Prince – Sign "O" The Times

The bonus discs are a disorganised hotchpotch of tracks with all Crystal Ball / Dream Factory tracks that were included in the 1998 Crystal Ball compilation missing. A real shame considering how loud and compressed the 1998 mastering is. Likewise would it have hurt include the full version of The Ball (complete with Joy in Repetition), without the tantalising fade? Seems like a lot of pointless jams and jazzy dross were included at the expense of a remastered set of full-length cuts from Dream Factory, Crystal Ball and Camille. Without going into the disc-wrecking packaging, which has been mentioned already, this is a real missed opportunity for a definitive '86-'88 rarities collection. A real disappointment.

Like many others, the discs in the first box set I received had some scratches, which is understandable considering how tightly they fit inside the disc holders. A replacement box was no better. In the end, I ed Warner Music Group in the US who sent out a set of the CDs and DVD to my address (I live in the UK) - all discs were thankfully in unmarked condition.

Fantastic box set - the music, book and packaging are all outstanding. No problems with the discs for me.

Anyone have a bit of the start of Rebirth Of The Flesh at the end of Emotional Pump?

Received mine today in the USA & can echo the sentiments here thus far as most of my discs came with minor abrasions and even obvious fingerprints and hand prints straight out of the box (& I removed them as carefully as possible)!!! Of course, I find this unacceptable, but I also find the way they have packaged the discs in the slide-in format unacceptable for something this expensive, but it seems there is no getting a pristine set. I even have a long scratch running down the back of the inner book back side. I have started the book and am sad Lenny's intro is so short, would rather have heard much more from him than the muddled essay by Daphne Brooks. She doesn't really seem to understand what Prince was about and has instead projected her opinions onto his art. Haven't gotten much further so I'll update this at a later date. I am glad the book/box is essentially "vinyl sized" so it will fit on the shelf better than Keane's last album on vinyl box set, which is disappointingly too big for a normal record collection shelf. Overall it is a beautiful box set, and the shiny peace symbol and SOTT logo overlayed on the covers is a nice accent not easily captured in photos, but I am puzzled that this is the first "remaster" that didn't get a foil type cover redo, I thought that was kinda cool on the 1999 reissue and even the Purple Rain silver instead of white...this would've looked cool with a gold foil type cover. Definitely wish they would stick with old school solid plastic CD and DVD cases for box sets, but the cardboard is becoming all too typical. I would have sprung for the vinyl if the Estate wasn't so set on the chronological tracking strategy. Seriously, beyond the original album, this and 1999 both have the bonus material tracked in such a way that listening on vinyl would be less pleasurable. At least with digital we can import and track in a more album-like way the numerous vault items and single remixes b-sides and edits. Does anyone actually want to listen to a single edit and then a remix and then a dub of the same song in a row? It would've been cool if they would've done a recreation of the last known test press of Dream Factory, Camille, Crystal Ball on separate discs, along with a disc of alternates, discs of outtakes, etc...something more "organized." I do find it odd they did not put the original album on one CD, I've been burning copies for the car, etc. that way for as long as CD burners have existed...Anyway, it seems they've gone the easiest route with these and I am glad to have this regardless.

In my case, one of the disc is duplicated so another one is missing.
In my copy i have 2 Vault Tracks CD#2 and the disc is missing is Vault Tracks CD#3.

Beautiful box set, sadly every single disc was scratched/buff marks straight out of the packaging, outrageous considering it cost £150, I am not sure if returning it for a replacement would be any good, as you'd probably just get a different variety of scratched CDs.

All the discs are scratched, this is simply unacceptable for a set this pricey. The music is of course great.

Love this very much. The remastered album is on point, and the Vault tracks are great. However, the disc-holders are terrible. Not happy with the risk of scraching discs of a 100+$ set.