I'm just now putting the finishing touches on the Russian dub for Star Wars, and boy must this thing have an interesting history. The original dub was (probably) in mono for broadcast TV by Studio Gorky in 1989. The existing bootlegs of this original broadcast, as far as I can tell, all have a severe echoing which make it pretty all-around unpleasant to listen to.

However, when putting together the Special Editions, apparently there was some better-quality tape to go back to, because the SE dubs sound much better--and by better, I really mean "less bad". There's a constant wavering in the high frequencies throughout the whole thing, which you get used to over time, but which occasionally causes the London Symphony Orchestra's brass section to sound a bit like a mariachi band.

In addition to some audible tape damage in a few areas, there were also apparently some severely damaged sections of tape, because parts are dubbed over with what appears to be, at least in certain cases, completely different actors and not-very-well-blended background noise. Not only that, but when patching them together, it looks like they forgot to take into account PAL speedup, so the pitch jumps 4% for these sections.

Anyway, there was a lot to compensate for, in addition to despecializing and removing 1993 audio effects, and resyncing. I can't say the result sounds great, but at least it doesn't sound worse, and it's probably more impressive if you know any Russian. It's not ready quite yet, but feel free to PM me if you're interested.