It’s got nothing to do with syncing to the GOUT audio. The GOUT standard was about which frames were to be included in any given release so that decent audio, subtitles, and foreign dubs could be easily muxed in. This was very important in the days when we were syncing LDs that had all sort of frame differences – those were the releases that sometimes had black frames inserted to maintain sync; it was also important when editions (notably Harmy’s) that were based on the SE DVDs (and later the BDs) were produced. The GOUT could have been released with a laugh track and still have served as the basis for a standard as to which frames to include.
Well my point isn’t so much about the quality of the GOUT or its audio, but rather about how complete it is. When I say it’s “flawed”, I mean that frames are missing and the audio (at least in ROTJ) had to be looped in a certain place to maintain sync with the video. Given that, I just feel that a better source (“better” in the sense that it’s more complete and free of those audio edits) shouldn’t be cut down simply to conform to an inferior (less complete) standard. And now we’ve learned that the missing GOUT frames in question were actually in the middle of a reel, rather than at the end, so that increases their significance in terms of what audiences originally saw in theaters.