Distracting from what? Watching a little pod fly through space... this isn't dialogue! lol
You have to realize that Empire Strikes Back is the OPPOSITE of a normal film. The characters end up in a worse place then they began.
The music, as such, does the opposite as well... the big battle is in the beginning of the film, with the "big" internal battle at the end... to kinda balance it out...
But its really like a normal film backwards... this would explain why williams wrote sooo much music for the opening of the film... becuase normally only the end has a lot of music...
Notice too that at the end of the film, not a lot of music is used (the battle between Luke and Vader for example)
But yea... I can see why people want the other... but at the same time, I worked very hard to try to fix the film version of "Probe Droid" but the release is flawed. The horns are flipped and the mixing is all wrong.
Unless hes ok with that or don't plan to change the sync of the music... then I suggest trying the original unused one.