hairy_hen said:
I haven't been following this thread before, and only just read it through in its entirety. While I don't wish to rain on the parade, it should perhaps be tempered with some healthy scepticism. I'm not convinced that it's entirely worthwhile to go to the trouble of working with cinema DTS discs unless it is absolutely necessary.
To use The Matrix as an example: there has been talk of the Bluray soundtrack being inferior to previous versions, and I have to say I'm baffled as to where this claim comes from. After having heard it numerous times on the old DVD, I found not even the slightest hint that anything on the Bluray had been altered. In every way it was exactly the same mix—same balance, same dynamics, same everything.
Now admittedly I don't yet have an HDMI receiver and therefore can only listen to the 640 kbps AC3 track, rather than the Dolby TrueHD. But it would astonish me greatly if the two actually turned out to be any different from each other. If there is a difference, it may just as easily turn out to be something happening during playback, such as an unwanted dynamic range compression mode being activated, or a difference in DialNorm values causing the overall volume to come out lower.
When comparing soundtracks in this manner, you must make absolutely sure that they are completely level-matched, or any comparison of their relative dynamics will be rendered meaningless. Do not ever believe that you are immune to being fooled by differences in playback volume, for even experienced professionals can be tricked into believing they hear superior sound quality when in fact all that has happened is that something was made louder. It is shockingly easy to fall into this trap, and I believe that a lot of what people think they hear is actually only this kind of placebo effect. This particularly applies to bass content because of the Fletcher-Munson curves, whereby our hearing is particularly insensitive to low frequencies, and consequently is very susceptible to a false perception of level differences if playback volumes are not equal.
To give a textbook example of this, consider The Phantom Menace. I have heard repeatedly about how much better the movie sounds on laserdisc than on DVD, but this is actually false. This web page measures the output levels of both, and determines that the two versions are virtually identical to each other in dynamic range. The only difference is that the laserdisc version is mastered 8 dB louder than the DVD. That's a huge discrepancy: of course one is going to sound more powerful than the other! But if you turn up the volume by 8 dB to compensate when playing the DVD version, this will be entirely cancelled out.
The recent Batman films have also been mentioned here, but again I find no difference whatsoever in how they sound. Last summer I attended a triple feature screening of all three at the Cine Capri, the best movie theatre in Phoenix, and what I heard there was identical to what is on the DVD and Bluray releases. The total effect was considerably more powerful, of course, due to the huge auditorium and the absolutely killer Dolby setup they've got in there (even more so now that they've installed the new Atmos system), but the mixes themselves haven't been changed at all.
So, while I absolutely applaud the goal of preserving theatrical mixes and making them available, it is important first to verify that there is actually a need to do so in the first place. There are plenty of films whose soundtracks have indeed been badly mangled on home video (the site I linked to also has another page that conclusively demonstrates how much better the original mix of Jurassic Park is, for one), and it would be best to concentrate such efforts on theatrical mixes that truly are unavailble through any other means. And don't be tricked into thinking that the delivery format somehow results in better sound, either—all that really matters is the mix itself, and whether it is packaged as Dolby or DTS is largely irrelevant providing everything else is the same. The AC3 codec is more efficient than DTS, able to achieve similar sound quality at only half the bandwidth, so comparing the numbers doesn't really mean much on its own.
hairy_hen,
Thank you for the information presented in your post. This preservation project was never meant to replace any current audio configurations. It is meant more as a companion project to have a "known source" option for movies where DTS was available in the theater for a particular movie. Since DTS started in 1993, there are a bunch of films excluded unless they were re-released to theaters for special runs such as the Director's Cut of Alien. This project is also a way to preserve the theatrical audio because they can be damn hard to get a hold of, LOL.
I am not looking to change the world, just give something back to a place that has given to me.
I would certainly appreciate any insight you would care to share about all of this. Every little bit helps.
Shawn
