> I wonder why no one would've seen something like this coming though?
>
> Was it just a bunch of suits saying, "Yeah, let's sell some cds!" while the
> original mastering guy prepared to cringe come "Digital Release Date"? (1
> day later?)

Oversimplifying it... yeah that's sort of what happened.

The industry wasn't technologically prepared to rerelease all those
albums.  They didn't have enough equipment, much of the equipment
wasn't yet very good, they didn't have enough qualified people who
knew how to use the equipment they had.  The 80s/early 90s simply did
not have the cheap ubiquitous digital power that exists today.  The
inexpensive machine on my desk beats a Cray2 on every metric. It
wasn't too long ago that good custom 12 bit (12 bit!) sampling
consoles cost hundreds of kilobucks.  And good mastering engineers
were (and are) high priced talent.  Last but not least, not everyone
took good notes. "Did this cutting master have preemphasis?" "How does
it sound?" "Meh, it sounds OK." "Then go with it."

It took a long time to sort out the mess that the rush caused, and the
reputation of the CD suffered for a really long time.  But they made a
*ton* of money.  The late 80s and early 90s were the music industry's
version of the housing bubble.  oh boo hoo sales are down recently--
sales had never been so incredibly inflated as during the great
vinyl->CD switchover when just about everyone replaced their
collections at $16 a pop.  Some had to do it twice after things were
finally properly remastered.

Monty