Help Me Understand Why Reissues & Remasters Are So Important To So Many

Of course, it basically means "slightly less background noise".

case in point: PiL "second edition" US version

Incidentally, I do care about sound quality, have an expensive stereo system, don't listen to MP3s, and only use my computer speakers for listening to things online, never for other music. Perhaps that skews the theory.

Oh, and I actually do own moderately decent speakers and headphones in addition to the mp3 player, so I might be the minority.

With care and attention, along with assistance from the latest in digital technology, extremely sophisticated things can be done to the frequency balance and attack response of the music so that the new master can sound almost entirely different. This is why Bob Dylan's acoustic guitar is so much more present in many of the CD remasters from last year (I'm not even talking about the SACD layers), or other recordings seem "warmer" or "more detailed".

I think it is awful that many original CD masters were not attentively done, but there also have been technological improvements that were not available in the late 80s.

At home, I listen almost exclusively now to well-made MP3s (--alt-preset standard VBRs) through a very good amp on very good speakers - MP3s do not equal computer speakers.

Still, people would buy something like that if it had a "digitally remastered" sticker on it. I took Mark's question not as "why do some audiophilically (?) informed music fans value remasters?", but "why do people who really don't know or care about sound quality believe that a remastered version of a record is something worth buying?"

There's all sorts of "5 CD's a year" music buyers that would purchase a Beatles remaster because a) it's the Beatles, and b) they'd heard from someone that digitally remastering is the shit.

Plus, for me, hiss = rock.

That's a bit of a silly question. Some of us DO care about sound quality, and welcome the opportunity to replace poor-sounding CDs we originally bought 15 or even 20 years ago, when quality standards were much lower, not only WRT sound quality but also packaging, art, etc. In 1986, it didn't matter that the Velvets' Loaded sounded like crap - the mere fact that it existed was miracle enough, and so we jumped at the chance to buy it.

That's a bit of a silly question. Some of us DO care about sound quality, and welcome the opportunity to replace poor-sounding CDs we originally bought 15 or even 20 years ago, when quality standards were much lower, not only WRT sound quality but also packaging, art, etc. In 1986, it didn't matter that the Velvets' Loaded sounded like crap - the mere fact that it existed was miracle enough, and so we jumped at the chance to buy it. If we coulda seen 10 years in the future that Atlantic would release a brand-new, elaborate version of "Loaded"...well, you get my point.

I've already been through this once when I finally had to concede defeat in my battle against CD's and had to start resisting the urge to repurchase albums I already owned on CD the first time round.

Of course there are always a few exceptions.

The buy-each-iteration-of-a-classic-LP folks, in my experience, are borderline audiophiles. (But then I used to hang round in those dodgy corners of the web where such people gathered and this is a lot of what they talked about. It's a skewed experience.)

Most of the best reasons have been mentioned already. As it happens I have only recently started to buy CDs that I already own on vinyl - (a) I can afford to now, and (b) the technology has advanced enough that it's worth doing so. That said, it's generally the promise of bonus tracks of hard to find or previously unreleased stuff that tempts me to buy.

192k mp3s are, thankfully, starting to gain ground against the 128k standard.
But they still can't compete with uncompressed CD quality. Pink Floyd's
_Wish You Were Here_ really made me realize how limited MP3s are;
the 192k files clearly lacked the grand, spacious feel that I was so accustomed
to.

Of course, if you smoke enough weed none of these really matters.

jazz is probably the worst genre irt the constant re-releasing of old material, so i usually wait for something to be remastered before even considering purchasing it. i just dont like buying something and then seeing a (usually superior) new version of it within a few months. although i havent replaced older releases with new ones yet, i am tempted to replace some of my old blue notes with the RVG versions for the sound quality and also because older blue notes have the bonus tracks directly following original versions of the songs, instead of having them at the end, which can be annoying.

I bought the Illmatic 10th anny. CD because I forgot that I already owned the old one, and actually like the album a lot more now. The old one was a little muddy in comparison.

Funniest question evah.

Ah good friend. I'm making an exception for the Aladdin Sane revamp since that has bonus cuts where the Ryko one did not.

For other people it's possibly just that the reissue experience -- reading through new liners, going through bonus materials and videos, putting the remastered mix on your fancy stereo -- is an improved nostalgia experience (or just a different one) than pulling out your old dusty copy and listening to it the same way again. Or at least different enough to be worth $20.

Why of course. Now please always mark every Cure reissue as 10/10.