I posted the Steve Hoffman link more for his body of work, rather than his personal tastes.
He's a sound engineer that uses a "Hands Off" approach when it comes to:
Equalization
Remixing
Compression
Reverb
Noise Reduction
The CD's he Mastered and Remastered were well known benchmarks; not necessarily music that fell within my tastes,
but always well done from an audio perspective.
I always found this interview Q&A interesting:
Q: So why didn’t the record companies use these master tapes to begin with?
A: "In the old days, you couldn’t just cut a record from the master tape or the stylus would just jump right off the record when you tried to play it. So in the old days, mastering was cutting a record so you could play it on an average phonograph. Unlike the CD’s of today with wide dynamic range (difference between the softest and loudest volume), the LPs had a much smaller range so you had to use a compressor to limit that range to an acceptable level. Also you couldn’t load up the bass too much or the stylus would jump off of the record. So you had to use an equalizer to back off on the low end or turn up the high end and you had to ride the levels so it didn’t get too loud. You essentially did what you needed to in order to have the best sound that would fit into the grooves of the record. And that being a very subjective thing--every mastering engineer had their own way of achieving that. In addition, while they were playing the master tape onto a record lacquer for use in making vinyl records, a tape was running to capture this version of the album. That became the EQ Dub or Cutting Master and was then sometimes incorrectly labeled the Master Tape and they put the real master tape away since it didn’t need to be used. So then any time another lacquer needed to be cut, you just pulled out the "LP master" tape. And depending on how long ago the recording was made, there might be a different tape marked master made for reel to reel duping or 8-track tape duping and that led to a lot of confusion when asking for the Master Tape."
