hairy_hen said:

The spitting sound was something I edited out on a whim last year for a previous soundtrack attempt, and the edit seems to have found its way into this version also. I'm surprised you noticed!

Ah... I see. I'm just so used to hear it at that moment, so it came as a surprise when it wasn't there, I think I've seen this film too much I guess. ;)

hairy_hen said:

The spitting was obviously a mistake--they must not have noticed that it was a part of the dialogue track until after the mix was complete. They had Mark Hamill redub that line for the mono version, and this error is not heard in that mix. Why it was never removed from the SE mixes I don't know--guess they forgot and didn't notice again. It had sort of bugged me after Darth Editous pointed it out a few years ago, so I deleted it by looping a section of background noise. Not having it in the film is no great loss; I'm certainly not going to produce a new version just to put it back in, lol. But yeah, I guess the oversight does make it slightly inauthentic for that brief moment, alas.

I think it may actually be some hair from Carrie Fisher that had found its way into Hamill's mouth, in that scene you can clearly see Fisher's hairdo starting to fall apart. ;)

A new version is obviously don't needed :) I was just curious and wanted to know if it wasn't part of the original 70mm audio or something. Thanks for your explanation.