I think he meant to ask if I was going to remix the captured audio in 5.1, and yes, the plan is to fashion a new multichannel mix, but as previously mentioned, it depends heavily on the quality of the source material and capture, so I can’t promise anything at this point. Once the mono and stereo audio has been digitized, I’ll know for sure what I’m working with. HDR for the video is a must. Once you’ve seen Fantasia properly projected with just the right amount of luminance, there’s no going back— some of those special effects really pop in 35mm, and you really won’t get the full effect in SDR.

Disney is wildly inconsistent with the A/V quality of some of their titles. The Jungle Book is another one that comes to mind. If ever you can, listen to the 1990 Dolby Stereo soundtrack; it’s noticeably more enveloping and consistently separated than the 2007 Platinum Edition mix, despite the latter being presented in discrete surround. Sound effects pan more frequently in the Dolby Stereo mix, and while the underscore for almost every song is mixed in broad mono that sounds flat as a pancake in the Platinum Edition (”Trust in Me,” “My Own Home,” and the closing “Bare Necessities” reprise being the only exceptions), you can hear separate music stems at play in the Dolby Stereo mix. The differences between 1990 and 2007 “I Wanna Be Like You” in particular are like night and day. (I’ll probably post the A/B comparison videos here soon.) So, yeah, there’s trade offs between both options— few scenes have broad mono score while most are in true stereo, and it isn’t always the same scene in both mixes.

For those interested in Fantasia’s audio history, I’ve explained it here.