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 likely unsurpassed, unless they reprocess his master tapes for SACD. Our friend here
@Delmarva , has FLAC'S of it, and his assessment is this is best SQ he has ever heard of Trilogy
. If you have a means to play FLAC'S through your DAC, please let me know and I can arrange to drop you my MFSL Trilogy FLAC'S to evaluate and to see what your assesment is.
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'ss 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. These examples are pure rubbish.
money wasted.
On initial play, some "modern" remasters tricks one, at first, because they sound louder, so one thinks WOW this sounds louder, it's got to be better, but then what one finds out is there's no dynamic range. It's like the whole album is the same loudness.
@FOH Engineer and I have both discussed this topic in much detail and both concour about how some of the new, so called, "modern remasters" are this way.
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 1989 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, more natural "analog sound". However, not enough for me to go drop another $200 on the other 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 what equipment was available in 1989. 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 done 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 MFSL 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?
Anyway, please let me know about the Trilogy FLAC'S and I'll be happy to drop them to you.
Cheers,
-Blitz