What are the actual quality changes in the remasters? (good or bad...)

Remix of Queen's stuff isn't necessary.
The stereo mixes are excellent and for the most part, the instruments sit in the mix nicely. Some buried bass in Queen 2 and Sheer Heart Attack, but that's mainly due to mixing down the tracks.

Beatles are a different story. Mixed during a time when stereo was a gimmick and the accepted way to mix was to separate the tracks into separate speakers.

Question is...should they have remixed all of the albums when they remastered them all a few years back? Was it silly in hindsight to use the original mixes? I possibly think so now, after hearing the new Sgt. P mix and the unavailability of the mono mixes, even on Spotify.

No I don't think they should've.

[QUOTE] [b]Marcos Napier wrote:[/b]

In the Queen remasters (all that I've heard, I don't own them all), I didn't notice any of these "improvements" (or anything that made the originals sound worse, to be fair)[/QUOTE]

The loudness war thing makes them automatically worse for me.

BUT - I did listen to a few of them, and one thing I noticed was a bit of mic popping that was fixed in the first verse of It's Late. If that's the kind of detail oriented approach they took, then surely there are other nuggets like this.

So while these were done with love and care, the compression makes it a net loss for me. Dynamic range is everything with Queen, and much of it is lost on the 2011 remasters.

That just sounds a little bit pretentious. Stop remastering and start remixing, it would be like a sledge hammer to the senses...