To enhance the quality of a piece of art which is considered dated or sub-par in comparison to the rest of the market. In most cases (and i'm looking at Pink Floyd here) re-masters can lose the essence of the original, which is why I believe a HT remaster is a [edited] idea.
How is it [edited]? Yes HT is perfect the way it is, but just imagine what songs like Papercut, ITE, OSC, Runaway would sound like remastered.
Well, that could be one purpose of remastering, yes I'm guessing that they'd have more stereo-widening and a lot more compression so that it seems a couple of dBs louder ... If anything, it's the mixes that should be revisited, especially on the newer albums
I agree minuteforce, the newer albums' post-production is subpar in my opinion. P.S. My apologies to anyone offended by the word which was removed from my post.
I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to hear papercut remastered, I'm not saying it doesn't sound awesome cause it does