Carpenters Remastered Classics (1998 US Pressing) Question.

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Kristopher

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What I’ve read online ticket to ride US pressing is the hardest version to find minus the long box. (I found the 1998 release had sound quality “sonically better” then its original 80s CD.) I’m an audophile I pick up the slightest changes in audio. I can tell if a vinyl record has been played many times even if it looks Mint to the eye.

I purchased a sealed one for $700 and have a VG+ And I have to ask how many copies were made? I have a friend who has worked in a record store for over 60 years Called Beverly Records in chicago. He has info on what some things are worth. He has no idea about the long box CD but has the official “average” market value for Offering formats And almost every CD. I have a very good plus condition I offered to sell for 200-250 to a friend I know in person. I owed him money and “offered” to trade a Very Good Plus+ with mint artwork but mild marks to the cd which drastically lowers the potential value. These marks cant be felt with a fingernail and there is not one “circular” mark as we all know thats a bad thing. He agreed to come buy it in person. Many have said something doesnt have a “True Value” (but has its own respective market value regardless of the final price when bought.)

I asked my record dealer today and he said it can range anywhere from $100 to $800 depending on the condtion and demand. The price is based on averages over a long period of time as prices fluctuate.

I’m talking about the 1998 AMERICAN ISSUE ONLY. The 2012 and Japanese late 90s issue is a seperate release.

My friend who wanted to buy a copy of mine said he talked to someone YESTERDAY and was told its worth 20-30 dollars. I asked him if he is out of his absolute mind. Sealed copies of the US release I have seen very few minimum for $125 from people who don’t know what they are selling or people who are desperate for the money right away. However almost everytime I have paid that amount for the remastered Classics (Thinking i had a goldmine) I have always gotten a Japanese issue and it’s annoying as hell.

When I paid $700 that one time, it was LEGIT. UPC sticker on top and I to this day dont regret that purchase. The seller had several pictures and stayed on for 3 weeks. I bounced my checking account just to cover the rest. Since I bought it for 700 technically it was sold and that was the value. Every other time I got screwed. My other copies I got lucky from my childhood.

Anyway my two questions are how many copies of these were made.

And what should I tell my friend who thinks I’m trying to rip him off?
 
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I had no idea the 1998 US Remastered CD of Ticket to Ride was considered to be so rare - I picked up a copy in pretty good condition a couple of years ago for $8! The one that I thought was the rarest was the US Remastered issue of The Singles 1969-1973, which seemed to disappear from sale pretty quickly, resulting in far fewer copies in circulation than the other titles from the Remastered series.
 
! The one that I thought was the rarest was the US Remastered issue of The Singles 1969-1973, which seemed to disappear from sale pretty quickly, resulting in far fewer copies in circulation than the other titles from the Remastered series.
I thought so too when I saw the singles 1969-1981 CD come out it seemed to me that was intended to replace the 1969-1973 version in my mind that might be the reason why that remastered version of the first singles album disappeared so fast I may be wrong but it's just a guess on my part.
 
I remember getting my copy of Ticket RC in 2003 brand-new from a new CD store. I had to get them to special order it, but the 98 RC was stilll available.

As for audio quality, the Remastered Classics CDs were all encoded in the HDCD format, so depending on the player (which is hard, as HDCD manufacturers are not required to brand themselves HDCD) you can end up hearing 24-bit audio rather than CD’s standard 16-bit.
 
As for audio quality, the Remastered Classics CDs were all encoded in the HDCD format, so depending on the player (which is hard, as HDCD manufacturers are not required to brand themselves HDCD) you can end up hearing 24-bit audio rather than CD’s standard 16-bit.

I'm not so sure that any HDCD encoding on Carpenters discs is anything to be concerned about. I refer you to several posts by the late Charles Hansen of Ayre Acoustics.

HDCD list

A relevant portion of that post, bolding is mine:
CHansen said:
Now here is the kicker. When the mastering engineer is making an album, he can choose to use PE, LLE, both, or neither. Many, many albums are made using NEITHER. But the PM A/D converters still put the secret "subcode" into the bitstream that will light up the "HDCD" light even if there is NOTHING to decode!

That is why I said that about half of the "HDCD" albums I have (that light up the "HDCD" light) are "fakes". They will sound exactly the same on any CD player because there is nothing to decode. (Well, actually every CD player sounds different, but that is another topic for another day.)

So I hate to break the news to you. The fact is that this list of HDCD discs is just plain wrong. There are many titles that, while made with the PM A/D converter, were not made using any of the HDCD features and do not require decoding. For example on the first post in this thread, "Patsy Cline's Greatest Hits" was listed. This is not an HDCD disc and requires no decoding whatsoever.

