The Ultimate Collection (Universal 983 584-7)

Cuyler

Bright colored pinwheels go 'round in my head.
Hi everyone,

I had no idea until I consulted the Carpenters Complete Recording Resource (The Carpenters Complete Recording Resource) that The Ultimate Collection (Netherlands edition) is one of three places to find the "original album mix" (which I assume means not remixed/cleaned up). I remembered buying this back in 2006 (or maybe my parents bought it for me haha) and was shocked to read that "the set went out-of-print almost immediately after its release and was replaced with a similar track list that had nearly all remixes on the early stuff." (Ultimate Collection (NL)) Well, I have a copy of the Netherlands release. At the time I bought it, I had no idea it was from the Netherlands (shoutout to @ChrisCarpenterCollecter), and I also had no idea until today that it was so rare and immediately withdrawn.

In any case, I am ripping the CD in WAV format now... feel free to contact me if you have any requests :)
 
I still remember buying the From the Top cd set and not even having a CD player HA HA....but I was able to listen to a few tracks on a friend's CD player in his RV....and listened to KC's disco and solo songs which I loved!!!!
 
@Harry or @Chris May, I'm wondering if either of you know... when it says "32-bit floating point mastering," did they work with the source tapes for the Netherlands Ultimate Collection project? I don't think there's any point of ripping the Remastered Classics CDs, upconverting them to 32-bit float point, then downconverting it to CD redbook quality again for release... but I could be wrong!
 
32-bit float mastering is rather uncommon when compared to 24-bit fixed mastering. Basically they were just using it in the mixing stage to ensure ever single track (piano, drums, vocal, etc) was mixed properly and at a high quality before exporting to 24-bit and being shipped to the CD/Cassette/LP Duplication facilities. Also those 32-bit files were probably saved for future use.
 
That Netherlands set with original mixes was re-released in total as CARPENTERS COLLECTED. It's bit identical and still available as far as I know.
 
32-bit float mastering is rather uncommon when compared to 24-bit fixed mastering. Basically they were just using it in the mixing stage to ensure ever single track (piano, drums, vocal, etc) was mixed properly and at a high quality before exporting to 24-bit and being shipped to the CD/Cassette/LP Duplication facilities. Also those 32-bit files were probably saved for future use.
I can actually tell from looking at the spectrograms that, although the mixes may be identical to the LP releases, the mastering is not. Especially on the earlier songs ("Ticket to Ride" is a great example), there is much more tape hiss on here than on the Remastered Classics CD, which to me indicates a flat transfer of the source tape, with less noise reduction. (I personally don't like noise reduction, so I quite enjoy this mastering approach.)
 
Seems to me Richard wrote at one point that for the early albums like “Offering” & CTY, Dolby wasn’t used until the final 2-channel mix down. Whereas later albums from like N&T onwards used Dolby right from the recording session.
 
Seems to me Richard wrote at one point that for the early albums like “Offering” & CTY, Dolby wasn’t used until the final 2-channel mix down. Whereas later albums from like N&T onwards used Dolby right from the recording session.
Ahh, okay. The N&T tracks on this 3CD collection are also relatively hissy (compared to their Remastered Classics counterparts, at least). However, I did notice that the Horizon tracks are much softer, probably in large part due to Dolby, and in large part due to the fact that they recorded at 30 ips from Horizon on.
 
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