When the Robert Johnson CD set came out in 1990 I bought it immediately for myself, but then promptly gave the set to my best buddy. Why? Because the sound was awful, and I knew it wouldn’t matter to him as much as it did to me.
I wasn’t expecting miracles from those old records, but it was apparent to me that the engineers did an unforgivably lousy job. The proof is heard in the remastered 2011 Centennial Collection, and it takes only a few seconds to hear the difference.