I have bought numerous vinyl new that skipped immediately. Cassettes fucking rule. Some are cheap and break. Some people don't take care of them. They sound great tho. They sound better than CD's used to. They sound better than vinyl plus no crackling or skipping.

Every great album was recorded analog. That is TAPE for all you hipsters. Tapes have their own special compressed sound. When y'all complain about SOTT sounding bad on CD .. I still listen to it on cassette and it sounds great. Don't be dissin on cassettes. Cassettes are the bomb.

There are lots of cheap tapes out there. They don't hold up as well. I have cassettes from 25 years ago that are still top notch. Prince sounds best on cassette. Ever hear the black album all cleaned up ... lost something didn't it? Prince be puttin it all on cassette and driving round in his car. Nothing sounded as good after he switched to digital. Lost all its life. FACT

TrevorAyer said:

As someone who owns most of Prince's WB collection on Vinyl, CASS & CD, I am laughing my ass off at the idea that the cassettes sound better. This is not about equipment either, as my cassette deck is of even higher quality than my turntable.

First of all, cassettes have the shortest lifespan of the 3 formats. I've recently been digitizing my analog collection and the following properly stored tapes no longer play: Dirty Mind, Controversy, Purple Rain, & Around The World In A Day. All my vinyl still play great (except for the aforementioned Lovesexy issue) and all of my CDs still play perfect except for my promo copy of Graffiti Bridge which crapped out for no apparent reason.

Second, tape noise, even with noise reduction is less pleasant than vinyl noise. CDs of course add no additional noise.

As far as mastering, the originals all come from the exact same master so, not a factor.

People often say that cassettes provide more low end frequencies but a good EQ will give you that on any format without the noise of the cassette.

Cassettes are making a comeback because of nostalgia, hipsters & Guardians Of The Galaxy (after that movie came out I saw cassette walkmans at Best Buy). They are not better and certainly a riskier investment due to the shorter lifespan of the medium.

As I've been transferring my very large cassette collection I have found that at least 2 out of every 10 no longer play. This is way more than for vinyl or CD.

I will however concede that most high quality blank tapes last much longer than pre-recorded tapes, and sound much better. My homemade Maxell brand chrome & metal tapes for instance sound fantastic compared to prerecorded cassettes and so far all I've checked still work. If you like cassette so much I recommend scoring some good blanks and dubbing vinyl and/or CD. With the right equipment and knowledge you can make copies that sound better to your personal preference than any of the official releases.

In my not-even-a-little-bit humble opinion, of course...

All that said, if you get the chance get Graffiti Bridge on Cassette. Here's why:

http://prince.org/msg/7/385930

Yeah I have 12 of the original tapes & 8 still play. Not good odds.

I was born in '70 and grew up with vinyl & cassette. I preferred tapes as a kid for the obvious reason that they were portable, they never made a vinyl walkman.

I also loved making my own mix-tapes. Even as I made the switch to CD in '88 I still usually made tapes of my favorites because it was years before I would have a CD player in the car. By the mid-90s I began to wish I had purchased more vinyl than tapes in the 80s as I began collecting the Prince albums that I already had on cassette & CD.

Tapes were great, I get it. I just can't get behind the idea that they sound better than vinyl or CD and it's always been obvious that they didn't last as long. They had other problems too. Does nobody remember what it was like for a tape deck to "eat" a tape? Or, how fun was it to REW/FF to your favorite song? Or maybe you played a bad tape, the heads on your deck got gunked up, and before you realized it you played a new tape and the gunk got on that tape and ruined it?

Yeah, nostalgia will only take you so far...

KingSausage said:

I've had quite a few CDs that fell prey to the dreaded CD rot. No pattern to it at all.

Surprisingly I've had an extremely low percentage of my CDs stop working (knock on wood), even though I carried many of them around to DJ gigs for years (right up till I had the ability to carry CDR copies and leave the originals at home). I guess I've been lucky with CD. The few that have crapped out are very frustrating, but, it's so few that I like the odds of a digital disc.

KingSausage said:

If VHS comes back, I'm gonna fucking puke.

Oh, believe it! It's already back with the hipsters. And like a few bands have put out cassettes in the last few years a few new movies have had VHS releases as well.

The ONLY thing VHS has on DVD/Bluray is that there are litterally thousands of titles that were released on VHS that have never seen release on DVD, Blu or digital. That's a good reason for serious collectors to hold on to their players and tapes but there's no reason for the format to make a comeback. NONE! The quality sucks and the lifespan of the tapes is even shorter than that for cassettes.

djThunderfunk said:

KingSausage said:

djThunderfunk said:

Oh, believe it! It's already back with the hipsters. And like a few bands have put out cassettes in the last few years a few new movies have had VHS releases as well.

The ONLY thing VHS has on DVD/Bluray is that there are litterally thousands of titles that were released on VHS that have never seen release on DVD, Blu or digital. That's a good reason for serious collectors to hold on to their players and tapes but there's no reason for the format to make a comeback. NONE! The quality sucks and the lifespan of the tapes is even shorter than that for cassettes.

Totally. I'm a big silent film enthusiast, and it's depressing how many silent films were available on VHS but not DVD. And then how many were on DVD but not Blu-ray. Each new generation of home video media technology means fewer silent films commercially released, let alone in pristine restorations.

I guess the good news for you is that the vast majority of silent films are in the public domain and literally anyone can legally post digital copies of their VHS tapes. Surely that's a thing somewhere on the interweb-tubes. No?

djThunderfunk said:

KingSausage said:

djThunderfunk said:

I guess the good news for you is that the vast majority of silent films are in the public domain and literally anyone can legally post digital copies of their VHS tapes. Surely that's a thing somewhere on the interweb-tubes. No?

