They were always mastered, there was just the 90s-2000s race for loudness that changed how they were mastered. There are some genre's that benefitted from that loudness war (pop music sonics changed dramatically) but yeah anything which should have had subtlety got squashed to oblivion.
How do you feel about more recent re-masters where they have been more sensitive to over-compression and in some cases re-re-mastered to address the appalling re-masters?
I have some issue with re-masters that attempt to fix problems with the source material. I'm not a huge fan of artists tinkering with the original material, adding elements that got lost in the mix due to overdubs/noise, were not technically possible, or just re-mixing for their taste. At least Taylor Swift is up-front about re-recording her albums.
My gut is that music recorded/mastered to tape is going to sound 'as intended' on vinyl and everything recorded digitally (the old DDD label on CDs) targeted CD. I have nothing scientific to back that up though.
I don't trust them enough to risk spending money on more re-masters. I always go for the original.
Interestingly, I've grown to dislike music that is too perfectly produced. I like that the singing isn't perfect, there's some background noise picked up by the mikes, etc.
For example, listen to some of the Jefferson Airplane albums from the 60s. Those albums would never be produced today, because the band is a bit of a mess. The harmonies are out of sync, the pitch is imperfect, the timing erratic, everything is off kilter. But that rawness is, strangely enough, what makes the albums so endearing and a treasure. It's like the band has come by your house and is just having fun in your living room.
So much better than the antiseptically perfect modern productions, along with that awful ubiquitous autotuning. Barf. C'mon, dare to have a sour note here and there.
I find recordings of Moreschi (the last castrated tenor as far as I'm aware) to be very fascinating for that reason. The quality is terrible, he isn't hitting the notes or the rhythm particularly well, and yet it's really endearing.
https://youtu.be/KLjvfqnD0ws is one that has been digitally cleaned up but prefer listening to the messy version sometimes
Totally different type of music, but I feel the same way about rap.
Eminem's very early music feels amateurish, you can hear various audio issues. But it's some of its best work.
Now, anyone who makes an album can make something. That sounds absolutely spotless with about $2,000 worth of gear. Something's lost, there's something nice about hearing a mistake someone makes, but they don't have enough money to rerecord it so it stays on the record.
Rarely when I make my own music, I'll just leave some of the problems in there.
Most of the first CD's in the 80's were made straight from the masters engineered for Vinyl and Casette media. They sounded awful with absurdly excessive EQ in the 3-6KHz range. Non-technical people commented that they preferred Vinyl because they could "hear the Aluminum" in CD's.
This was eventually fixed and proper CD masters started to become common in the early 90's.
Another thing to consider is the natural aging of our ears. Even without abuse high frequency sensitivity degrades as we get older. Those 80's CD's probably don't sound as harsh to someone 40+ today as they did back then.
I remember going to hear the first CD player imported to our city, it was a big event. I wondered why they had picked speakers to go with it that sounded so horrible. It wasn't until later that I found out it wasn't the speakers.
Here is one that is particularly insidious: some of the remasters are done with new tracks, wherein the old musicians are replaced with session musicians, who do not have to be paid royalties and the like. I found out about this practice and began listening carefully ...
Session musicians replace the band members a lot even in the 60s or 70s. Often, the band couldn't play at all. They'd have to learn to play their own tunes so they could tour.
See "The Wrecking Crew" documentary.
Even for "Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass" there was no "Tijuana Brass". Herb was a session musician and decided he'd try making his own album. It was such a hit he had to go round up some brass players so he could tour.
