Folks with large collections.....

Playback gear has improved, the thing is, you can dress Newbee up but you still can't take him out to dinner! What the heck does that mean? : )

Viridian,
That may be true, but with the right disc and equipment you can go hog wild.

Nrchy - Re "What the heck does that mean". I'd guess that reflects your response to my attempt at a humerous barb about your attraction to solid state stuff. You might be suggesting that I lack class or manners because of the nature of my posts involving you. It could be your version of what Viridian said about putting lipstick on pigs. But, then, that would be too personal wouldn't it. Anyway, in case its not clear, no offense was ever intended. Life is far too short for that. :-)

Apparently Viridian has not heard the 50khz Soundstream recordings that Telarc did in the late '70s and early '80s! Else he could be qualifying his comment to at least exclude those from the swine.

What about the "remasters" many companies are doing now? I don't mean the off-label remasters, but rather the ones the major labels are doing themselves?

I have some of the remasters, but not the original discs, so I can't compare them. The remasters I have are still somewhat deficient, unfortunately.

Aggielaw, I have some of the RCA CD remasters - If I didn't have the LP's I might have thought they were OK, just sort of bleached out perhaps. But in comparison, well there is no comparison! I was thinking more about a lot of new issues in the late 80's and the 90's - I'm starting to believe that the recordings were a lot better than the equipment available for replay at that point in time - those are the ones I was addressing (although the first two I mentioned were old reissues of which I did not have an original copy). Some of EMI's Recordings of the Century are notible for performance and a few have quite good sound as well, but I have found many of their early remasters, DG and Phillips remasters as well, as you have. Lacking! I've kind of enjoyed most of the Mercurys, but then Merc was always about technicolor sound so I guess it shows thru in the remastering a bit more. I never had many jazz LP's to judge by, but so far I've been impressed by some of the re-masters by Blue Note, Verve, and especially Concord Jazz. I have virtually no experience with the other styles as I never saved my old worn out LP's and I'm not nostalgic enuf to buy reissues. But is kind of fun now looking thru the dust for nuggets.

You know, I already threw out all the CDs I did not like from the old days. Which is most of the 80's. I still have the Uchida because I remain smitten, but I have not had the heart to play on my new gear. Now I will. But I will say that my father's and grandfathers' that I just could not part with, sound great now. And some of my LPs I got used, I am just now starting to play with great improvement. But I have thrown out a couple dozen from 70s to 80s that now sound worse! So you cannot put lipstick on a pig but that's not the part I care about.

All my equipment was purchased in the late 80's, early 90's. I have Nestorovic 5AS loudspeakers, Lazurus cascade tube pre-amp, Adcom amp, Pioneer cd player, Phillips TT. I think it sounds fabulous. The good cd's from the 80'-90's sound good, the bad ones sound bad. The newer cd's are a big improvement from many of the older cd's, even though some still sound terrible.