Why is most everything remastered?

Let’s not forget that for vinyl anyway, the tapes used for the cutting were very often a copy with bass rolled of so the phono carts of the time could track it. New vinyl masters don’t require that since cartridges are better today and it’s a seen as luxury item with more spent on gear.
A to D converters back in the early days of digital were not nearly as good as now, and of course there’s higher transfers than 44.1/16.

I’m not saying some remasters don’t take a step backwards sonically, but there’s often no reason why it has to be that way.
A while back I heard the new Peter Gabriel remasters.
I would have bet that they were remixed from multi-track, since it was such a huge sonic upgrade from the first digital masterings. I posted on the Steve Hoffman forum about it and was told there was no remix, just a remaster.

Plus today we have better cables and power conditioning available, so if a remastering studio uses these, it should be beneficial. 

I‘ll never forget the experience aeons ago when a friend brought his spanking new MoFi copy of Sticky Fingers over for a spin. We waited with baited breath for the needle to hit the vinyl and then……whoa…….we both looked at each other - was the stylus clogged with gunk? had the amp settings been changed? Nothing untoward detected,  so I put my old British pressing on the platter and gave it a spin. Instant relief - there was real life in the music, we had greater clarity, bite and proper dynamics - it sounded like a proper rock and roll band was playing,  The MOFi pressing was sanitised to the point of being insipid and anaemic.

Proves you can butcher things just as effectively at half speed as you can at full..

@pesky_wabbit 

I haven't listened to MOFi of sticky, I have a survivor copy from years past that still sounds amazing. The original inner sleeve reads...

Engineers: Glyn and Andy Johns, Chris Kimsey, Jimmy Johnson and everyone else who had the patience to sit thru this for two million hours. After, so many hours  someone 50 years later has the nerve to mess with it.

Because so many CD's that came out in the 80's and 90's and beyond sound like crap the way they were originally mastered? Midnight Oil and Iron Maiden are just two that come to mind immediately - the remasters sound GREAT; the original releases of their earlier CD's are awful. 

emailists

there were speed wars, size wars, and equalization wars.

you seem to have a misunderstanding of the RIAA curve that won the equalization wars.

the EQ curve is identical today to the EQ curve that was normalized way back when. Cartridges then, and now, and bass signals then and now are cut, traced, and boosted the same progressive amount they always were. Same for highs, same now as it was.

LP = LONG play.

In order to get MORE material onto the 12" size that won (MORE material), at 33 rpm speed that won (to get MORE music per inch than a faster speed):

BASS was electronically CUT, to minimize the physical WIDTH of the grooves, so MORE grooves could be included, thus LONG PLAY!

Then, the reduced bass was electronically boosted to be EQUAL to the original prior to being cut.

The opposite was done to the highs.

any cartridge that was able to produce MORE bass, prior to the boost in Eq would produce exaggerated bass.

music with a ton of bass is recorded/mixed to be that way, and to end up that way after the good old eq curve does it’s thing. it ain’t the cartridge.

remastering to get more bass is simply pandering to current bass heavy trends.

.......................

aside from RIAA standard, just like Fletcher Munson 'Loudness' curves, any engineer or equipment maker may choose intentionally to vary something. a mistake could lead to a preference, but this has nothing to do with cartridge bass output then and now.