Quality of recording

OP, have you read up the "loudness wars"? If not, you'll find it very interesting.

Most material released in the 50s and sixties was mixed with assumption that listeners would be listening to AM radio in their cars or a transistor radio.  Most of the pop from this era actually doesn’t sound right to me when it is played back on a good system 

Yeah, except audiophile labels most of them have to do it most of the time, I guess.

That's the problem for us.

What about all the remasters and remixes out there. Is this attempt to satisfy audiophiles or simply to extract more money from consumers? I presume many of these producers/engineers paying attention to sound quality, bean counters couldn't care less. I state this based on better sound quality I hear on many of these remastered/remixed recordings vs originals. There can be no doubt some of this due to better adc and dac equipment, so not intentional about better sound quality, but at least some of these remixes superior, which is intentional.

I'd say most all of them do that want to sell any quantity of music; nobody is depending on audiophiles to sell music to except for MoFi and the like.... 

I know back a few decades ago - they might still do, I dunno -  producers would often listen to their mixes on relatively crappy systems, knowing that that's what most people would hear them on, or in their car, and try to get it to sound best for that.