“Every gun makes its own tune” - Blondie

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo

Remastered Mono Track

Update of July 19th 2014:

The v1.1a has been synched with the Italian Mondo BluRay, available both in FLAC and DTSHD.

Current version: 1.1a. Info in old PMs is also valid for v1.1a and Mondo.

Changelog on 1.1a

There was a sync issue with one scene missing on the 1993 LD (it was also wrong on the MGM downmix). It was restored from the Italian mono.
There are some sound stutterings (milliseconds of silence) on the original PCM track. Some of them could be fixed; however, wherever I felt that fixing would rather make things worse by creating artifacts, I left them be. Many of them are actually still present on the MGM downmix mono track.

About the project:

In 2002, MGM has created an Extended version of “The Good, The Bad And The Ugly”. The reason for it is that in 1966, the Italian version was cut by ~14 minutes of runtime for international release (here the comparison of US Theatrical version vs MGM Extended version; here is the comparison of MGM Extended version with Italian version). In 2002, along with the re-integration of those scenes (which had not been dubbed into English previously), MGM also created a new 5.1 sound mix. For this mix, original sound effects (mostly gunshots) have been replaced by new, “fuller” sounding ones. Although the original DVD (2004) and BluRay (2009) issue of the MGM extended version also contain an English mono track, it was only a downmix of the new 5.1 soundtrack, with all the new sound effects.

Unfortunately, the new 2014 4K restoration still made use of the downmixed mono.

Goal of this project:

To recreate original sound experience created by the original sound editors Vittorio de Sisti, Elio Pacella and Fausto Ancillai, which are familiar from the English theatrical version and from the Italian version of the film.
To sync the English mono sound with the 4K edition of the film

Working materials:

Uncompressed English PCM mono audio for US Theatrical version from 1993 Laserdisc (thanks to PDB)
Dolby Digital mono audio from 1998 US Theatrical version DVD (192 kbps)
English mono audio (downmix) from 2014 UK Extended BluRay (192 kbps)
German mono audio (DTS-HDMA) from 2014 UK Extended BluRay
Italian mono audio from 2009 US Extended BluRay (224 kbps)

What was done:

An English PCM sound (1) from an MGM laserdisc (1993) was obtained (thanks to PDB). However, this LD edition was additionally cut compared to the 1998 DVD theatrical version. It was converted from 44100 Hz to 48000 Hz.
The English Extended downmix (3) was used as a sync guide as well as for filling the extended scenes’ material. No new sounds were used in those except for one (see below).
The English Dolby Digital mono (2) was used to fill missing pieces from the scenes cut from the 1993 LD, as it has similar sound characteristics (as opposed to the downmix (3)).
The German mono track (4) was unique as it was created 1995 from the original Italian theatrical version of the film prior to MGM’s restoration and thus not using their new sounds (it was synched with the 2002 MGM edition by German TV channel ZDF). It was the best quality source for one extended scene (Clint Eastwood meeting Angel Eyes’ henchmen) containing a gunshot. See sample.
The Italian track (5) is unique in that it is synched to the US extended version of the film and even contains some bits absent from the original Italian cut (“Il Grotto” as well as “Sorry Tuco” at the end).
Additionally to just inserting new scenes, many efforts were made to make the dialogues in-sync with the mono downmix guide track. It often required cutting and shifting small bits of dialogue around. I hope I succeeded.

Results

There are two versions of the final track:

DTS-HDMA (Core: 768 kBps, 24 Bit resolution) 1.0 mono
FLAC (lossless audio, 24 Bit resolution, 277 kBps) 1.0 mono

Sample (flac)

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Spectral analysis:

Disclaimer: Usage of this track is solely allowed in compliance with the forum rules, meaning that you have to own your own legal copy of the film.