And the winner is: Compact disc release. Live was one of the very first bands I ever saw in concert, all the way back in August of 1995 at the Coca-Cola Starplex (now Gexa Energy Pavilion) during the third of four "big" shows I attended during that year. Listening to this again brings back memories of evenings not long after high school graduation spent running down the road of my old hometown with the cassette of this album playing on the stereo of my very first car. That very same cassette tape from my teenage years is the one I used for this comparison, played back now on equipment that's a tad better than what I had back then. So how does it hold up twenty-one years later? Quite well, as it turns out. And how does its content hold up, sonically speaking, to the compact disc that I've also had since my teenage years? As expected, the mastering does appear to reveal less (or no) effort at mastering for loudness, while the levels on the CD have clearly been pushed well past what is reasonable. That being said, given that this album was released in 1994, the mix still sounds very good and lacks the extremely compressed and dynamically flat sound of releases with a more recent pedigree (see No Exit or pretty much anything by Weezer other than Pinkerton, or for that matter almost any popular recording released since 1999). Ultimately, despite its lack of brickwall peak limiting, the cassette is still a cassette, and the compact disc is leaps and bounds ahead with a much richer, fuller, more robust sound, and much better high and low end. The can be heard quite clearly in the drums, particularly in the snare and hi hat. Go with the CD for this one.