One comment I received was that my older version of ANH was lacking the 'punch' of the version TeamBlu used on their release, when the only difference was I had adjusted the LFE to only contain more relevant frequencies and reduced the overall volume to something more in line with a home release to match better the existing Dolby 5.1 and 2.0 surround tracks.
That's not surprising: I have found that it is shockingly easy to be fooled by level differences when trying to assess whether a track is more dynamic or has more bass (the most obvious qualities that make something seem 'punchy'), and that even a small gain change to the whole track can cause otherwise rational people to swear that something major has been altered . . . when in fact all that happened was someone turned the volume knob slightly.
As an interesting anecdote, Roger Dressler of Dolby Labs once reported that he was comparing the Dolby and DTS releases of Twister on DVD, of which everyone swore the DTS version was so much better (using the most hyperbolic terms, of course). Even he at first thought the DTS was more powerful—until he measured the outputs and found that its gain had been mastered half a dB louder. When he corrected this discrepancy at the playback stage, the apparent differences vanished, and he could no longer tell them apart. So even the most experienced professionals are not immune to this phenomenon: the difference is that they are aware of it as a potential issue, and know how to account for it when it comes to their attention.
When you think about it, the entire 'loudness war' in music mastering can be explained by this simple fact of how easily fooled we are by level differences.
Given your information here, I think I'm going to go back and take another look. Thanks for this information, hairy_hen, I'm still relatively new to this kind of sound work (I'm primarily music production and live sound, all in stereo!), so I may have some questions for you soon. It seems at some point I lost sight of the fact that we don't have DTS theatrical audio systems in our homes, something that I was emphatic about that when I first started with cinema DTS. You are absolutely correct about getting this right. ;)
Heck, I don't even have a job in this field yet: I just go to school and intern at a studio part-time. Most of that experience has been with stereo music also; the only things I know about 5.1 are what I hear when watching movies, and what I've read online from Mr. Dressler and others like him.
I will certainly be glad to help with anything else that comes up. Ultimately, the idea of using cinema DTS tracks is to be sure of hearing a real theatrical mix at the highest bitrate obtainable, but since we don't have the hardware it is expected to be decoded with, or the knowledge of everything it would be doing internally, careful listening seems to be the only way to make sure it comes out right. Assuming that any available AC3 releases use the same mix, there really shouldn't be much if any difference between them aside from compression issues, once the levels have been matched. I'm hopeful that my settings will prove applicable to all soundtracks found on these DTS discs.
Does this mean we need to redo Jurassic Park again too?
I'm not sure. It seems that way, but I guess it depends how they mixed it in the first place, whether the surrounds had bass in them that is being sent to the LFE and boosted too much or not. Since JP was the first movie to be shown in DTS, presumably it would have been heard on the early units, which sounded different in the crossover region from the later ones. It's hard to say at this point.