While I dearly love my original vinyl copy of this, my absolute favourite Rolling Stones album, which is not only one of the best double albums ever made (along with led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti), and is their most consistent, and consistently brilliant album, I love where it's coming from, with a very sleazy, slack rocking blues Groover vibe, which grooves from one end to the other like a something-or-other, with additional dashes of sweetness and soul, this, sonically is far superior, both in terms of clarity, sense of space and separation of instruments which perfectly compliments that "live in the studio" feel that this album has, with the band all playing together at once, rather than sounding like a patchwork of separately recorded pieces sewn together in the control room.
...I love the vinyl sound of the LP, which does give it that "vintage" sound that comes with vinyl, but this has power, punch and rocks even harder.
I did study the scant notes in the booklet, that comes with this, for a reason why it should sound so good, but only found the answer I wanted on the back cover.... With just one simple statement, that says it all:
"Remastered by Bob Ludwig"
Bang.
This has a whole lot of something extra, which I can only attribute to him.
The real beneficiary of his presence here, has to be Charlie Watts Drumming, which but has extra snap, crack, and an almighty bass drum thump.
I checked on Discogs, to see if there was a contemporary 1994 Ludwig vinyl to this, and apparently there was, but only in the US on 180g vinyl... And according to reviews on that vinyl issue, sounds awful!
Well, never mind, maybe later ones sound better (hopefully with the Ludwig mastering), but this CD is more than adequate.... It sounds great!