While doing a test of various codecs and bitrates, I thought I'd also test original versions of cds against remasters.

For the most part, it's much easier for me to tell differences in mastering than it is to tell differences between encodings. As a random example, I was testing King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King. I can't really ABX 128 vbr Quicktime or Lame (let along higher bitrates) against the original, but I could easily ABX my 1989 CD against the 2004 Original Master Edition (the OME is noticably better).

This may be totally obvious, but I'd never really focussed on it. I should spend more time trying to find the best recording and less time on encoding differences.

Its not surprising that you can ABX remasters - even if there would be no difference between them except of 1,5db loudness difference, you could distinguish them. And yes, you're right...... the mixing and production of the music has a way bigger impact on soundquality, than mediocre encoders or equipment. Unfortunatelly, it nowadays often is the weakest part of the chain.

Doesn't foobar's replaygain or abc-hr's calculate gain functions correct for the loudness difference? They certainly appear to level the differences in gain.

If you tell it to do it (in 0.9 it asks, i dont remember how it was in 0.8), then yes - however, i didn't know that you were doing the ABX via foobar.

Yep

In any event. we seem in agreement on the main point