And the winner is: 2002 remaster, by a wide margin. This one may come as a surprise, given the obvious difference in the waveform images above for the two different releases. The remaster is clearly louder and compressed compared to the original CD release, but it beats it in audio quality by a very wide margin. The listening results for these two are not even close, with the remaster sounding comparatively crisp and distinct and the original CD sounding horribly muddy and dirty. But while the remaster is potentially the best sounding edition of End of the Century that we're likely to hear, I don't mean to give the impression that it sounds good. While considerably crisper and clearer sounding than the 1986 disc, there is hardly any bass to be heard. The hi hat sounds good on the remaster, though there's still not enough improvement to fix the dull sounding snare and cymbals coming from Marky's kit. Blame for the terrible sound of this album must be laid squarely at the feet of producer Phil Spector, known as much for his excesses as for his famous "Wall of Sound" and his work with acts such as The Righteous Brothers, The Ronettes, and (somewhat controversially) The Beatles. Spector, a fan of the band, asked more than once to work with them, and when he finally got his wish, it was abundantly clear that he had no clue how to properly produce and record this type of music. The guitars have no crunch, the drum sound is flat, Dee Dee's bass is barely audible, and the entire production sounds muddy and messy. The result was the singularly worst sounding album in the Ramones' entire catalog. Selections from this album are not very abundant on Ramones "best of" compilations, and that's not surprising given both the production woes and the largely lackluster quality of the material. Overall, compared to the Ramones' first four efforts, End of the Century somewhat fails to deliver.

On a final note, the 2002 disc offers up five demo recordings as bonus tracks, four of which are of songs from the album, and one ("Please Don't Leave") which does not appear elsewhere to my knowledge. While I usually find the inclusion of demos to be ho-hum at best, these give some insight into how these songs could have hit had the album been given proper production by someone who knew what they were doing in the studio. The additional inclusion of the movie soundtrack version of "I Want You Around" is a particular highlight.