Old CD dynamics vs Remastered?

I have nothing against either in general.

Digital remasters of a lot of older material (50s era and earlier) tend to most often deliver new revelations and opens up listening to a lot of otherwise long forgotten recordings that I do not remember ever sounding good in my youth.

Elizabeth - Remasters are cleaner but not necessarily less dynamic. Noise or distortion can often make impression of more vivid sound (clean jazz guitar sounds less dynamic than distorted guitar).

More often than not, I find the originals more pleasing than the remastered versions. Sometimes a remastered version is also remixed and it makes me crazy when a song that I really like doesn't sound the same anymore because someone thought the the new mix would be better.

IMO, the pluses of digitally remastered CDs far outweigh the general tinny non-dynamic sound of earlier recorded CDs. I deliberately seek out the 24 bit digitally remastered CDs. Right now I have Jackson Brown's digitally remasaterd "Fountain of Sorrow" CD playing and it sounds light years better than the original. Guitar licks and bass sound so much better. Same with "For Everyman". This original CD was down right horrible.

Overall dynamic range may be more compressed in general with newer recordings but transients/micro dynamics are often cleaner and better represented which provides a certain degree of liveliness to the music that may not be there in older digital masters. There is also often more energy in the music overall and that also works well with certain kinds of music.

Its a mixed bag much like its always been. In general, I tend to like newer remasters better than older ones, but not always.