JGJR wrote:I had a feeling one of you would post something like this. Here's what I think. With the equipment I have now (an Onkyo CD player from the late '80s that I have to replace the belt on and a proper receiver and speakers; thus it's been 100% vinyl and digital here for the past few months), I'd bet that those Shudder to Think, Shades Apart and whatever other super-quiet CDs would probably sound good with the volume turned up, but on a CD boombox or Discman or car CD player (what I was listening to this stuff on back in the '90s), I just remember having to turn it way up and having trouble hearing important parts, et al.
All that said, I've owned the Embrace and I think 1 or both of the Dag Nasty remaster CDs (unless I am misremembering but I definitely had the Embrace disc) from that Silver Sonya remaster series and I don't recall it/them being brickwalled at all.
I was initially impressed with some "loud" remasters in the mid/late 90s when I primarily used a portable CD player and boombox. The headphone amp in the portable could only give so much juice and the boombox had serious limitations as well. Overtime those discs got fatiguing, and I got rid of a lot of them and replaced them with older discs. The Bad Religion and Slayer remasters are prime examples of that.
Part of the problem is that people do a lot of listening on cell phones now, and most of those are very weak on the audio side, but they are getting better. I always recommend the LG V series as it's much better for people that actually listen to music. Typically when the latest and greatest model comes out the old ones are discounted, so that's a way to save some $.
If people are listening at their desk through a computer, it's not that hard to put together a decent desktop headphone system either. Desktop headphone amps and DACs are pretty cheap now, like $100 for performance that was unthinkable 10 years ago.
And if you are using a computer any playback software that isn't total shit should support replay gain tags. Lots of free software available like Foobar and such, so no real excuse.
RE: those Silver Sonya remasters, I do have a few of them I bought several years ago but I usually hunt for the old copies now if I'm filling in Dischord collection holes. They aren't the worst remasters I've ever heard but some of them are more compressed than others. The DAG discs do have bonus material not on the old 2 for 1 Can I Say/Wig Out CD. I picked up a copy of of the old Embrace disc last year in a used record shop. I think I had the remaster at some point but don't remember.