Initial thoughts on the "upgraded" Carpenters Christmas album

Agree with above suggestions for these songs to be gleaned from AOFC:

Home for the Holidays
What Are You Doing New Years Eve
Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Little Alter Boy
Do You Hear What I Hear?

One further important alteration/enhancement: "I'll Be Home for Christmas" needs to be given the same technical treatment that many of the songs on the RPO album received, the adjustments that brought Karen's voice noticeably more to the forefront - it's a beautiful arrangement and Karen's vocal is magical, but it tends to get swamped by the orchestration - she needs to be heard, really fully heard...
 
CDs can hold a maximum of 80 minutes of music, so if it's going to be a single disc, some selections are going to have to be cut.
Maybe he’ll do a edited version for CD, but have a DVD-audio release that contains both albums at either CD-quality (DVD-A can hold 7 hours at that level), or higher (16-bit, 48khz 1.5 Mbps or higher).
 
Well Blu-Ray is still a niche market. At least most people have DVD player that could play a DVD audio disc.
Hmmm. I have several DVD-A discs and they won’t play their surround layer on any of my DVD players. They only play the stereo layer. My Blu ray audio plays without any problem.
 
They should, or at least play a Dolby Digital track unless they didn’t encode any DVD-video data on the disc which most DVD-audio discs did to provide compatibility with all DVD players.


I’ve only got a few DVD-audio discs, and they work with every DVD player I’ve played them on, from cheap $25 department store players to PS3 & PS4.
 
DVD-Audio is completely dead. SACD still has a few users (I'm one of them) and Richard needs for any release to make money. There's no reason to encode in DVD-Audio. Blu-ray could be interesting and even then, the number of buyers would likely be low.

Ed
 
I’m afraid somethings going to get omitted, a song or even an interlude to make 2 albums fit on 1 disc. That doesn’t sit well with me. I hope that doesn’t happen.
 
DVD-Audio is completely dead. SACD still has a few users (I'm one of them) and Richard needs for any release to make money. There's no reason to encode in DVD-Audio. Blu-ray could be interesting and even then, the number of buyers would likely be low.

Ed
Seems to still be alive:

 
None of these are DVD-Audio releases...unless I'm missing something.

Ed
They are DVD-Audio.

Al Stewart - Time Passages 5.1 DVD Surround

Barclay James Harvest - Time Honored Ghosts 5.1 DVD Upmix

Giancarlo Erra - Departure Tapes 5.1 DVD-A surround

Al Stewart- Year of the Cat 5.1 DVD Surround


Reflection Club - Still Thick as a Brick 5.1 Surround DVD
 
They are DVD-Audio.

Al Stewart - Time Passages 5.1 DVD Surround

Barclay James Harvest - Time Honored Ghosts 5.1 DVD Upmix

Giancarlo Erra - Departure Tapes 5.1 DVD-A surround

Al Stewart- Year of the Cat 5.1 DVD Surround


Reflection Club - Still Thick as a Brick 5.1 Surround DVD

That's one DVD-A hybrid disc that's also a CD (the Giancarlo Erra). There are no purely DVD-A discs on that list, though it is encouraging to see that one. The others are DVD surround. I miss DVD-A so I wish they were still a thing but they're not.

Ed
 
That's one DVD-A hybrid disc that's also a CD (the Giancarlo Erra). There are no purely DVD-A discs on that list, though it is encouraging to see that one. The others are DVD surround. I miss DVD-A so I wish they were still a thing but they're not.

Ed
Unless they shot videos for most of those albums in the 70’s, these are not DVD-Video discs in any manner, especially the ones that are using 96/24 encoding.
 
Maybe he’ll do a edited version for CD, but have a DVD-audio release that contains both albums at either CD-quality (DVD-A can hold 7 hours at that level), or higher (16-bit, 48khz 1.5 Mbps or higher).
Downloads are where all the activity is today. And IMHO, 24/88.2 or 24/96 should be the bare minimum for hi-res releases, although record labels are now cheaping out and offering 24/44.1 in many cases. 🙄 Seriously, with cheap bandwidth and storage available today, there's no excuse to cut corners.
 
Downloads are where all the activity is today. And IMHO, 24/88.2 or 24/96 should be the bare minimum for hi-res releases, although record labels are now cheaping out and offering 24/44.1 in many cases. 🙄 Seriously, with cheap bandwidth and storage available today, there's no excuse to cut corners.
Well you don’t get the nice packaging with downloads.
And the downloads, even “uncompressed” ones sound compressed.
 
My wife and I played "Christmas Collection" while putting up our decorations this morning and thoroughly enjoyed listening to the two discs...what a warm, memory-invoking experience this always is - she remarked on how easy and soothing it is to listen to Karen sing (I just smiled knowingly), and how deep and resonant her voice is on "I Heard the Bells..."

I listened especially to Richard's arrangements and performances of the instrumentals on both albums and, as always, enjoyed them completely - I would never want to be without them! (admitting that as a pianist, of sorts, myself I'm a little biased, but they are very creative and brilliantly executed).
 
My mom and I were putting up the decorations this morning and we had “Christmas Collection” on, along with other CD’s, which brought about the Christmas mood.
 
iTunes Store UK are offering Carpenters 'Christmas Collection' download for £5:99. That's 31 items in total. Or £0.99 per item to download.
 
Has there been any update or announcement on the possibility of an 'upgraded' Christmas collection?

It's August now, and it seems like most Christmas albums start to show up around October, so we'd be just a couple months away, if this is something in the works for this year. Any news @Chris May ?? :)
 
Has there been any update or announcement on the possibility of an 'upgraded' Christmas collection?

It's August now, and it seems like most Christmas albums start to show up around October, so we'd be just a couple months away, if this is something in the works for this year. Any news @Chris May ?? :)
I was just wondering the same thing, or will this be several years down the line? I don't know about anyone else, but I sure could use a dose of something new Carpenters-related in my life after a pretty s*&tty 2022 so far and the upgraded or reword Christmas project would be a perfect gift to myself and family and friends.
 
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