Simply putting a disc in and seeing the light is not enough. The only way to know for sure is to use Foobar with the latest HDCD plug-in. PE is very simple to interpret -- it's either on or off. LLE is a bit trickier. Watch the gain setting in between tracks for a quick indication of whether it was used.

Sorry to break the bad news. It is just part of PM's slimy marketing practices. Rather unfortunate, as they had the best engineers in the world along with some of the sleaziest marketing guys in the world. But finally there is a way to know for sure how a disc was recorded and if it actually needs decoding. (This is why there are so many discs with no marking on the jacket that will light up the "HDCD" light. The mastering engineer used the PM A/D converter because he liked the sound, but didn't use any of the HDCD features because so few players have the decoders.)

See also:
Huge misconception regarding HDCD - Charles Hansen - Digital Drive

Bottom line is that engineers may have used equipment that would flag a CD as HDCD (light the light), but it wasn't actually doing anything that needed decoding. I believe that somewhere in those pages it is stated that typically, if a disc's outer packaging doesn't specifically state HDCD, then it probably isn't anything more than 16/44.1 in reality.

I would say that this applies to Carpenters recordings, though I have never thoroughly investigated it. The fact is that none of the outer packagings list HDCD. So I would just be careful about claims of HDCD in regard to Carpenters recordings.
 
I just had a shock and hadn't even noticed. I just went to check what copy of `ticket to ride` I had on cd and I don`t even have it at all, barring vinyl and cassette, how the hell did I miss that :sad:
I had a look on Ebay and there`s one copy of the 98` re-mastered cd for sale in the states!
 
I'm not so sure that any HDCD encoding on Carpenters discs is anything to be concerned about. I refer you to several posts by the late Charles Hansen of Ayre Acoustics.

HDCD list

A relevant portion of that post, bolding is mine:


See also:
Huge misconception regarding HDCD - Charles Hansen - Digital Drive

Bottom line is that engineers may have used equipment that would flag a CD as HDCD (light the light), but it wasn't actually doing anything that needed decoding. I believe that somewhere in those pages it is stated that typically, if a disc's outer packaging doesn't specifically state HDCD, then it probably isn't anything more than 16/44.1 in reality.

I would say that this applies to Carpenters recordings, though I have never thoroughly investigated it. The fact is that none of the outer packagings list HDCD. So I would just be careful about claims of HDCD in regard to Carpenters recordings.
I'd have to disagree with on that, since when I play the Remastered CD's that I have in my PS3, connected to my Yamaha surround system by TOSLINK, I find that there is more dynamic range on the discs than when I play them on another CD player, or even made a CD-RW copy that I then played back on the PS3. Even when I compare pre-1998 CD's (especially of tracks that have not been remixed, like (Want You) Back In My Life Again) to post-1998 CD's, the dynamic range is a lot wider than when those same CD's are played on a standard CD player.

Also, record companies are not required to put the HDCD logo on a CD or its packaging.
 
My friend thinks I’m trying to rip him off selling a very good plus for 200. He was totally OK with it until he talk to somebody here he says. I bought my sealed copy for $700 US. I didn’t feel ripped off because every other time before I did.

The two questions I asked were how many were made and what should I tell my friend who thinks I’m trying to rip them off :)
 
As far as how many were made, I don't think anyone would know unless they had access to Universal's manufacturing records.

But usually, in order for a CD or DVD to be pressed, and for the discs to be sold at, say $19.99 in stores, a minimum ball park estimate would be in the 5,000 to 10,000 copy range. This is why most MOD CD's and DVD's that you get from Amazon are on CD-R and DVD-R---if the company doesn't think that it'll move a lot of copies of a certain title, but it still wants to release it, they'll use the lower cost alternative so that they can only print up like 500 copies or 1,000 copies at a time, and not have to pay $5,000 to $15,000 to make a glass master.
 
I'd have to disagree with on that, since when I play the Remastered CD's that I have in my PS3, connected to my Yamaha surround system by TOSLINK, I find that there is more dynamic range on the discs than when I play them on another CD player, or even made a CD-RW copy that I then played back on the PS3. Even when I compare pre-1998 CD's (especially of tracks that have not been remixed, like (Want You) Back In My Life Again) to post-1998 CD's, the dynamic range is a lot wider than when those same CD's are played on a standard CD player.

Also, record companies are not required to put the HDCD logo on a CD or its packaging.

Wow. Where to start? HDCD has NOTHING to do with dynamic range. Absolutely nothing. Dynamic range is a function of compression. The only -- ONLY -- difference between an HDCD and a standard CD is that an HDCD is encoded with 20-bit samples instead of the 16-bit samples used by red book CDs. This does not affect the dynamic range in the slightest.

