CD Reissues of Utopia's "Oblivion" and "POV" Albums

I received the Rhino 2 CD set of Oblivion, POV and Some Trivia from an eBay seller today, and I am curious about something. Is it true that every CD reissue of Oblivion and POV is "mastered" from original Passport Records CDs of these albums? I have read this somewhere on the internet (and that the master tapes were deliberately destroyed by irate Passport Records employees when the company went out of business) and would like to know if this is true. [BTW, I once owned both Passport CDs, and I still regret selling them for $50 apiece years ago.] TIA.

 

I have never heard any of the remasters. I have the original Passport CDs of POV, Oblivion and Trivia, as well as the Rhino collection.

 

Oblivion and POV were reissued by Esoteric Recordings about 10 years ago. I don't have those (they are almost as expensive as Passport CDs).

 

Does anyone know why the production on Oblivion and POV sounds so thin and compressed? As far as I know, Todd and the band were using the same studio (Utopia Sound) that they recorded most of their earlier albums at, and all of those earlier albums sounded much fuller and balanced than either of these. Digital recording? Rushed recording sessions?

 

The master tapes were not destroyed, they were used for the Rhino set (which I did the liners for!) They would have been kept by Todd, not by Passport-- At this point the band owned its music and licensed it.