msycamore said: I just hope that ridiculously loud bass when R2 fall down in the canyon isn't included ;)
A 12 decibel reduction takes care of that, no worries. Just a tiny bit of oomph, instead of a dumpster hitting the ground from ten stories up. ;) I don't mind that sort of thing in recent films, but the aural aesthetic of Star Wars doesn't support an overly exaggerated low end for that type of sound effect. If it's really objectionable I could remove it entirely, though it does sound good as it is at present.
I've been trying to find more information about the technical specifications of 70mm magnetic audio, but haven't really found much that I didn't already know. I'm not sure exactly how much headroom each channel contained, or what sort of mixing standards were in place at the time. Various sources have suggested that the modern digital surround formats brought the powerful sound of 70mm to a much greater number of theaters; it's probably reasonable to assume that the dynamic characteristics were fairly similar, but I'm sure it's not exact. Specifically I'm wondering whether the practise of lowering the LFE level by 10 decibels to increase the headroom was in place when Star Wars was mixed, or if that came about afterwards. I can pretty much tell when I've made the bass too loud just by listening, but it would be helpful to have a concrete maximum db figure to refer to.
That would just be for my own edification really--aside from fixing the Alderaan explosion and checking a test file again, I'm basically done. It really sounds awesome! I'll always wonder how close it is to the real thing, but I can definitely live with this version.
If by some miracle the 70mm mix was ever given an actual transfer and official release, depending on how it was done it might not be possible to put it out exactly as it is without some tweaking. The two LFE's would have to be summed together, and the mono surround probably distributed equally among both rear channels to get a proper 5.1 format. If there is bass information in the boom tracks that goes above 120 hz--possible, since it was a new format and obviously Dolby Digital standards hadn't been established--those would have to be put back into the mains. A bit of stereo panning in the surrounds or from front to back might not be objectionable if it was done tastefully, or possibly boosting the bass response if it seemed necessary; though the goal should clearly be to keep it as authentic as possible. This is Lucasfilm we're talking about, however . . .