http://www.jeffrougvie.com/bowie-blog/

I thought the Ryko discs sounded better than the EMI discs, I bought a few EMI discs to compare at the time. The packaging was not as nice though and the discs messed up the whole "pic disc" thing. I still play my Ryko's by default, RCA's are in the loft. The promo's were nicer too.

Insert for the STS release.

until JR addresses the flaws in the Ryko campaign instead of continually praising his own work, putting down the superior RCAs and taking digs at people with more knowledge of the Bowie catalogue that he ("trainspotters" he calls them with cutting originality), it's hard to take his blog seriously.

this paragraph from the previous entry on Nothing Has Changed caused me to laugh out loud, an occurrence as rare as a lunar eclipse.

“Reality”, despite the buzz around its release is just another too-uptight Bowie album and the tracks here don’t come to its defense, although these are all edits, so be thankful for merciful brevity. I would’ve included his cover of Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s “Love Missile F-1 11” from that period.

in other words, the single most throwaway b-side in the entire bowie oeuvre would have made the grade had Jeff Rougvie compiled Nothing Has Changed... enough said.

In fairness he makes at least one point I agree with (along with many I don't).

The Ryko Discs sounded right at the close of the eighties. The sound follows the fashion at that point so that the discs sound different (to us purists certainly not better).

I hated the studio production of most music from 86 until well into the 90s and the Ryko guys clearly believed they were doing a great cutting edge job. The result is that the discs sound more dated because they are of their time. In addition they clearly thought Sound and Vision and Joe the Lion new mixes were great Bonus tracks and they sounded dated within a week.

We must remember at the time people people bought and loved them and sold all their vinyl. Mine was stored in the loft until I came to my senses in the new millennium.

i agree with the whole post, didn't want to quote the full thing. the Rykos were some kind of revelation at the time, and their brightness was part of the attraction (let's be honest, it's the impact of things sounding "better" because we hear things we haven't heard before that led to 20+ years of "loudness wars") but tastes change and their popularity has waned for most. Rougvie harps on about them being from the master tapes yet we know in some instances the WRONG tapes were used. he also asserts the RCAs were cut from cassette masters but we've only recently learned that the generally favoured German RCAs were sourced elsewhere. the impression we get from his blog is that Ryko had access to "the masters" and no effort was made to confirm whether better options could be located elsewhere.

Spot on.I think this 'mastered for cassette' is a myth.Umatic cassette.Hmmmmm
I loaded all of my cd's of aladdin into cubase,level matched and listened to the gap just before she'll come...from LGS.Guess which issue has the most tape hiss and the least.Maybe they couldn't find a Dolby A
Bought the vinyl and HiRes!
Nice box and book though

Just a thought on "Mastered for Cassette" - master tape.

Whilst cassettes are / were an inferior method of playback to records due to hiss, limited frequency response due to tape speed, I suspect the master tape for a cassette actually does not have to be manipulated in the same way, or the same degree as a record cutting master.

To the best of my knowledge, and a mastering engineer's input would be highly welcomed, there is no or little need to limit the high frequency content, loud low bass content does not have to be centred as it must be for "safe" vinyl playback as there is no stylus about to jump out of the groove.

In short, I suspect that the cassette masters are actually higher quality than the LP masters ( putting aside any generational matters), and therefore it would be best to cut from these, if the choice was between two tapes each prepared for the different mediums of cassette and record.

Perhaps we have incorrectly dismissed " a cassette master" (not an actual cassette) as being substandard due to the playback issues and limitations of cassettes. As an analogy - a "needle drop" is not as good as master tape, yet clearly a record can provide very good playback.

A master tape for cassette would be the same as a master tape for vinyl, of course the mastering process would take different ways and yes you don't have the bass limitations you have to deal with vinyl.

May I ask, and pardon the vagueness... which STS release is the pictured insert from? Ryko? I must be missing something.

the clue is on the front and back... Q magazine's "sleevenotes" series. intended to be placed alongside the standard CD insert.

Thank you. I had no idea about Q magazine's sleeve note series. Not bad. Cheers, John.