HDTracks albums with fake dynamic range

[MindsMirror]

Here are segments of waveforms from the HDTracks versions of Halestorm's The Strange Case of... and Trivium's Vengeance Falls, respectively.
 

 

 
In both of these examples it looks like the audio was clipped and then stretched to give an artificially higher DR score. The Halestorm album has DR9 compared to the CD version which has DR5, yet after replaygain is applied they don't sound noticeably different to me. I don't have the CD version of Vengeance Falls to compare.
 
I have listened to HDTracks releases that were clearly superior to the CD versions, such as the Dream Theater albums. These two examples look like they are derived from the same brick walled source as the CDs. I haven't seen a discussion of this anywhere else so I figured I'd post these examples. Perhaps some people are fooled into thinking their HDTracks albums with higher DR scores are better, when they may actually be just as bad as the CD.

 

[NA Blur]

It would be great to know just how HDTracks improves the audio quality from an engineering and mastering perspective.

 

[elwappo99]

This is something people should be aware of, but also nothing totally new. It just seems to be not wide spread information. 
 
HDTracks is just a retailer. They contract with the record companies who just ship over the files. They really don't have a lot of say in what they get, and with so many releases they don't really compare them to the previous CD releases of the same album.
 
Which means, in some cases you get pretty much the same thing as the CD (as you found out) or in other cases, you get a different mastering. Best thing to do is research and see what people have thought.
 
In my experience so far having a 24/192 file doesn't really mean much over a 16/44.1. It really comes down to the mastering of the album and the effort put into SQ. I've found far better albums for SQ in the 16/44.1 range than 24/192.