Star Wars 1977 70mm sound mix recreation [stereo and 5.1 versions now available] (Released) — Page 14

Thanks hairy for the update, and Thanks for letting me include it on my V2 BD Set.

Erikstormtrooper said:

h_h, I'm glad you've decided to take this up. I've never had any problems with your first version of the mix, but I can't complain if you want to make it even better. Not picking up on some of the perceived errors makes me feel a bit noobish, but I'm fascinated nonetheless.

Is your final version going to be 2.1 that Satanika will upmix to 5.1?

And do you have any ETA for this? I'm in no rush; I'm just hoping it can make its way to Dark Jedi's and Harmy's latest versions.

Already ahead of you, PM's have already been shared and such.

I know comparatively little about this stuff, but I'm wondering if they did go back to an earlier generation - the '77 stereo mix has that echo effect in the music in the Falcon battle and the end credits, while the '85 mix doesn't.

Listening to dark_jedi's release through headphones, cycling between the '77 and '85 stereo mixes during the end credits. There is reverb in both, but it seems much more pronounced in the '77. In that, it sounds like it's not just reverb, but an actual echo. Listen to the horns in the beginning. There is still reverb in the '85, but the '77 almost sounds like it's in a tunnel. (Though in the end credits, the stereo in the '77 almost seems to me to be wider than the '85?)

You can also hear the echo in the Moth3r and Catnap telecines (in fact, I'd say that the mono fold-down makes it more noticeable...)

I noticed that though the telecine fold-downs have the echo effect (I don't think the two channels are folded down exactly in sync), but when I use "Audio Device -> Mono" in VLC to combine the two channels of the '77 stereo track on DJ's release, it's cancelled out. When I use "Cancel vocals" in GoldWave, the echo is left behind, and it sounds very odd. It's almost like they mixed in a low-volume mono fold-down of the music out of sync (creating a reverb/echo effect), with the two channels being inverse to one another (meaning that if the end result is folded down to mono in exact sync, the echo would be cancelled out). I tried that in GoldWave with the end credits from the OST, and the end result sounds similar to what's on the '77 stereo. Was it some sort of artificial reverb effect put in intentionally, or possibly some weird artifact from the fold-down from 4-track to 2-track? I think all the mixes have *some* added reverb in the music, but the '77 stereo is the only version to have this peculiar "wall of sound" echo. (I can kind of hear it in the music in other parts besides the two mentioned, but it's most pronounced in the Falcon battle and end credits. Skimming through it, I notice it during the opening crawl, the Falcon in the tractor beam, the Falcon takeoff from the Death Star, and the throne room music as well. Again, it's most noticeable if you listen to the brass in the music. And I was wrong, the '85 is wider - in fact, maybe this weird echo is part of what makes the music sound "narrower" in the '77.)

Speaking of echo, h_h, what's with the odd echo effect in the Death Star explosion, and is it going to be changed in the new version? I like the added LFE punch, but as I said, there's a strange echo almost like two sounds playing at the same time, slightly out of step with one another. (Was that due to combining elements from the '93 and SE explosion effects?)

I'm definitely excited for the V2 of this. Good to hear this will be in the Project Blu V2. Are you going to add the Luke spitting noise again? I believe it was talked about a few pages back. Your first version was already excellent but if you're making a more accurate version, that would be awesome.

I'd also be interested in that alternative version you thought about. It could represent how a 5.1 definitive mix might sound. The extra elements of the mono mix really are great...

Hey Hairy,

This is great news and I know you said it was just an idea, but I for one am a fan of the '93 mix, and if you were to do an alternate mix keeping in the non-offensive additions, I'd be all over it. If it's not too much work for you, I'd love to have it as an option.

If I end up making an alternate version, most of the loud in-your-face '93 additions will still be taken out, but the ones that don't stand out so much will be left in.  Certainly all the ones that came from the mono mix would be retained.  This will also allow greater retention of dynamic range by not having to substitute sources except where absolutely necessary.

But whether I do a track like that will depend on whether I can obtain recordings of individual sound effects from the mono mix.  I'd really like to put in the deceleration effect when the Falcon comes out of lightspeed and the whining machinery sound when caught in the tractor beam, as well as some other things, but I don't know if there are good sources for them.  Does the Sounds of Star Wars book have those effects?  I can't take them from the SE's because they're mixed in with other sounds.  I'd probably use the '85 mix to put in 3PO's tractor beam line as well, but I'm in two minds about closing the blast doors: I know many people like this line, but I myself don't care for it.  I first heard it in the SE and have a hard time accepting it as 'genuine', even though I know it is; plus it just seems unnecessary.  Have to think about that some more.

That music echo in the '77 stereo is rather strange, although it does have an interesting effect.  I guess it's an early use of the surround channel in Dolby Stereo, but perhaps one reason they made the '85 mix was to tone down this element.  Since it's delayed compared to the front channels, I don't think it would affect the imaging much, but I'm not sure.

