Remasters-who does the best.

Mobile Fidelity is the first one that comes to mind for me.

I have tens of thousands of CDs

Wow. With such a great collection I'm surprised you have an interest in remastered CDs. You probably have all the originals and, except for all DCC, many MFSL, most Audio Fidelity, I give the nod to the originals, particularly the WG and JPN discs.

Most are one step forward, two steps back.

Regards,

I can't see your system, so I am blindly going to suggest you keep your existing CD's and upgrade to a quality DAC. In fact, if you still use a disc spinner, consider ripping your music to a server, then feeding a top notch DAC, and you may get what you are looking for by taking the mechanics out, and using the latest, and best, technology for listening to your 44.1 ones and zeros.

Putting older CDs on a music server with effective automatic loudness adjustment, like SqueezeServer, helps equalize the overall loudness across tracks and disks may go a long way towards making older duller sounding disks sound better in comparison to newer remasters.

In general, I find most newer remasters to be quite good. The lemons usually occur in the realm of remastered hits packages of older pop/rock/top 40 material where loudness adjustments are poorly or misapplied in the interest of pure volume.

The best example of this in my colelction is a CD collection of Huey Lewis and the News hits.

The loudness adjustment functionality on the Squeeze server does help alleviate this to some extent.

I've found that there is no single reliable remaster source that will always 100% do a better job than others, or even be better than original releases.

I see you are into 'classic' Sabbath - same here.

The quality of remasters is all over the map.

And so called 'expert source' threads on other forums about what release, remaster is 'the best' is subject to opinion.

I've found that some so called remasters that are highly regarded in the 'expert forums' are no better than the original CD release.

But - I will agree that not every CD sounds the same - remasters can and do sound markedly different - just not always 'better'.

And, unfortunately, some Sabbath release just don't sound good no matter what the release. For example, just did my own comparison of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath: 2 vinyl releases (one the original, the other a 'remaster') and 2 CDs - both different 'remasters'.

They all sound a bit different - but the bass mix in all is a smeared mess - I just can't get a good ear on Geezer's work for this release...shame that.

In comparison, I popped in a Mobile Fidelity remaster of Rush's Moving Pictures, and it felt/sounded like Geddy Lee was playing in my listening room - crisp clear punchy bass notes.

You do have to do your homework for what release you are interested in for a remaster - read up and then you really do have to get your ears on the release/remaster and make up your own mind.

I agree about Repertoire - very good. Another one which to me seems consistently good with rock is Legacy.

another vote for Mobile Fidelity, and Concord have some excellent remasters as well. Blue Note Records have released an excellent series of some of their very best albums, remastered by legendary recording engineer Rudy VanGelder, which are well worth buying.