This master was the LCRS (Left-Center-Right-Surround) mix for Dolby Stereo, recorded on magnetic tape.
Given the overall similarity to the stereo versions, I'd suspected something like this to be the case. Unaltered portions of the 1997 mix do sound very similar to the original.
Finally, an Aphex Dominator II limiter was employed to reduce harshness in the sound caused by sharp transients.
Is this why the dynamic range of the 1997 mix is so noticeably reduced compared to the 70mm and 1993 versions? I strongly suspect this limiter to be the culprit. Extremely high level transient peaks are one of the biggest reasons the 70mm version sounds so powerful: the brief impacts right at the beginning of loud sound effects really 'snap' with great strength, and no other version duplicates this effect. Of course, the '97 version wasn't derived from the 70mm directly as the '93 mix was, so it's possible that this 4-track master had lower dynamic range to begin with, but the use of a peak limiter makes me suspicious. I guess you could describe the transients as 'harsh' from a certain perspective, but I don't find them objectionable the way the remixers evidently did. (The 4-track may not have held up as well as the 70mm printmaster in sound quality; though if that were the case, why not just use it to begin with?)
Because the surround channel in the original master was monaural, stereo surround was created by running the mono surround through a home theatre THX® processor, which splits the single channel into left and right, and then scrambles their relative phase.
Makes sense. All the original surround effects are present in the unaltered scenes, and with the same balance relative to the front channels. Shifting the phase would help spread them around the room by avoiding specific imaging, but by THX's own guidelines it seems unnecessary, since using dipole surround speakers would achieve the same effect without needing to alter the mix itself. The phase shift would also cause them to be diverted to the central rear speakers in a Dolby-EX setup, though since that format wouldn't come into existence until two years later, it wasn't yet a consideration.
In many scenes, "opening up" the ambient soundfield through stereo surrounds was apparent. One is the desert landscape on Tatooine, where the sound of the wind sweeps between the front and back. The opening scenes aboard the rebel ship and the final attack sequences on the surface of the Death Star exhibited similar enhanced depth in the surround field. And, some left-right rear effects were noticed, as in Tie Fighter scenes, though they seemed to be more subtle compared to current digital soundtracks.
I never noticed any particular expansion of the sound field on Tatooine; to me the wind in the surrounds sounded exactly the same as the original, but it's possible I missed it. I did notice other places where the original suround effects were given stereo panning, however. Quite a number of stereo surround effects were added to the spaceship scenes and elsewhere, though to me they usually stand out as objectionable: not always because they are new per se, but because they are not particularly well-integrated into the rest of the mix. The volume level of most new sound effects in the surround channels is far too loud relative to everything else that's going on, placing too much emphasis on being 'flashy' rather than balanced. The SE mixes for Empire and Jedi have this same problem with overly-loud surrounds to an even greater degree.
The LFE was present in the explosions of Alderaan and the Death Star, and from the Millennium Falcon, though again the intensity of the effects was less pronounced than what would be encountered in a contemporary movie.
The Alderaan and Death Star explosions are the strongest uses of bass in the '97 mix. Both of them correspond to the addition of CGI shockwaves into the visuals. There are a few other bass-heavy moments, but most of the usage is surprisingly subdued throughout the film.
Notice how they don't even mention the use of LFE for the opening scene with the Star Destroyer . . . which isn't actually surprising, because the '97 mix barely contains any bass at all in this iconic scene, so fondly remembered by many who saw the original 70mm version. The '93 stereo track seems to have more bass here than the '97 mix even without an LFE channel being present, and there's just something not right about that! It may reflect the dynamic reduction in the main channels, but it's still very strange.
New mixes were necessary for the added scenes, which were created in the 5.1-channel format. These mixes were meticulously blended into the four-track master, plus original dialog, music and effects elements to create a new 35mm Dolby SR (Spectral Recording) noise-reduction-encoded, six-channel master.
I think they must have remixed some original scenes from scratch as well. Similar to the mono mix, the level of the music can be noticeably more prominent than in the original stereo versions; this is particularly noticeable in the opening scene of the film.
The one aspect of this new edition that was controversial was the dialogue. While there were no problems with intelligibility, it was almost impossible to overlook the dialogue's bright and strident characteristics.
Every time C-3PO speaks, the hiss level is unbelievable. I have no explanation for this other than the tape quality having degraded over time. This hissing is also detectable in the original mixes, but to a much lesser degree. With the '93 mix being made just a few years earlier and the noise being less an issue, it again makes me wonder why they didn't use the 70mm printmaster as their source this time.
Other characters' dialogue has always been of somewhat inconsistent quality (probably why they re-recorded some lines for the mono mix), but I've heard it said that this mainly applies to the lines recorded on set rather than in the studio.
captainsolo said:
This would completely explain why the 97SE 5.1 has a more tinny and airy quality when compared to the 93 and 70mm audio.
This may be true. The characteristics of the EQ and dynamics could be due to the different masters used in addition to mixing choices made for the SE. But exactly where this mysterious 4-track fits into the history of it is something I can't definitively state with certainty. The general similarity of the multichannel versions to each other makes it likely that it served as a basis for all of them, but whether it was actually used as it was or simply as a guideline for the release versions to follow . . . who knows?
Nonetheless, the dramatic improvements to the sonics for this seminal film have prompted many film sound experts and enthusiasts to offer high praise for the achievements at Lucasfilm.
Leaving aside whatever one might think of the additions and changes, the '97 mix is indeed a significant improvement to the auditory experience of the film when comparing it to the sonic limitations of the 35mm versions. But when using the 70mm mix as a reference point, it seems like a step backwards in several respects.
It still mostly retains that authentic 'Star Wars' sound, though, which is more than can be said for the abominable 2004 remix . . .