Return of The Jedi Soundtrack released in 1997 and 2004 suspected by me to be a victim of the loudness wars

Or at least Lucas ordered the analogue tape hiss removed.  But for whatever reason those releases are un usable the high band information is gone.

But i listen to my LP, The first CD issue or the arista box and the clarity is there and the sound is not squashed like being brickwalled.

Too bad i needed to read an article online by a williams enthisiast years after i bought them to notice that something was very wrong.  I always felt they were a bit off, but i never could figure out why.

The tops of the musical waveforms have been either overly softened comprssed or just plain chopped off.

This reminds me of why i have to get the guitar hero version of metallicas new album and not the cd which was ruined by Rick rubin as a deliberate creative decision.  Just like They ruined Calfornication and stadium arcadium by the chili peppers.  I have even gone back to some of my foo fighters albums and found them a victim of the loudness wars. 

Note to music industry stop ruining music!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway this proves without a doubt that a demand to Lucasfilm for a remaster is needed, never mind the empire strikes back release being fucked from improper mixing as well.  Only Star Wars is a perfect release.  Jedi is also missing music that was on the anthology set.  Someones need to tell LucasFilm to show a little respect to John Williams and pay for a fixed release. That and the laserdsic dump of the original films makes me more than a little mad with them at the moment.  I guess its not worth doing to Greedo unless there is money to be made.

George "Greedo shot first" Lucas.  lol

Someone said Greedo was a perfect nickname for him when reviewing the gout on amazon so i thought it stuck.  You know Greedo AKA Greed AKA LUCA$H

skyjedi2005 said:

Anyway this proves without a doubt that a demand to Lucasfilm for a remaster is needed, never mind the empire strikes back release being fucked from improper mixing as well.  Only Star Wars is a perfect release.  Jedi is also missing music that was on the anthology set.  Someones need to tell LucasFilm to show a little respect to John Williams and pay for a fixed release. That and the laserdsic dump of the original films makes me more than a little mad with them at the moment.  I guess its not worth doing to Greedo unless there is money to be made.

I doubt there will be any more soundtrack remasters anytime soon. At least we have the Anthology set, albeit OOP but easily duplicated or found used. For sure there will never be another release of "Lapti Nek" or Ewok Celebration. I'm grateful they were released on CD before Lucas went bonkers. Too bad DVDs weren't around 16 years ago too.

Is this Anthology CD of ROTJ from the early 90's? I have the 04 of ANH, but was unsure which versions of ESB and ROTJ are best. It feels just like the versions of the films themselves! Can anything Star Wars be easy?

Not sure either it think it was 1993 arista records boxset called anthology.  Note even empire strikes back on that set has reversed sound channels.  But good musician and others have found ways to fix this i think.

I have all the sets and its the only way to have all the music unfortunetely.  Good thing someone on these boards did his best to fix jedi but as the tracks from the special edition have the flaws in the source there is little that can be done to fix it.  The sounds been squished do to too much pre-mastering.

The tracks on the fan release from the anthology even on my cheap set up are easy to tell the difference from the SE.

ABC's set he made is from both the anthology and the special edition.

I myself am going to make my own CD compilation Strictly from the original cd release. And the arista anthology.  Too bad my boxset is scratched to hell ive had it since 1993 and they have probably been played at least a hundred times.  Had i known back then i would have bought another sealed copy.  OUT of Print and no longer available according to Amazon.  Too bad i was going to buy one.

You would think digital noise reduction and hiss removal is a good thing right?  The special edition version sounds clean but is muffled sounding, the arista has analogue noise.  Guess what i prefer somes pops and tape hiss over the music being overly compressed and muddy sounding.  The fact that this passed QC is a joke.

For those readers not familiar with what skyjedi2005 is specifically complaining about:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

Ah, yes, the Loudness War. Another example of catering to the uneducated masses and flipping the bird at those with a true appreciation for the material. Reminds me of the whole "Die film grain die! All images must look squeaky clean and be bright like wet colored soap" thing that is going on in the magical world of Blu-ray. Seriously, what is the point in having such a fantastic ability for quality when you are just going to hack it off? Why should I buy a CD of an album, when I am going to be getting a recording with so much detail removed that I might as well be listening to a 96kbps MP3?

Janskeet said:

Can Lucasfilm make anything right these days?

In this case the current standard is being followed. It is just a stupid standard. I am pretty sure George himself has absolutely nothing to do with this.

C3PX said:

In this case the current standard is being followed. It is just a stupid standard. I am pretty sure George himself has absolutely nothing to do with this.

Correct.  It is getting extremely difficult to find a mastering house that won't brickwall your stuff to death.

How do the original late 1980's CD releases compare? I still have mine. I never thought the 90's special edition versions sounded as good as the anthology set, but couldn't put my finger on why...

zombie84 said:

Last weekend I found an LP of Return of the Jedi. I put it on, not expecting much since I never thought ROTJ was as good as ESB for the score--but my god, it was amazing! The quality--I was hearing things I had never heard before, nuances that I never knew about!

Ah, progress! We've come a long way in technology. 1980's the LP -----> 1990's the CD -----> 2000's the MP3. We've come a long ways! Is it just me, or do we continually lose something with each advance?

I suppose MP3 is to CD what cassette tapes were to LPs, drop in quality, rise in convenience. Not meant as a replacement, but as a poor and portable companion.

CD's have been around since 1983, and LP's since the 50's.

And MP3 has been around since the ninties. I know all that, in my dates I was going by what was the standard at the time. Hardly anyone owned CDs back in the eighties. Everyone I knew was switching out their record collection for inferior cassette tapes at the time, kind of like how everyone is switching out their CD collections for digital copies now.