The '93 mix of ESB contains a few glitches, so I did a bit of restoration work on it since it was the primary source for the new 5.1. This includes declipping, declicking, and noise removal, all with iZotope RX 3; as well as patching editing mistakes in the laserdisc source. I shall therefore upload this corrected copy in AC3 form to be included in the MKV.
Similar work was also done on the 35mm stereo mix. Earlier it was asked whether there was a 1985 remix of Empire as there is for the first movie, and the answer is no: all home video releases prior to 1993 used the same mix. Different masters of this mix exist, showing different EQ and dynamic characteristics, so I assembled the best possible version of it that I could.
Once I've finished doing such work on all three films, I'll make an archive of all the files that anyone can download, possibly as a myspleen torrent. I'll also make a thread documenting this work in more detail.
bouvines said:
Hairy_hen,
A follow-up question re the audio streams. Which is higher quality, the Digital Dolby (AC-3) bitstream or the "core" bitstream from the DTS-HD MA track? (The core stream is all I can ever get VLC to play from a DTS-HD MA track). I'm guessing the DTS-HD MA core is still better since it will still have almost three times the bitrate of DD 5.1 but wanted to ask you.
This is a tough question, due to the radically differing nature of the audio codecs and the way they store/process the sound. Both Dolby Digital and DTS are capable of delivering excellent results when used at their maximum bitrates (640 kbps and 1509 kbps respectively), so any demonstrable difference between them is going to be quite minimal. Go with whichever one works best for the format you're watching in, and don't worry about it.