CD sound quality: original pressings vs regular remaster vs MFSL, etc

Great topic for a thread. I have a Marantz SA-KI Ruby and have regular vintage CD's, HDCD, Japanese BluSpc CD's, Remastered CD's, MOFI Gold CD's, SHM-CD, UHQCD's, K2HD's, MasterSound CD's, Canadian SACD, MOFI Hybrid SACD, multichannel SACD, SHM-SACD............

Each sounding different, some great and some surprisingly lousy for their cost. Every person has their opinion on which format they like or think is the best. I'm a collector so I have to try what's out there. Of course there always is the argument people have on specs, file transfer, reading, cd construction material, etc.

I have read discussions in other forms about cd formats and various artists and some agreements are surprising. On one forum the consensus of Bostons 1st album is the original US disc is the best sounding of all formats. The SACD is bright, Mastersound sucks etc etc.

As people have stated here, it's a good time to buy cd's since record prices have gone insane.....

Thanks for all the advice.  Re-entering high end audio after like 30 years.

I just bought an oppo/modwright 105 CD player.

I was going to do the streaming/save all my CDs to HD, but after some brief research it seemed like doing it well was more complicated than I wanted to deal with learning now, though I'll probably hook up streaming to my system eventually.  I've tried the amazon streaming on my iphone and it is convenient (though terrible for searching classical).  I'll check out Quobuz and Idagio when the time comes.

I own a lot of CDs and vinyl. More and more these days I'm just streaming. I have a new DAC that helps things sound good - in general I'd say "near CD quality". It is an MHDT Orchid.
I also think this is a great time to buy CDs - prices are good and seem to be going down. But lately I sometimes scratch my head - do I really need to own a physical copy of this? Dunno. Sometimes yes.
BTW, I kind of envy you that you have that Oppo/Modwright 105. From what I've read it sounds like what I need.

I have the Oppo/Modwright 105d and it is great when you upgrade all the tubes to vintage NOS, however, if I upgrade to a DAC I will be bypassing all the tube glory I invested in, so that won’t help me!

I have a hard disc in my Lincoln and loaded several albums for a trip.  To my discovery I had two different versions of the Police The Singles and was shocked at how much better one version was from the other.  It’s as if one was 2 or 3 clicks louder in volume.  This has proven to be an interesting thread.

In terms of which version of a CD to buy, a general (but not always applicable) rule for playing through good HiFi equipment is that an original CD from the 1980s or early 1990s is preferable to any remaster. The exception is classical music and some jazz where remasters of older recordings are usually better (in classical music and jazz when they remaster they do not add so much compression, as opposed to the ’brick-walling’ often done in contemporary music remasters) .

Most remastering makes things sound better on earbuds and in cars, but not on audiophile equipment. It might sound more impressive on an initial A/B comparison, but your ears will find it fatiguing after a while, and it won’t sound as 'musical'.