> Yeah, this is often true. Some of Green Day's (a band I've never previously been into) albums were released in 24/192 or 24/96 a few years back and they actually sounded really great, with real dynamic range.
Back in the day you'd occasionally see remastered "gold" discs released. The advertising made a big deal about the disc material. Those probably sounded different too (they managed to sell them at a great premium) but with those, they sounded better because of the newer remastering, not the disc technology.
It's certainly possible this is the case with some of those releases remastered for SACD as well. The label probably didn't give Green Day a huge amount of money for production when they made Dookie, for example, but it eventually sold 20 million copies and additional production made sense. If it sounds better to the listener it's a real benefit, too, but it is quite likely not down to the playback technology.
Two oddball things I've noticed about remasters in the last couple of years: there's some agreement out there that the newest remaster of Hendrix's records is not the best. And King Crimson, who has an audiophile following and decorates their catalog with remasters with alarming regularity, removed a little dynamic range (an oversimplification) from the newest remaster of Larks Tongues in Aspic when remastering the CD and mastering for DVD/A because people very understandably complained about the (technically very good) previous version being too quiet. Audiophiles say they want dynamic range, but...