I now have the lossless LFE from the Bluray, so I'll probably be using that where I can, but since most of my 70mm bass comes from the '97 mix, for which we only have a lossy source, it will only affect a relatively small portion of it.  But I think I will use the lossless bass for the other two movies also, and for them I can most likely use the whole thing.  Well, almost: it turns out that the volume of the Bluray tracks is pumped up so high that the loudest bass is actually clipped, which is completely ridiculous, so the lossy versions would still have to be used for those parts.  Incidentally, while I don't have the entire 2011 mix for ANH, just from looking at the LFE channel I can immediately tell that the vast majority of the movie sounds exactly the same as the 2004 version—there are only a couple minor differences, which is exactly what I'd predicted.  So the Bluray is still the same messed up pile of crap as the dvd for the most part.

For anyone who's interested, take a listen to the '93 mix when R2 gets blasted by the Jawas, and listen to the rear-channel echo just after this.  Now listen to the '85 and '77 stereo mixes: hey, that sound's not there!  It isn't in the mono mix either, but it is in the SE's.  Is it a '93 addition, or was it part of the 70mm version?  I can't decide.  The in-theatre 70mm recording doesn't seem to have it, at least not the one I have, but then that recording doesn't seem to have any of the surround effects at all, so that tells me nothing; also, the mono version completely omits everything that was in the surround channel of the others anyway, so again that's inconclusive.  There's another sound like that during the shot of the Millennium Falcon in hyperspace, a sort of 'backdraft' or something in the surround, which is only heard in the '93 and no other.  Again, I have no idea whether it was a part of the 70mm version or not.  What to do, what to do . . .

Thanks for the update hairy_hen, and I will get those other files for you soon.

hairy_hen said:

That music echo in the '77 stereo is rather strange, although it does have an interesting effect.  I guess it's an early use of the surround channel in Dolby Stereo, but perhaps one reason they made the '85 mix was to tone down this element.  Since it's delayed compared to the front channels, I don't think it would affect the imaging much, but I'm not sure.

Well, since the surround echo is a lower-volume mono fold-down of the music in the L/R channels, wouldn't it make the stereo field seem narrower if not properly matrixed, since it reduces the distinctness of the two channels?

But whether the stereo imaging of the music in the L/R of the '77 is as wide as the '85 - that we really can't know because all we have of the '77 is the LD's non-matrixed, non-Dolby analog stereo, just the straight LT/RT tracks in 2-channel.

Anything to say about my question about the "double" Death Star explosion sound in your 5.1, and whether that will be improved in the new version?

Hairy, I'm with you in that I hate "close the blast doors". Like you, I thought it was a SE addition when I first heard it in 1997. No other stormtrooper in any of the three films sounds like that guy! It sounds like it was added later on to give a reason as to why the doors close. I hate it, I know others that hate it and if you do an alternate mix, I really hope it's not included because I wouldn't be able to listen to it.

I think I will probably not include 'close the blast doors' in an alternate track.  Since it would not be a strict preservation but rather a composite of the parts I like best about various versions, it wouldn't make much sense to put in something that would annoy me when I watched it myself.  ;)

Some of the other dialogue changes are interesting, but the alternate stormtrooper dubbing sounds nothing like the rest of them, and I don't care for those at all.  The tractor beam line doesn't bug me because I grew up with the '85 version.

What the mono version improves over the others are the sound effects and a more polished sense of continuity.  As an example, the fact that the comm system starts beeping almost immediately when Luke, Han and Chewie are blasting out the security cameras in the detention block—if you listen closely you can hear that it is there during almost the entire firefight, while in the others it doesn't start until after the shooting has stopped.  They also moved the stormtrooper line "How long have you had these droids?" about a second earlier, giving the impression that Luke has to think for a moment before replying; in the others the lines are much closer together.  Little things like that show how much effort they put into that version, but unfortunately most of those nuances would be very difficult to replicate given what I'm working with.  I would simply try to include some of the more obvious sound effects but leave the rest of it the same as the 70mm.

Haven't made as much progress as I'd have liked the past two days, because I've been trying without any success to make the opening flyby work as I wanted it to.  Unfortunately, it seems impossible to remove the added sounds while retaining the proper dynamics.  The EQ of the two sources is just too different to get them to blend, and the switch is instantly obvious no matter what I do.  So it looks like I'll probably have to do it the same way I did before, which is to use the less dynamic track for the whole thing.  Someone like Belbucus might be able to pull it off, but I'm not nearly that skilled.  Although, maybe I should try to get in touch with him before giving up on it completely . . .

