And the winner is: Mixed. This ultimately depends on the song in question. But first, some observations. One track from the More Dirty Dancing album is omitted on the anniversary disc, that being the thirty-eight second snippet of "Time of My Life" that serves as that album's inaugural track. While this is arguably a negative, in my opinion it isn't a deal breaker unless you're an obsessive completist as far as this material goes. On the other hand, I see the inclusion of the long version of "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" on the anniversary disc as a bit iffy. Every previous release of this song that I'm aware of used the shorter 4:49 edit, including the original soundtrack album from 1987, so I'm dubious about including the longer, extended 6:46 version here. Then again, the longer version is the one that is used in the film, so its inclusion on the 2007 disc is technically more accurate. It's just going to be a surprise if, like me, you were used to the shorter version that was on the original soundtrack album and played on the radio. In any case, the use of the different edits of this song isn't being factored into my review here. Finally, as stated in the introduction, the songs on the anniversary edition are presented in the same running order as they appear in the film. I prefer this presentation as it mirrors the original flow of the film for those of us who are familiar with it. While the running order of the original two soundtrack albums was good, if everything is going to be presented on a single disc, this is the way to do it.

So, on to the listening results. Overall, the 1950s songs vary as far as whether they are better presented on the anniversary disc or the older releases, while the 1980s songs are better on the older releases. If this doesn't make sense, I'll try to explain what's happening here, at least according to my ears. The main reason that many of the "oldies" sound worse is the use of inferior masters for the transfers. Some of them sound either thin ("Hey Baby") or muddy ("In the Still of the Nite"), while on the anniversary disc, all of them sound comparatively full, clean, and clear (making allowances made for the varying fidelity of the original recordings). That being said, even here things can vary a bit - I prefer the transfer of "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" tha appears on the More Dirty Dancing disc over the less dynamic one on the anniversary edition. And the Otis Redding number "These Arms of Mine" is very clearly limited on the anniversary disc, such that the More Dirty Dancing variant is noticeably better. Overall, the "oldies" on More Dirty Dancing sound better than their counterparts on the anniversary disc, but the ones on the original Dirty Dancing soundtrack album sound worse. As far as the '80s material, the original discs are the winners here. The masters used sound great, and they lack the Loudness War volume boost given to their counterparts on the 2007 disc. Obviously, "Gazebo Waltz" is an exception, since it never appeared on either of the original soundtrack albums, but thankfully, it sounds good and is presented at a reasonable volume level. For the '80s material, one would presume the album producers had access to the original master tapes or to high quality copies, and the songs fittingly sound fantastic.

Picking an ultimate winner here is challenging. In the end, it really depends on what you as a listener value more: the older songs versus the newer songs, the presentation, the song sequencing, the overall experience, and which version of "Time of My Life" that you prefer. For overall presentation, the newer disc wins, but I'm not ready to declare its two predecessors as obsolete just yet. For a casual listener, the anniversary disc is probably just fine, especially given that it is still very listenable despite the completely unnecessary volume boost and compression. I'd rather this sonic bastardization not have taken place, but that's just the name of the game these days when it comes to reissue CDs. I created my own version of the anniversary collection by combining the best versions of each song together onto a thumb drive for play while barrelling down the highway on my road trips, and I'm perfectly happy with that.