Hi Zebra03,
It all depends on how they ripped it to disk drive, meaning which encoding method they used. IMHO, the MFSL Gold Trilogy CD, Mastered by Steven Hoffman is unlikely to be surpassed, unless they reprocess his master tapes for SACD. Our friend here
@Delmarva , has FLAC'S of the MFSL Gold Trilogy CD, and his assessment is: "This is the best SQ he has ever heard of Trilogy
". I've also ripped this MFSL CD and other MFSL CD's to FLAC, in the event I'm too lazy and want to stream the music through my
Yamaha NP-S2000).
There are many modern remasters, where the mastering engineer has his/her head squarely up his/her rear-end. It is not uncommon for them to crank the gain to the Max and then limit the dynamic range (compress the hell out of it). I was burned by this with AC/DC, Metallica and Queensryche, to name a few. My original release CDs from the late 80's and early 90's sound far better than the so-called "modern" remasters. These examples I just mentioned are not uncommon, I found the same with some Styx remasters as well. These examples are pure rubbish.
Money wasted.
On initial play, some "modern" remasters tricks us, at first, because they sound louder, so we first think: WOW this sounds louder, it's got to be better, but then we quickly discover there is NO dynamic range (One of the biggest advantages of CD's. It's like the whole album is at the same loudness.
@FOH Engineer and I have both discussed this topic in much detail and we both concur how some of the new, so called, "modern remasters" are this way (junk).
Now, there are some modern remasters that are the Tops in SQ. Deep Purple - Machine Head 2012 Remaster, Zep Jimmy Page Remasters and Rush Bob Ludwig remasters are all good examples of modern remasters done right.
EDIT: In fact, I recently purchased the 1993 Rush 2112 MFSL Gold CD as an experiment. Certain aspects of it still sounds better than my highly regarded and much respected Bob Ludwig Rush Remasters. They are close to a tie, but the MFSL is slightly warmer sounding, and with a more natural "analog sound". However, the difference in this case is not enough for me to go drop another ~$150 to $200 more on the 3 remaining MFSL Rush released CD's from that era. So if you think about this, the Ludwig remasters were done in 2012 with all the latest and greatest processing equipment and by one of the world's greatest Mastering Engineers, as compared to the processing equipment was available in 1989 thru 1993 (for MFSL CD's). So, this is proof how outstanding the MFSL, Steven Hoffman "Magical Mastering Touch" is/was. (He still consults for other HiFi grade labels to this date). My recent acquisition of DCC label, Steve Miller Band - Book of Dreams was Re-Mastered by him in ~2003 and has all the same excellent qualities of the mastering he'd done at MFSL up until ~1993. So anything vinyl or CD MFSL (or any other HiFi Label) that has is "touch" is pretty much the tops in SQ.
EDIT: I have not looked or listened to the two YouTube links you've provided as of yet. Do they specify the encoding method used?
Cheers,
-Blitz
