Chicago / The Studio Albums 1979-2008 / Vol Two 10CD box

Every summer in the 80s, we’d trek to Merriweather Post Pavillion and Chicago always delivered (even with Scheff) despite the weather. “16,” “17” & “18” all deserve to have Elliot Scheiner “do his thing” in discrete surround. RHINO, please stop re-releasing repackaged, 2-channel re-hash. Please let the MASTER 5.1 (discrete) Remix with BOB LUDWIG handling the RM and you (Rhino) RE Chicago’s most fruitful, ($) chart-topping (absolutely second-to-none, 6+ year, 1983 onward) run to (multi) SACD, (Immersion) or (SDE) bluray and DVD-A…or ALL 3 formats with multiple options like Pink Floyd offered (thanks to EMI & Acoustic Sounds).

Don’t forget Chicago made a couple of the best music videos EVER (from a marketing position can u say hirez (lossless 5.1 audio 1080p video) extras? Service the fans like you did briefly with the REM DVD-A’s and the (10) 2011 Japnse Premium Sound multi-SACD releases. Maybe, just maybe if you guys learn how to market the medium in N/A it’d catch on. Novel concept, eh?

Well received my copy today and why I much prefer the early Terry Kath era I was excited to finally get a decent correct version of 16 (the original remaster featured edits of What You’re Missing and Love Me Tomorrow) and Hooray! they are fixed. Of the volume 2 set I really only cared for the Cetera albums but I was interested to hear the earlier Scheff albums remastered and for all the problems they fixed on 16 they added some new ones to 18. Just a cursory listen and two of the tracks cut about a second of the intro. Very noticeable on 25 or 6 to 4. This is very frustrating. I was hoping to replace all my individual discs with the boxes. Guess that’s not happening.

They will never release Get On This. The fact that it was never included in the first place is an indication of their feeling on this track. I don’t know if it has to do with Dawayne or what, but it is a shame we never got an official release. And my boot of it is a copy-of-a-copy-of-a-poorly-ripped-mp3. Of course, their horrific Terry Kath tribute CD is just telling of how they view their archives.

I’m a collector and fan of many original and today’s version of Rhino on all formats however the Chicago vol.1 box set for the most part sounds awful. Most of the albums were remastered too loud and the lacked separation. I have both of the Chicago SACD/hybrids released so far and IMO the sound quality is amazing. If the original master tapes still exist for the albums in Vol. 1 are are still in decent condition, that set should be remastered again and released with all bonus tracks in much better sound quality. If any of those albums were recorded in quad or 5.1 that haven’t already been released, why not release them all now?
I’m sure some of you are excited about Vol. 2 however I’ll wait for reviews before I consider purchasing it. I much prefer Terry Kath era Chicago.

There wasn’t an exclusive bonus track on the Stone of Sisyphus Japanese CD. I wonder if they are finally including the awesome “Get On This” which was excluded from the original release. It might just be a typo and they meant that Night & Day would have the bonus track from the Japanese CD.

I hope that the versions of 18-21 will be remastered versions. I have the remastered version of Twenty 1 and it is super compressed. Hopefully that will be rectified on this new set.

If this one’s anything like Volume 1, it should be well worth it — simple packaging, but a solid collection of album and bonus tracks.

The inclusion of the bonus tracks for their 80s albums is interesting; I picked up the 2010 Chicago 17 mini-LP for its bonus tracks.
But not Chicago 16, which goes for exorbitant prices.

So if this box carries over the same bonus tracks, then the entire box will be notably cheaper than the Japanese edition of Chicago 16…and you get 9 other remastered CDs in the process. That’s a neat deal.