The public domain copies usually look like shit.

Is it a situation of a movie being public domain but a remastered version of the same movie not being public domain?

djThunderfunk said:

KingSausage said:

djThunderfunk said:

Is it a situation of a movie being public domain but a remastered version of the same movie not being public domain?

Yes, as far as I can tell.

Sucks. I bet they can copyright their "version".

KingSausage said:

Poplife88 said:

I gave up on the re-issues. I still have my original copies of most of his 80s work. However I was missing Controversy, the Black Album, and Lovesexy. I received Controversy a while ago and it skips like crazy (as does AOA). It seems my player doesn't do well with the new "heavy" records. My original copies from the 80s play fine as do my old 12" extended remixes. When I got the notice that the Black Album was cancelled, I just cancelled the rest.

Has anyone experienced this with these new heavier vinyl records?

I haven't experienced that. What kind of turntable and cartridge do you have?

Audio Technica PL60. I have had it for awhile now and have never replaced the needle...maybe thats it.

Btw, for sound, I like vinyl the best. My old records still sound awesome, especially compared to CDs. However cassettes were the worst. I still have a few (The Family, Mazarati, Color of Success, W&L first album) that I play very occasionally. The sound is just awful esp compared to vinyl. They were poplular back then because they were portable...NOT because of the sound imo.

Poplife88 said:

KingSausage said:

Poplife88 said:

Audio Technica PL60. I have had it for awhile now and have never replaced the needle...maybe thats it.

Btw, for sound, I like vinyl the best. My old records still sound awesome, especially compared to CDs. However cassettes were the worst. I still have a few (The Family, Mazarati, Color of Success, W&L first album) that I play very occasionally. The sound is just awful esp compared to vinyl. They were poplular back then because they were portable...NOT because of the sound imo.

It might be the stylus. A couple of friends of mine have that turntable and they've never said anything about difficulties playing new heavy vinyl.

.

With thicker LPs, the stylus is indeed hitting the grooves at a slightly shallower angle. Perhaps if the stylus is worn or damaged in a certain way, that bit of thickness might be just enough to cause issues. Very interesting. There's high end turntables out there that allow the arm to be adjusted for different LP weights. I don't have one of those, but I'm guessing the people that are buying those types of turntables are probably servicing the stylus more than their car.

foefurs remasters sound pretty good...who is this?

injuredpinky said:

KingSausage said:

Poplife88 said: It might be the stylus. A couple of friends of mine have that turntable and they've never said anything about difficulties playing new heavy vinyl.

.

With thicker LPs, the stylus is indeed hitting the grooves at a slightly shallower angle. Perhaps if the stylus is worn or damaged in a certain way, that bit of thickness might be just enough to cause issues. Very interesting. There's high end turntables out there that allow the arm to be adjusted for different LP weights. I don't have one of those, but I'm guessing the people that are buying those types of turntables are probably servicing the stylus more than their car.

I'll give that a shot. Thanks for the information!

Just received yet another email from Amazon (U.S.). SOTT is being pushed an additional week from 9/20 to 9/27.

.

My hope is we'll start seeing deluxe editions in 2017. If the LP gets pushed any further, I may just cancel it and wait for the deluxe editions.

injuredpinky said:

Just received yet another email from Amazon (U.S.). SOTT is being pushed an additional week from 9/20 to 9/27.

.

My hope is we'll start seeing deluxe editions in 2017. If the LP gets pushed any further, I may just cancel it and wait for the deluxe editions.

Getting used to them being pushed back now.

Guitarhero said:

Updated list (I think...)

Parade - 08/23/16
ATWIAD - 09/06/16 or 09/09/16
Lotusflow3r - 09/23/16 - (...But some sites are already shipping as of 8/1/16)

Sign O' the Times - 09/27/16 - (Originally 8/23/16, delayed to 9/20/16)

Lovesexy - 10/18/16
Batman - 10/18/16
Grafitti Bridge - 11/22/16
Diamonds & Pearls - 11/22/16
- 12/13/16
Come - 12/13/16

The Black Album - Cancelled

Xarina said:

Updated list (I think...)

Parade - 08/23/16
ATWIAD - 09/06/16 or 09/09/16
Lotusflow3r - 09/23/16 - (...But some sites are already shipping as of 8/1/16)

Sign O' the Times - 09/27/16 - (Originally 8/23/16, delayed to 9/20/16)

Lovesexy - 10/18/16
Batman - 10/18/16
Grafitti Bridge - 11/22/16
Diamonds & Pearls - 11/22/16
- 12/13/16
Come - 12/13/16

The Black Album - Cancelled

Parade on 8/23??? I will beleive it when I have it in my hands!! (but sure hope it's true!) I have the original LP, CD, and even cassette! but excited to hear the remastered version (and just to get something "new" from Prince)

bobgeorge77 said:

Not sure if it was posted...but PURPLE RAIN is being reissued on cassette Friday 8/12. It's a purple cassette!!!

This follows DIRTY MIND, CONTROVERSY & 1999 which were all released in the last few weeks.

VANITYSprisonBYTCH said:

Not sure if it was posted...but PURPLE RAIN is being reissued on cassette Friday 8/12. It's a purple cassette!!!

This follows DIRTY MIND, CONTROVERSY & 1999 which were all released in the last few weeks.

Not that I need it, but the purple cassette sounds really cool!! would love to see a pic of it when someone gets it...( i do have the old 45" purple rain that was purple somewhere...i'' have to look for it)

I picked up the Purple Rain cassette reissue today - looks great!

kdavis said:

I picked up the Purple Rain cassette reissue today - looks great!

Okay. How does it SOUND? Or did you just buy it as a collectible?