It's these kinds of posts that always drive me away on the rare occasions I look at this site. The level of misinformation being spewed is astronomical.
 
Thank you, @engineer for your explanation of HDCD. I would expect everything you said to be true on that subject. As to the "misinformation being spewed" we try very hard to tamp that down when we can, but as this is a public forum, as you know, anyone can say pretty much anything. One of the purposes of the Carpenters Resource was to attempt to eliminate all of the misinformation regarding which mixes were used where, and I've pretty much limited that to what my own ears tell me with help from Chris May.

I personally have never delved into HDCD other than to note that Windows Media Player used to have a "light" that would light up on certain discs. I don't think it even does that anymore. And I posted the Charles Hansen info above as he seemed to have a handle on the situation.
 
Wow. Where to start? HDCD has NOTHING to do with dynamic range. Absolutely nothing. Dynamic range is a function of compression. The only -- ONLY -- difference between an HDCD and a standard CD is that an HDCD is encoded with 20-bit samples instead of the 16-bit samples used by red book CDs. This does not affect the dynamic range in the slightest.

It's these kinds of posts that always drive me away on the rare occasions I look at this site. The level of misinformation being spewed is astronomical.
Sorry, but I would say that you are spreading mis-information. It is actually 24 bits that are encoded onto an HDCD, not 20.

Mark Linett said:
...the Pacific Microsonics HDCD system which encodes 24 bits onto a conventional 16 bit CD...

Also, you shot yourself in the foot, with your above statement when you said "Dynamic range is a function of compression". By going from 24-bit to 16-bit, you are adding compression and it does affect the Dynamic range. It is like with Blu-Ray's, if you have a system that can decode DTS-HD, then you get a better Dynamic range and response than if you have a system that can only decode the main DTS stream, then your dynamic range is going to be limited by the original DTS's 16-bit playback.

Also, and this is from the link that Harry provided, and its right at the top of that page:

https://audioasylum.com/audio/digital/messages/18/184385.html said:
1)Peak Extend (PE) - was a compansion algorithm that compressed the top 9dB of audio signal during recording into the top 3dB of digital codes on the disc. When played back through an HDCD-enabled DAC or CD player, a "sub-code" that replaced some of the audio signal in the 16th bit (LSB) would instruct the DAC to expand the compressed signal and restore the full dynamic range.

...The truth is that PE (*if* engaged by the mastering engineer) could only ever provide a maximum dynamic range increase of 6dB
(italics and bold added by me)

It's why I don't listen to MP3's a whole lot (even on my phone). If I want to import something into my iTunes list from CD (which I rarely do) I have my iTunes set up to import it as a much higher quality file than Apple's default.

This kind of reminds me of the question about the old audio cassettes about whether the Dolby "B" system gave a better sound than if a cassette was recorded and/or played without Dolby. Whenever I listen to a cassette in my car I always turn Dolby off, as it clearly compresses the audio signal and dynamic range.
 
Straight from the now-archived official hdcd.com site:

High Definition Compatible Digital® (HDCD®) is a patented encode/decode process for delivering the full richness and detail of the original microphone feed on Compact Discs and DVD-Audio. HDCD has been used in the recording of more than 5,000 CD titles, which include more than 250 Billboard Top 200 recordings and more than 175 GRAMMY® nominations, (View a list of the HDCD Grammy nominees in 1998, 1999, 2000, and2001) and account for more than 300 million CDs sold.

HDCD-encoded CDs sound better because they are encoded with 20 bits of real musical information, as compared with 16 bits for all other CDs. HDCD overcomes the limitation of the 16-bit CD format by using a sophisticated system to encode the additional 4 bits onto the CD while remaining completely compatible with the existing CD format. HDCD provides more dynamic range, a more focused 3-D soundstage, and extremely natural vocal and musical timbre. With HDCD, you get the body, depth, and emotion of the original performance not a flat, digital imitation. Tell me more.

HDCD

Furthermore:

Q: What is HDCD?

A: High Definition Compatible Digital, or HDCD, is a patented process for delivering on CD the full richness and detail of the original microphone feed. When listening to HDCD recordings, you hear more dynamic range, a focused 3-D soundstage, and extremely natural vocal and musical timbre. You get the body, depth, and emotion of the original performance-not a flat, digital imitation. HDCD-encoded CDs sound better because they are encoded with 20 bits of real musical information as compared with 16 bits for all other CDs. HDCD overcomes the limitation of the 16-bit CD format by using a sophisticated system to encode the additional 4 bits onto the CD while remaining completely compatible with the CD format.

HDCD - About HDCD - What is HDCD?

The rest is all opinion and conjecture. We're done with this topic for now. :)
 
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