And the winner is: 1997 Repertoire release. Overall, the Repertoire version is the way to go here, save for the added material appearing on the Blue Box discs that is making its first appearance on CD. As for the songs on the Repertoire discs that don't appear on the remaster, if you purchased the 13 CD Shocking Blue box set, you already have all of them by way of their original, individual albums. There are a few differences worth mentioning between the two compilations. For starters, "Venus," the band's only North American hit single, is presented in fake stereo on the 1997 discs, while in the boxed set the song is presented in its more appropriate mono. Secondly, the cuts with original lead singer Fred de Wilde feel tacked on as an afterthought on the Reportoire discs, stuck ingloriously onto the end in each case. In fact - and this is the third issue I have with the Repertoire discs - the entire presentation of the songs is a mess, wildly out of chronological order and seemingly random other than having the biggest singles pushed to the front (and then not even arranged in their correct release order). An argument can be made for separating the A and B-sides onto separate discs, but if you're going to do that, why not put each song in the same order as its corresponding flip side on the other disc? Why is "Venus" the first track on disc 1 while its B-side "Hot Sand" is relegated to track 6 on disc 2? On the Blue Box version of this package, the band's entire singles discography is arranged chronologically, with each single's B-side following directly after the A-side. To my mind this is a far more logical means of presenting this material (and, incidentally, showing how the group's sound evolved over time), and it is the way I recommend experiencing it.

My issues with the Repertoire presentation aside, it wins over its Blue Box counterpart in the area of sound quality. As shown clearly by the waveform illustrations, pretty heavy compression has been applied to the newer box set, and it's definitely audible. Although in many cases the apparent clarity of the new release seems sharper, an A/B comparison of volume matched samples make it pretty clear that the sound on those discs is inferior and not just louder. This is a phenomenon I've grown tired of running into - better apparent clarity of sound (likely due to the use of better source tapes and/or a better transfer process) but inferior, compressed sound. On rare occasions this seems to work out (e.g., Judas Priest's British Steel), but most of the time it ends up being just another tiresome example of the engineer going for volume at the expense of sound quality. The only way to obtain the Blue Box variant of Singles A's and B's is as part of the 13 disc box set, which contains not only the singles collection discs but all nine original Dutch studio LPs along with the band's official live album and (to my knowledge the first ever re-release of) Mariska Veres's 1993 jazz album with her Shocking Jazz Quintet. The sound quality on the other discs is excellent overall, with none of them subjected to the degree of compression applied to the two Singles discs. As of this writing, the box set retails for an exceptionally low price for the amount of material you get, so it is the route I would go rather than tracking down a used copy of the Repertoire release. Otherwise, if you're just a casual fan, Repertoire is the way to go. No matter what you choose, it's good to finally be able to give this severely underrated band the attention it always deserved.