's new reissue of Randy Newman's classic GOOD Ol BOYS is the stuff of the gofd, complete with a whole second disc of unreleased stuff that's all good. skip h