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It's a good move for Stereophile to post now-classic recording reviews ... and an important reason for doing so is that others can conveniently comment about them in this Comments section.
While classical CDs have been spared the madness of the "loudness war", I can confidently say that "remasters" or re-releases of classical early digital/CD has not really brought about any important changes I can detect. E.g., Deutsche Grammaphon* has re-badged older stuff with claims like "Original-Bit Image" and Sony/others re-released older (first/second gen.) CDs with SBM or 20-bit (or higher).
I can't hear any difference .... and I'm hardly an objectivist.
Rather, for PLAYBACK of early digital, new/improved gear/equipment can make important differences (as JA has noted) ... and of course, the quality of recording engineering is perhaps most important of all ... yeah, even in the early digital days there were excellent mikes, preamps, ... and even recorders/encoders: I think Soundstream and Decca were at 50kHz in the late '70s!
As far as the musical performance and sound engineering ... I think this has generally been improving ... perhaps because performers and can listen to older recordings and use them as references and metrics... to improve the art and science ... but don't ask anyone to prove that ;)
Notes:
* DG, with some of their Eloquence series re-masters, took a huge step back ... Eloquence was electronic ambient processing ... sounds awful, and they didn't just apply it to early mono ... but even many modern stereo recordings, too!