Excellent thread and work on this! You strike me as an expert on these matters, so I wanted to ask you what is meant to be the very original theatrical mix? I’m from the UK and I’ve got the UHD and Blu-ray, the former containing the Atmos track and English Dolby Digital 5.1, the latter a 5.1 DTS-HD mix. The DTS-HD mix, to my ears, sounds incredible, and its frustrating that - like many of the other Pixar films on UHD in the UK - it isn’t included on the 4K. The thing is, I’ve been informed that the Dolby Digital track found on the UHD is supposedly the original theatrical audio track. Maybe I don’t understand, or maybe Disney chose to neuter the audio, but I watched through the film with the DD track and it didn’t sound as robust as the 5.1 or how I would presume such a track as that would sound. So I guess my question is: what is meant to be TS1’s original audio? Is it a 5.1 DD or something else entirely? And if the DD is the original track, is it me or the disc that is resulting in a lesser sound? I have this same issue with a handful of the other Pixar UHD audios, like Monsters Inc., which also has a robust 5.1 on the Blu-ray and not the UHD which contains a 5.1 DD that is likewise meant to be the original theatrical audio. Thanks for any information you can provide!
Interesting. So to give you an idea, Toy Story was in fact originally screened in 5.1 surround using Dolby Digital sound, in fact the 5.1 audio was later preserved when the film came out on LaserDisc in the US and Japan, though it’s pretty obvious that films’ soundtracks at the time would be stored on either 6-track analog tapes or on 16-bit PCM tracks (as with the case for films mastered in CDS such as Terminator 2 and Edward Scissorhands), which is why the Dolby Surround downmixes from the digital PCM track on LD tend to be more crystal clear than Dolby Digital, especially since the film’s audio reels had to be re-captured twice for the DTS LaserDisc and the first DVD releases, since if you sync the LD DD mix or the DTS LD mix to the DVD DD mix or the LD DD, it would start fine until the end where it goes out of sync, especially since I would know analog audio reels were used not just because of it, but also the errors the DTS LD mix. I talked about it in the description, so you can check it out. DTS apparently was designed to be as close to CD audio as possible, hence their logo of “The Digital Experience” using a CD on their symbol and promotional poster. as there are less compression, and it uses 20-bit audio rather than 16-bit that DD and PCM use.
In fact, the DD track from the UHD you were talking about was NOT the original theatrical mix, it is the 2005 remix of the film that you can also find on the BD. I honestly have no idea why Disney or Pixar chose to do that, but my guess was that it was done to match their tradition of their films being mixed to 6.1 (or 5.1 EX) starting with the second film, which is why A Bug’s Life would later get the same treatment when it was first released on Blu-ray.
Here’s a screencap of the DD track from the UHD to give you an idea
To give you an idea (from left to right), these include parts that were added in the new mix. First is an LFE sample of Rex’s foot stomping, Woody’s microphone feedback from the rear channels, the kids cheering when they found out Andy got Buzz, and the footsteps as they head back downstairs. So, if you have the 2000 DVD release, or listened to the Flemish track or the audio description track on the BD, they contain the original theatrical mixes.