The master tapes are just that: the final mixed sound and outputted to audio tape.
On a production back in the days, you had your on set sound recorded on a nagra and all of this was edited and put to stems which is multi tracked tape. One track was dialogue, another was music and another was sound effects. These stems are then mixed and mastered to stereo, mono, surround sound master tapes.
I understand that but didn’t all the played audio in the film prints come from the film (on the side)? Or where else someone could get these master tapes unless working for LFL? Just wondering is this a similar case to “I wish we had the o-neg to scan it for OT.com members” or are these tapes actually around somewhere like film prints?
From my understanding, the O-neg does not have the original soundtrack. They were mated during the making of the interpositives. The 35mm interprositives either had the mono soundtrack or the stereo soundtrack (Dolby Stereo matrix encoded 4.0 channel surround sound - L, R, C, Surround) and the 70mm had the 4.1 or 4.2 surround (basically the same sound mix as stereo, but with a specific LFE channel). During the work for the Blu-ray release, they archived all three of these. The 1985 and 1993 audio mixes appear to also be Dolby Stereo matrix encoded, but I don’t know if they are 4.0 or 5.1 (I’m awaiting a new external hard drive so I can start working on converting the matrixed stereo into discreet multi-track audio. Several of the early LD releases have the original theatrical matrixed stereo track. The mono is only available from a UK video recording and a film print - and neither one appears to be the level of quality we would want. The discreet 4.1/4.2 audio from the 70mm prints is not available but has been recreated by some enterprising OT members. Any higher than LD quality would have to come from LFL directly.