You heard right.

Homemade deluxe are the keywords you're looking for.

Toofunkyinhere said:

Hey I've heard about how poor the Prince cds of the 80's sound, but was wondering if they sound any better on vinyl?

Vinyl sounds better than the CDs.

I've just recently gotten into vinyl, and the answer is, yes, much, much better, esp. SOTT.

The CD mastering of SOTT is a crime against the Inner Ear.

Aside from the first two, SOTT and maybe Around the World in a Day I don't think many prince albums sound that much better on vinyl. Parade is a perfect flat rip that you can mess about with on a decent stereo system to make sound as you like.

I'd like to see someone go back to the master tapes of 1999 and see if they can improve that from the source though.

For what it's worth, the Kiss 12" sounds MUCH better than the version on Ultimate Prince.

I think the problem is that the analog masters for Prince's records have very often been executed with a great love for the source, and a lot of talent.

The sound of the 12'' SOTT single is just incredible. Because on a 12'', you have only one song, and therefore you can spread the vynil grooves on the whole record surface, thus you can push the needles in the red and gain a little more dynamics.
Escape (from Glam Slam 12'') sounds almost like a different song, given how much the CD and the vynil are apart. The vynil mastering is completely trashy, distorded and right on point.
And don't get me started on the masterpiece that is the Shockadelica mastering on the 12''.

Because analog dynamics can flatten dynamics spikes with a natural-sounding harmonic distorsion, Bernie Grundman could push them to 11, and that is why we get such a natural feeling from the analog masters. All the details shine, you can hear every color of every reverb tail, every tweak of EQ on the console.

You obviously need and excellent sound system (from source to output), but in this brand new age, when audio is MP3, how do we stop our ears from rotting?

The person who made the analog/digital conversion for the Prince CDs is obviously some deaf intern, or either he had no choice. With analog dynamic spikes everywhere, he got stage freight and lowered everything, and then applied some shitty low-budget compressor that killed all the colours.

The CDs sound bland, "grey" compared to the vynil. But how to get a genuine 80's original vynil that hasn't been played to death, is some challenge.

Be aware, a good portion of so-called vynils nowadays are mastered from digital sources, which is an heresy, besides being useless.