Why is most everything remastered?

So many reasons to remaster with many not being worth the time to chase down but many are well worth it. Depends on who is doing the remastering and why. Some of the older recordings are damaged to some degree and need remastering to rebuild what was there. Some were terribly mastered to begin with and maybe it is not totally correct to remaster it so it sounds better but I certainly appreciate that and some are butchered to sound like what they believe the masses are looking for, those I try to stay clear of. One begins to know who to chase down and look for their remastering.

I sure don't agree with the Giles Martin remixes not sounding good-I think they are fantastic.  Sgt Pepper sounds as though a veil is removed and Abbey Road has brought some buried parts forward that are nice to hear. 

I agree that Sgt. Pepper has a great amount of detail that has been revealed. It's more lively, noise-free with clarity, and a judicious use of compression. However, I find the overall timbre to be lean and thin in the highs. The type of tipped-up high-end found on earlier remasters. If these issues were addressed I would call this remaster a masterpiece.

Don’t forget most of the music released in the 50’s and 60’s was meant to sound good on a 3" car speaker or mono record player.

I’ve been collecting a number of BluRay and DVD silent films and have marveled at how optically clear and rich the remasters are. The soundtracks are typically engaging and do a good job of supporting the film. The BluRay versions offer uncompressed mono soundtracks.

So far, I’ve been happy with my mono Speakers Corner and Analogphonic pressings. Many 1950’s recordings used filtering techniques which can be bypassed today. I do agree however that there is a money driven craze to remaster anything and everything. It’s simple to understand that if the original source tapes aren’t in good shape, then there’s only so much that can be done. I scoff at those who make remasters from a compromised source, i.e. an original vinyl pressing rather than using the original source tapes or even the source wax cylinder for that matter.