SUMGUY21 said:

But the pops and clicks from the original vinyl transfer are quite distracting, especially at the beginning.

:) !!! The begining comes from the Anthology... Otherwise it comes from the RSO CD edition. Anyway. I take that as a compliment.

... Listen carefuly this track on every release and you'll hear those faults are just well hidden, or the mixing so flat (the SE) that you don't pay no more attention. That's why you have so much mediums and highs on the Anthology and highs+bass-mediums on the SE's: to "hide" or compensate those faults. And unfortunately they've hidden a lot of background details the same way!

It' s one of the worst track about saturation, that's why I choosed to post this one first. I don' t think I'll try to hide such things as they did.

(BTW: first post edited about what really is the project. Thanks).

If you're planning on distributing this alongside CD tracks, maybe consider processing those parts slightly with ClickRepair??

As to use any kind of denoising softwares... mmhhh. I'd like the tracks to be the less processed as possible. I wouldn't like the more corrupted parts (the trumpets saturation for instance) to be clipped because they are part of the noise.

Besides, there are far stronger pops on the Anthology (listen to "Attack Position" on disc 4) but it didn't keep Lucasfilm to release this set, and it doesn't keep the same set to remain better than the SE's ;)... Isn't it ?

Also, is there any particular reason the track seems to be sped up slightly and is shorter by 2 seconds?

The 2 seconds missings are at the transition of the begining and the duel theme: I choosed to make it match with the RSO version wich is as this, for a matter of rythm. So the track hasn't been sped up nor pitch changed.