Is remastered mainly just less jitter?

If you're interested in long, in depth discussions of which version is best, check out the Steve Hoffman Music Forums:

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/forums/music-corner.2/

George,  IMHO, while dynamic range is important to sound quality and the loudness wars are a blight on music, dynamic range isn't the only factor to consider when choosing between different versions of an album.

dynamic range isn’t the only factor

No there are other factors, but to me it’s the most important to start with and you can do something about it now, and the DR website let’s you be the controller of what you buy today.

Cheers George

+1 George, I agree - no one said DR is the only factor to consider but it’s way up there. In fact I'd guess that if anyone made a list of his least favorite CDs the CDs would score very low on the Dynamic Range Database.

Like the film business , it’s a sausage factory.

Quality meat goes in.... and ground up chicken lips and arseholes - comes out.

Whatever drives the masses.. to making it a mindless ’pull sale’ (buyer requesting to buy), is what is done.

It’s about the money. How much can be pulled from the mass of the market, and the mastering is dictated by where the mass of the market sits and exists, in lifestyle and points of view.

It’s a numbers game.

I also use the DR Database to compare recordings. IMO dynamic range is important, but it is clear from actually listening to some RBCDs and their SACD counterparts that DR doesn't tell the whole story. My rule of the thumb is close to that used by @georgehifi , which is I want records that have an overall "green" score. (Unless it is a genre that wouldn't exist if it had a green score dynamic range--Oasis records come to mind.) If the SACD has a vastly different lower DR than the RBCD, the SACD probably isn't worth owning IMO. However, if the scores are close, for example if the RBCD score is a 16 (rarely happens but they do exist) and the SACD score is 15, then I'm inclined to hunt the SACD down on the used market if possible. Mastering and remastering, whether found on RBCD, SACD, vinyl, or a "hi rez" file, etc. can be done really well and add value or be done poorly and diminish a recording.