Always. Plus you have to factor in their amps, speakers, processors and if people have calibrated things properly. Ghost Protocol sounded okay to me theatrically, but I saw it in an older second run theater with standard Dolby 5.1 running off the film print.
TServo2049 said:
Another example of a missing mono track: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. When MGM put together the restored extended cut, they only did a 5.1 remix, since the original mono track conformed to the shorter U.S. theatrical cut, and according to DVD Savant a restored mono track was not included in the restoration budget.
The worst remix of any film ever. It violates the film itself and everyone's intent.
The Blu-ray includes a mono track...but it's a fold-down of the modern remix! All the other MGM Leone films include the original mono (albeit not lossless), but TGTBATU doesn't.
This is exactly what MGM did when they released a newly extended cut of Duck, You Sucker! on DVD. The "Mono" option was merely a folddown of the 5.1, and while it was nowhere near as intrusive as the bastard GBU mix, it features the wrong music in several spots!
The original DVD contains a mono track, but naturally it's not lossless. This film deserves a lossless preservation of the mono track from laserdisc. Both of the 90s letterbox LD releases contain a digital track as well as a CX-encoded analog track.
It sounds quite good for lossy DD. I need to find those LDs myself, I do know that the first letterbox issue has the Italian names for the three in their freeze frames, and that the later issue is simply the same as the original DVD, which was an early LD to DVD port.
I think it could also be possible to make an extended version of the original mono track, by taking the lossless Italian mono track on the Mondo Blu-ray for the additional scenes, and switching to a mono fold-down of the English whenever someone talks. That way, you'd have a mostly original, English mono mix that could be synched up to that superior release.
And if you want to go one further and make an English mono that includes the grotto scene, to synch up to the MGM Blu-ray, you could probably cut together the lossy Italian mono on that disc with the English dialogue from the remix.
It's better, easier and truer to simply leave the scenes in Italian and subtitled. That way you have the original effects and balancing the way it was mixed. To try and go in and replace dialogues would be nearly impossible since everything is already mixed and placed in a single channel. You'd wind up with the two dialogues fighting each other and drowning out everything else. And I hate the re-dubbed English, Clint and Eli hardly even sound like themselves and it really detracts from the experience.
FremenDar said:
Sounds as though captainsolo needs a receiver which supports HDMI, Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD Master Audio and LPCM.
It's older but it does both DD and DTS 5.1 just fine.
BATMAN (1989) Blu-ray 5.1 TrueHD sounds shit because it was lowered 4Db.
Really? Hmm..wonder why they did that. I guess it's part of the Dolby Stereo to 5.1 conversion? All the films that have this done seem to lack the punch and rumble that I recall them having. With the move to discrete channels, there seems to be a loss of presence and a kind of analogue muddiness that I miss. (Just watched Last Crusade on DVD and thought it sounded a bit too polite.)
Since the JAWS Blu-ray is only going to have 7.1 DTS-HD MA, anyone have a high bitrate PCM track from the Signature Collection Laserdisc? Similar to what dark jedi did for The Terminator. Glad I have a Blu-ray disc burner but BD50s are expensive.
That would be the way to go, as the Blu will have a lossy mono as an afterthought. That said, with a decent receiver and speakers, lossy mono can be pretty effective. I cranked the heck out of the mono on the 30th Anniv. DVD when I screened this for people in college. No one has really understood what the Jaws experience is meant to be like unless hearing this in the dark.