Salam,

What do people think of these edited versions that have come into the market over the past 20 years especially of Musnad Imam Ahmad and the 4 Sunan of Abu Daud, Nasai, Tirmidhi & Ibn Majah?

I personally feel that these editors, no matter good their knowledge were, no matter if it was even Albani, they have no standing compared with these great imams to cast aspersions of the hadith in their collections. These imams collected the hadith in use at the time by the fuqaha in the main and these fuqaha did not just consider the sanad in determining the authenticity of the narrations; they consulted other scholars, travelled different regions to see the practice of diverse communities "brought up" on the tradition of certain sahabah etc.....unlike the present editors who look into books on the narrators and decide this sanad is sahih, this is daif...of course this does not mean the latter huffaz such as Dhahabi, Ibn Hajar etc had no right to evaluate some dubious narrations.

Allamah Anwar Shah Kashmiri was right: sanad is the cane of the blind