@TServo2049: I'm honestly not hearing the echo you speak of during the Death Star explosion.  I didn't do anything to that part other than add bass from the 1997 mix, which is in its own separate channel and should not interfere with the mains.  If there is something there I'm not noticing, it's either in the source track or is some kind of artefact from the upmixing.  But I'm just confused about what you mean by this, because it doesn't seem to be showing up on my end.

hairy_hen said:

@TServo2049: I'm honestly not hearing the echo you speak of during the Death Star explosion.  I didn't do anything to that part other than add bass from the 1997 mix, which is in its own separate channel and should not interfere with the mains.  If there is something there I'm not noticing, it's either in the source track or is some kind of artefact from the upmixing.  But I'm just confused about what you mean by this, because it doesn't seem to be showing up on my end.

Actually, listening to it again, it's not an echo.

Using DJ's V3, here's the explosion sound from the '77 stereo, the '85, the '93, and the front L/R channels of your mix.

'77 stereo: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=UVKUB084

'85: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=RUSTLKAO

'93: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=4X2YVMT9

Your mix: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=8OYWQ7J0

Since your mix is based on the '93 mix, I decided to see what happened if I cancelled the two out. Here is what I found when I used GoldWave to mix together the L/R of your 5.1 mix and an inverse of the '93 mix:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WW8TKYJW

It sounds to me like part of the explosion sound from the SE. You said that you only used (part of) the bass/LFE from the SE explosion - but it sounds like my initial suspicion was correct, some of the SE explosion sound ended up in the mains (and not just bass frequencies either).

I don't have the 2.0/2.1 version of this mix, and the Sendspace links are dead. h_h or someone, can you reupload it so I can compare?

(BTW, just to clarify, the LFE sounds fine to me - when I played the '93 mix and h_h's LFE together, the DS explosion still sounded correct.)

There will be no difference from the stereo version and the '93 mix, because I did not alter that part of the track in any way.  It is completely impossible for any part of the SE mix to have ended up in the main channels, because the main channels of the SE were not used at all.  Phase-cancelling isn't really going to work completely either, for several reasons: one, the upmix likely altered the phase relationships of some parts of the sound; two, different lossy encodes cannot be completely recombined in this manner because different parts of the total sound have been discarded or retained; three, the 5.1 track is a few milliseconds delayed compared to the stereo version; and most importantly four: the stereo tracks on the disc probably have DialNorm applied, which reduces the total volume of the audio, while the 5.1 version does not, and therefore comes across at exactly the same level as the source laserdisc track.  It is simply louder by a consistent amount, which I know very well can cause a lot of confusion about what sounds better or worse.

There does seem to be something a little bit different, but nothing about it sounds wrong to me, and I believe that the above reasons (which are out of my control) should explain any discrepancy.  The only other thing would be if something went drastically wrong with the AC3 encode and upper harmonics of the bass somehow ended up in the main channels or something, but I highly doubt this is the case.  I don't know if that's even possible, actually.  If it did, I should think the result would be a lot more distorted.

Satanika, I'd be grateful for any help you could provide with the flyby.  At this point I'm pretty sceptical that what I've been trying to do can actually work, but I've been wrong before.  I ended up deleting my prior attempts, but I'll send over the source files and we'll discuss it.

Made some more progress last night, so now I only have the beginning section of the movie to work on before moving to the LFE channel, though I may do a bit more tweaking to the quad laser battle.  I've again been able to retain more dynamic range from the '93 mix by keeping the replacement sections shorter, and I've also been more conscientious about the exact synch and phase than before.  The improvements tend to be subtle, but I'm pleased with them.  Still haven't decided what I'm going to do about those two surround effects, though, because I can think of convincing reasons both for keeping and discarding them.  Anyone else want to weigh in on those?  To restate, it's the echo when the Jawas blast R2 in the canyon and the 'slipstream' or whatever when the Millennium Falcon is in hyperspace just before arriving at Alderaan, and I can't decide whether to think they were '93 additions or part of the original mix.

h_h,

I just realized that EasyNews has 1142 days of NNTP retention (as opposed to only about 200 using the website), so I downloaded Belbucus' '93 mix, listened to it, and it turns out that I was wrong. The Death Star sound is, in fact, exactly the same as in your mix. I just listened the DS explosion in your 5.1 mix on DJ's V3 (folded down to 2.0 by VLC) and then played the uncompressed '93 mix, and they sound identical - meaning that the reason I wasn't hearing it was because the stereo '93 mix on the V3 did have DialNorm and compression, just as you said.

So disregard everything I've said before, there is absolutely nothing wrong with your mix, it's not even an upmixing flaw. It's exactly the same as in the '93 mix.

I guess it just felt weird because 1.) those low-end sounds probably aren't as prominent when listening through speakers as opposed to headphones, and 2.) I've never actually watched the film on laserdisc, or listened to any of the lossless LD audio rips before now, so I guess I was just not used to how it's supposed to sound. (And FWIW, Mallwalker's lossless of the '85 is also louder and fuller than the DD2.0 version on the V3.)

Case closed. Excuse me while I eat my hat...