Star Wars 1977 70mm sound mix recreation [stereo and 5.1 versions now available] (Released) — Page 18

After working on this almost nonstop for the past few days, I'm just about done with the main channel editing.  For the most part it sounds about as good as I could ever hope to make it, and I'm really pleased with how it has turned out.

I was going to upload the stereo track and call it finished, but upon further listening tests I began to detect a few subtle errors that had previously escaped my notice.  So it's not quite ready for posting yet, but it will be once I've got those sorted out.  Unfortunately I'm not entirely sure what the trouble is—I can hear that something is mismatched without quite being able to identify exactly what is causing it, or knowing what to do about it.  Some of the things I tried actually made it worse, so if I can't fix it, I guess I'll have to decide how much aural imperfection I'm willing to tolerate.

These are only small errors I'm talking about, quite possibly things that no one will ever notice if they didn't hear the more audible changes that occasionally appeared in the previous version.  If I'm stuck with them, it's certainly not a big deal; I'd just rather know that they're beyond my ability to deal with before putting it out there.

Recently I've become concerned about the issue of phase shift and how that can negatively affect sound quality.  It's a complex subject that I don't understand very well at all, but I've been trying to learn more in order to be able to avoid or counteract it.  For example, I hadn't realized until now that using a low pass filter causes a phase shift in the extracted low frequencies, which is exactly the kind of thing that could cause unintended cancellation or smearing when combined sounds that are no longer aligned.  See here for more information.

Owing to this, and the previous experience in deriving bass from the 1993 mix as part of the LFE channel, I'm thinking now that I'll probably avoid using the '93 as a source in that way again, and instead use edited versions of the '97 bass in those instances, replicating the earlier effects as closely as possible.  Sometimes the '93 bass really does sound the best, which is why I wanted to use it, but combined with the fact that phasing issues can be equipment-dependent, making it impossible to guarantee that other people will hear the same results that I do, that decision seems like the wisest course.

In other threads I've mentioned that I want to use the LFE channel from the 1997 DTS theatrical audio if possible, to gain a potential improvement in sound quality over the AC3 laserdisc, although if that doesn't happen, it'll still be fine the way it is.  Right now I'm looking into joining a sound design and audio editing program for the fall semester, so I definitely want to have this mix all finished by the time that starts.

I've been reading the thread about the '77 stereo mix in digital, but I haven't actually heard it (if I am to do so, it would have to be posted somewhere other than newsgroups).  It is definitely a great discovery for the sound quality of that mix, though I don't think it will affect anything I'm doing for the 70mm project.

My main reason for wanting to use the '85 mix in my edits this time instead of the '77 was that its wider stereo image matches that of the '93 mix—in the previous version the reduction in width was (to me, at least) easily detectable at times, and limited my options in choosing where to switch between sources and disguise the transition.  In the new version I've had more freedom in this regard, and often even I can hardly hear the switch once the EQ has been matched.  Some of the most troublesome edits may only be given away by something as subtle as a change in the tape hiss.

Occasionally I have felt that the original stereo mix could be a bit more robust-sounding than the 1985 in brief parts, so I guess I haven't completely ruled out using it a little bit; but if possible it would be better not to, if this discrepancy can be otherwise accounted for.

As a word of warning/disclosure, sharp-eyed viewers may notice that the new 70mm track will briefly drop synch about halfway through the movie (when the TIE fighter sneaks up on the Millennium Falcon at the ruins of Alderaan) before regaining it a few seconds later.  This is because the '85 mix ran longer than the '93 here for some reason, and I couldn't get an exact match without making an audible cut in the middle of dialogue and noticeable sound effects.  I haven't yet tried muxing it to see what it looks like, but since the delay amounts to less than one frame and is of short duration, I don't think it will be much of a problem.  Of course, if I do find a way to fix it without the delay or making a jump-cut, then I will certainly do so.

Earlier I spoke of finding two sound effects in the surround channel which I couldn't positively identify as being 1993 additions or authentic 70mm originals, but just to be safe I deleted them from the track, since the former case seems more likely.  I also found another very subtle effect that was added to the '93 mix and hasn't been pointed out before: a tiny little rumbling sound while the rebels are waiting for the stormtroopers to board the ship, which I think is also in the mono mix but definitely absent from the in-theatre 70mm recording.  It's so quiet I'm not surprised no one ever noticed it before, but for such a tiny addition it sure did take a lot of work to eliminate.  This addition corresponds to where the special edition inserted some very loud effects of the ship being pulled in overhead by the Star Destroyer, and the SE version may actually include this as part of it.

