And the winner is: Original 1986 CD release. To be quite blunt (and yes, facetious), I feel like there's no need to own either version of this album, as if I ever want to hear it I need only turn on the radio and tune it to the local classic rock station. Boston's debut is one of the most overhyped, overplayed rock albums ever committed to tape, in my opinion, if not the most. That being said, either of these will give you a better listening experience than what you'll find on terrestrial, over the air radio. But as to which of the two sounds better? As the waveforms show, this isn't as cut and dry a contest as one may have otherwise assumed. There is indeed a volume boost on the remaster relative to its predecessor, but it does appear that some degree of restraint was exercised when it came to mastering levels. Are there audible differences? Yes, and in many cases they favor the remaster due to an added clarity and clearer stereo separation. At other times, there doesn't seem to be much of a difference in either. At some points the original sounds too bright to my ears, almost as if some kind of boosting was applied to the higher frequencies; at other times the remaster sounds a bit too dampened (and at still other times, it sounds more "open"). This is a tough one to call. I don't expect high frequency enhancement in an attempt to fake greater clarity on a CD from 1986, though I do expect a decent probability of the disc having been mastered using LP-equalized production tapes. This makes it very difficult to decide if its sound is more "correct" than what I'm hearing from the remaster in a lot of instances. In general, the trend seems to run in favor of the earlier disc, at least to my ears, and that is the one I am going with here. But this is by no means a blowout; it's more me picking the disc with the slight overall edge. With enough listening, I find myself preferring the sound of the 1986 release more often than I do the remaster.