Something else to consider here - as was stated earlier, while 1984 saw the advent of the CD, digital recording had been around for a few years and recording studios had not gotten used to the techniques needed to adapt to the technology. Primary among these techniques is to NEVER, EVER go into the red on a recording. It took a while for people to figure out that when digital saturated, it didn't get all compressed sounding in a musical way like tape does, it just distorted in very ugly ways. And a lot of lesser engineers and mastering people weren't paying attention to this at first.
Still, it could be done well and Dire Straits stuff is plenty of evidence that some folks knew what they were doing.
I have several copies of albums I keep with the CD copy just to demonstrate to people what happens when they don't pay attention to recording levels when using digital recorders. My favorites are a Spencer Davis Group Greatest Hits album and the Stone's "Get Your Ya Ya's Out". Take "Gimme Some Lovin'" from that CD and compare it to the version on the "Winwood's Greatest Hits" double LP. That's all it takes...