The digital version of the '77 stereo sounds robust to me, and I've read at least one member who said that it sounded better than Belbucus' preservation of the analog. I'd listen to it just in case.

I'm very nearly ready to sign off on the new 2-channel version.  Just need to check it a little more to make sure there's nothing I've missed, give it a final listening test, and it should be ready for uploading.  I spent a lot of time recently going over it in fine detail and making little tweaks to fix things as well as I could; I think it's all taken care of, and at any rate whatever remaining issues would almost certainly be beyond my skill to improve any further.  I'll post more in more detail about that later on.

My belated thanks to everyone who PM'd me about the digital '77 stereo track.  I did end up using it for the explosion when the droids are getting in the escape pod, since the '85 mix just sounded too tinny in comparison at that point.  The tradeoff is worthwhile for a more robust sound, seems to me.

I think I'll go ahead and use the LFE from the '97 AC3 laserdisc like before, since the DTS version is not yet available as a source.  But when/if that happens, I'll investigate the possibility of replacing it if it turns out to offer an additional benefit to the sound quality.

I want to have the 5.1 track finished in the next few weeks so that it can be included on the Despecialized Edition 2.0, without causing Harmy any unnecessary delays.  I would be spending today on it, but we're going to see a triple-feature for all three of Christopher Nolan's Batman films at the Ciné Capri, so that's right out.  ;)

When me, borisanddoris, and ElDonante get the 2 SE DTS soundtracks finished maybe someone can comb them over and list any differences they may notice....maybe there is something in there that will help other projects.

:)

I've gone back over this thing and redone certain parts more times than I care to say, but at last I'm ready to declare that the new stereo track is completely finished.  It's still not perfect, but at this point I think further improvement would be going well into the realm of diminishing returns, and would require more skill and better equipment than I possess to get any meaningful results.  So without further ado, here it is—a stereo FLAC file split into a six-part RAR archive.

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6

5.1 mix to follow as soon as possible.

Still several things to be done with the LFE channel, and I tend to spend a while fine-tuning each detail until I'm sure it's exactly right; but I've been pretty focused lately and am confident that it will come out the way I'm hoping.  Even when not working on it, I've often been going over possible editing solutions in my mind, so I have a good idea what to do for most of it even beforehand.

Once the upmix is done, there are a couple things I want to tweak about the imaging, if possible, so that will be a new experience for me to edit in multichannel rather than stereo.  If it turns out as I want, some concerns I've had about too much information occasionally being sent to the centre channel will be addressed.

Editing to add: About 4.1 . . . yes, technically this would most correctly represent the original mix, which had monaural surround information.  However, the surround cues that are found in the 1993 mix are themselves monaural, and when upmixed will play equally from both surround speakers in a 5.1 setup, each at -3 db to maintain constant acoustic power.  In Prologic II using movie mode, and other similar algorithms, the surround cues are played back out of phase with each other to help disperse them and avoid direct phantom imaging, partially simulating the effect of the multi-speaker arrays found in movie theatres, according to THX recommendations.

The only actual stereo content that will be present in the rear channels is low-level duplication from the front (controlled levels of crosstalk between channels, essentially), again for the sake of ambience.  The effect of the upmix cannot exactly represent what the true discrete 70mm version would have sounded like, but given the source materials available it's about as close as it's currently possible to get.  Add in the extra bass from the LFE and things are sounding great.  ;)

Quite honestly I'm not sure why having the older stereo track would be needed at this point, since everything I haven't tweaked is exactly the same as before; and all the parts I did change still sound very similar, just with improved sound quality and correction of my previous mistakes.  The new version does not really present a significant creative difference so much as an upgrade in the technical sense.  It sounds more like the real 70mm mix, and is therefore more 'authentic'.  But I guess some folks will always want to have everything ever put out for the sake of a complete archive, of course.

Unfortunately, I realized yesterday that I'd messed up some things on the LFE channel, so I have to go back and redo them.  Accordingly, I've decided that rather than trying to recreate my earlier work on the parts that sounded correct already, I'll simply port them over from the previous version, and only make any edits on the parts where I didn't properly simulate the theatrical sound, in order to reduce the possibility of any further mistakes.  This means that the bass from the Bluray will not be used at all, but since it would have only shown up in a few places, the benefit of lossless would have been minimal anyway.  I haven't ruled out using the Bluray LFE for the other two films when I get to them, though.

Almost forgot to mention it, but I combined the stereo track with Harmy's latest workprint (partially because I was tired of listening to the mono mix, lol) and found that the synch error I mentioned earlier is small enough not to be noticed, so it turns out there's nothing to worry about on that account.

