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New pressings suck?

Posted by magiccarpetride on April 15, 2017 at 18:16:11:
Yesterday I experienced a bit of a shock. I purchased a brand new, sealed LP "Abbey Road" by the Beatles. It is a 2012 180 gram pressing from the 2009 remastered source. The outer shrink wrap had a label "Made in Germany", which, to my mind, spells quality.
I washed the new LP, vacuumed it, rinsed it with distilled water, vacuumed again, and then sat down for a listen, expecting to be blown away. Hmmm, for some reason the LP sounds kind of dull. Muddy, murky. Yes, the bass is voluminous, deep and strong, but where is the sparkle?
OK, maybe I'm imagining things. I pulled my old scratchy Abbey Road copy, the one I bought many moons ago on a garage sale, simply for the iconic cover. I put that sorry old beater of an LP on, and my jaw dropped on the floor -- this old LP sounds so superior compared to the brand new remaster, that it is simply unreal! How can this be? The bass is much deeper, much stronger, the highs are crystal clear, the entire sound is so much livelier. Yes, the record is horribly scratched, was obviously badly abused in its previous life, but nevertheless it still sounds brilliant.
This made me wonder: is it perhaps true that all the good pressing plants are now history, that even in Germany one cannot get a decent LP pressed anymore? Or is this wimpy pale sound caused by the digital source -- the remaster used for cutting the LP is a digital remaster from 2009?
Any ideas?