I never had a problem with the 1997 SE scores when they came out, but after I expanded my music tastes a bit I realized how harsh they sound. It didn't dawn on me how bad they were until I started buying the original LP scores. I had never heard the music sound like that!

Personally, I prefer the LP of Jedi the best, in terms of musical fidelity, even though ESB is my favourite score. The amount of range and clarity is great, and there is very well used bass in it. Particularly in the battle scenes near the end where you have those war drums and a slightly Wagner-cum-Holst-ish sound, it was something I had never appreciated before.

The out-of-order track listing is a common practice in motion picture soundtracks until relatively recently, as far as I know, although there is a slightly chronological progression in that usually the first track is the opening credits and the final track the climax and end credits. It's simply the result of only being able to present a portion of the soundtrack on a record; even though they were double LPs they still only contained maybe 70% of the total score, maybe less. You don't necessarily want entire cues all the time, but instead highlights, and they have to be re-edited so that they flow together; thus it necessitates ordering the music so that it flows in the best aesthetic manner. I mean, if you think about it motion picture scores were never meant to be heard on their own like an album, in any particular order, so the insistance of in-movie chronology is slightly arbitrary. It's mainly psychological associated, because we are so familiar with the movie that we know what should come "next" according to the film.