Hopefully, it won't be more than another week or so until I'm done with this.  In the meantime, here's another comparison file between the 70mm and the 2004 mix, in which I highlighted some of the worst-sounding parts of the latter in order to show just how drastic the degradation really is.  (I made this for a friend who is looking forward to seeing original version of the movie again for the first time in many years.)  Be sure to note the huge swell of static and distortion when the Death Star explodes; that's always good for a laugh.

link

LFE channel is coming along; the major decisions are made, so it's mostly just tweaking the details now.

I've got the five channel upmix from Satanika, and I spent a while going through it to see if there was anything that needed adjustment.  I found a rather distracting phase error early in the movie that will definitely need to be corrected: this was introduced by one of my edits and was probably unavoidable due to the impossibility of completely matching the different recordings to each other at that point.  After much trial and error, I'd made the EQ as close as I could, but the differences in dynamics and frequency response between them were such that a more exact match could not be obtained.  In stereo it sounds okay, but evidently the upmixer was confused by the difference and choked on it.

At first I despaired of being able to do anything to correct this, but eventually I had the thought of upmixing the two recordings separately and then editing them together afterwards, which would bypass the problem completely.  (Fortunately, none of my other edits exhibit anything like this, so it only has to be done once.)  In addition, I'd like to manually pan a few things out of the center channel, since upmixing tends to make the mix too centrally focused in places where the signal is strongest, causing some occasional brief clipping, as well as not being quite faithful to the original which would have sounded wider in those places.

I'm also comparing the phase relationships of the channels to each other.  It turns out the upmix did not invert the relative polarity of the surround channels, so I'm going to do that myself.  Which surround channel is inverted will depend on their coherence with the front, and how the combined bass frequencies sent to a subwoofer would interact with each other.

All of these tweaks I'm making will clear up some little nagging problems that existed in the previous version, which at the time I was not able to fix properly.  Once it's done, I'll encode an AC3 as well as uploading the edited lossless files, so that they can be used for HD projects. 

It would be cool to have the Mono mix "upmixed" to 5.1.

Question: Is there any 5.1 version available with clean sorround channels? I mean, without residual voice (reverb). I would like to "upmix" my Mono VHS dubbing, replacing the center channel.

Sorry for bad english. 

The only discrete channel versions that have been released are the special editions, and of course they have a lot of extra sound effects that were not part of the original version.  I'm not entirely clear what's being asked here—taking a mono version and combining it with the surround channels from another recording?  I guess it's possible, but I don't imagine it would come out sounding that great.  I've been asked before whether the dialogue of my 5.1 can be replaced with an alternate language, but I am obliged to state with certainty that this will not work, due to the impossibility of isolating the speech from the rest of the mix.  I don't think the LFE can be used with a different recording, either, seeing how I've had to level-match it very precisely to the dynamics of the 1993 mix, and if attached to another version it would almost certainly seem as though it had been tacked on, rather than integrating smoothly into the total sound.

Anyway . . . it's nearly done, guys.  It's really, really close.  In fact it would have been done already, if I weren't painstakingly trying to identify and solve phasing errors.  I've already gone back on my previously stated position of not using the 1993 mix as a source for the LFE channel—I had to use it for the Millennium Falcon being caught in the Death Star's tractor beam, because the special edition just wasn't cutting it.  The 1997 version caused all kinds of weird phase problems, and the 2004 version is too different to be considered authentic.  Since there was nothing else I could do that would sound any good, and because the '93 version is by far the most authentic in this case, I carefully realigned the filtered '93 bass to compensate for the phase shift, and it seems to have worked perfectly.  (Hopefully it will come out the same way on other people's sound systems as it does on mine.)

In the course of trying to solve these kinds of issues, I came across a statement by Roger Dressler of Dolby Labs saying that Prologic II in movie mode does not send any low frequencies from its surround channels to the subwoofer when using bass management.  This is most likely because it would cause phase cancellation due to the surrounds having a 10 millisecond delay applied to them relative to the front speakers.  This upmix also has the 10 millisecond delay, and therefore such cancellation will almost certainly occur in the receiver during playback.  This kind of reduced bass is something that I'd actually noticed popping up occasionally in the previous version, though at the time I was at a loss to explain or solve it.  This time, hopefully, I'll be able to bypass the problem.

So, I just have to do a couple things along those lines, as well as a few final corrections to the LFE to remove my remaining mistakes.  It sounds quite awesome, if I may say.  ;)  We're almost there . . .

Your work is appreciated. It will be interesting to hear the finished audio.

Any chance this is making Harmy's deadline in a few days?