So adywan's ESB recreation is completely gout-synched? Awesome. I haven't had a chance to see his version yet (sacrilege, I know!), but I'll have to do that soon. If this mix will fit to it that would make it even better for me. He mainly used the SE 5.1, which sounds quite good for the most part and has the advantage of discrete channels, but I don't like the way they mixed the surrounds (flashy and too loud).

I never made a 2.0 ac3, just the flac, but it would be easy enough to encode one at the bitrate of your choice. ;)

The fact that the '93 pcm for Star Wars came right from the 70mm printmaster is the reason it sounds so good. If only they hadn't added the extra junk on top of it! I really dislike the shattering glass sounds as well--replacing those with the 35mm version was the first edit I ever made on this project. The loss of dynamics during that section is noticeable, but a worthwhile tradeoff. I partially compensated by raising the blasting volume by 2 db; any more and it would have been too obvious I'd fiddled with it.

I'm sure they still have the 70mm mix in the archives, since they claim to have kept everything. I think they should have used it as the primary audio source when making the special edition, because its power and sound quality are superior to the '97 mix (which is still pretty good for the most part). But why use an existing version when you can change it and make it "better"?

I don't remember anything about the LFE portion of the '97 mix in the theatre, or whether the place I saw it was even using 5.1 at the time. On the laserdisc ac3, I find the Star Destroyer flyby to be remarkably subdued in that respect--not even close to the accounts of awe-inspiring rumble in the 70mm version. Because of that, I made a large increase to the bass volume in that scene for the 5.1, so it would live up to what it should be. The Empire and Jedi SE's were never lacking in bass in that way--no idea why it should have been so low.