I’ve also been scaling back on my purchases from places like VMP, and buying a lot less at my local new stock store due to mediocre sound and pressing quality. GZ does a fine job for the hundreds of small bandcamp labels they service, but most of their cuts do nothing to improve the sound of a digital source on a decent setup. And as you point out many CDs can sound quite good, some mastering even walk all over the vinyl copies. I have plenty of access to good used stores here, enough to avoid the risky online used vinyl market. There’s plenty of issues buying used in-person as well, but overall I’m a usually much more satisfied buying well-mastered used records and new high-quality reissues than I am with some GZ crap from VMP.
This is all due to the new state of the reissue world, it’s being driven by over-consolidated major labels who don’t give a crap about sound or really even the music itself. They’re pulling licenses from smaller boutique labels, sometimes mid-production just so they can release more of the same colored vinyl in-house cut garbage. And with this kind of risk in the business I almost wonder if this is a major factor in labels like VMP not investing in quality lacquer cuts?
As for young engineers, there’s obviously some younger folks working like Joe Nino-Hernes at Sterling and Josh Bonati at his place, even Ryan K Smith is relatively young. They all seem plenty busy, but GZ’s automated process seems to be the biggest name in the game these days.