It’s a crap shoot as to which will be better.
Back in the Vinyl only era [ cassettes are Lo-Fi ] quality varied drastically from plant to plant, sequence in the stamper run and most assuredly by country / region. Artists with clout could specify all their product was released from which plants and maximum discs per stamper. Plebe acts often shipped discs with barely any groove at all left at the end of the stamper run.
A pal in Canada called and told me a store-bought LP had 1KHz @ about -70db all the way through one side. Either the bozo making the EQ copy or the cutter left their oscillator on. DOH! It passed QC all the way from the record company to the cutting lab to the stamping plant and back to Atlantic Canada QC!
In the modern era, master tapes recorded decades ago have suffered the ravages of time - binder deterioration, print through, lubricant loss. Add in sub optimal storage and handling e.g. winding at full speed, storage head out rather than tail out to mask print through, etc and it’s amazing how good the quality can sometimes still be. As often as not, ReIssues leave much to be desired. The music may still be great, but the sound can be atrocious. Two CDs in particular: 20th Anniversary Dark Side of the Moon and Mobile Fidelity Yellow Brick Road. The only reason I haven’t thrown them out is to use as examples for the uninitiated.
Record companies may care more about the money than the music, releasing ReMasters which are nothing but some B-flat 3rd rate tech adding EQ and compression to an existing bit-stream abomination. See http://ielogical.com/Audio/#ReIssues for an example on Donald Fagan’s NightFly I.G.Y.
IMO, retail vendors do themselves a huge disservice by not allowing the customer to use their own reference material. Lord only knows how poor the source and transfers are to the likes of Tidal, iTunes, Amazon, etc. See http://ielogical.com/Lossy/ to see just how much they care!
Back in the Vinyl only era [ cassettes are Lo-Fi ] quality varied drastically from plant to plant, sequence in the stamper run and most assuredly by country / region. Artists with clout could specify all their product was released from which plants and maximum discs per stamper. Plebe acts often shipped discs with barely any groove at all left at the end of the stamper run.
A pal in Canada called and told me a store-bought LP had 1KHz @ about -70db all the way through one side. Either the bozo making the EQ copy or the cutter left their oscillator on. DOH! It passed QC all the way from the record company to the cutting lab to the stamping plant and back to Atlantic Canada QC!
In the modern era, master tapes recorded decades ago have suffered the ravages of time - binder deterioration, print through, lubricant loss. Add in sub optimal storage and handling e.g. winding at full speed, storage head out rather than tail out to mask print through, etc and it’s amazing how good the quality can sometimes still be. As often as not, ReIssues leave much to be desired. The music may still be great, but the sound can be atrocious. Two CDs in particular: 20th Anniversary Dark Side of the Moon and Mobile Fidelity Yellow Brick Road. The only reason I haven’t thrown them out is to use as examples for the uninitiated.
Record companies may care more about the money than the music, releasing ReMasters which are nothing but some B-flat 3rd rate tech adding EQ and compression to an existing bit-stream abomination. See http://ielogical.com/Audio/#ReIssues for an example on Donald Fagan’s NightFly I.G.Y.
IMO, retail vendors do themselves a huge disservice by not allowing the customer to use their own reference material. Lord only knows how poor the source and transfers are to the likes of Tidal, iTunes, Amazon, etc. See http://ielogical.com/Lossy/ to see just how much they care!