Star Wars coming to Blu Ray (UPDATE: August 30 2011, No! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!) — Page 141

I have a center, and I have a front & left tower speaker, mono can either play out the center if it is 1.0 or out both my towers and not my center, either way I do not enjoy that audio at all, maybe if I was still watching on my old picture tube TV with no sound setup I would love it, all I am saying is with the setup I just spent a lot of money on, I want HD audio, is that wrong?

Damn, it is like if you don't share the same opinion around here anymore, you are the "bad guy".

dark_jedi said:

Damn, it is like if you don't share the same opinion around here anymore, you are the "bad guy".

LOL. You're the one over reacting to everything. A few people were merely trying to help you figure out why your system sucks balls at mono, and you claim they're making you the "bad guy".

CP3S said:

dark_jedi said:

Damn, it is like if you don't share the same opinion around here anymore, you are the "bad guy".

LOL. You're the one over reacting to everything. A few people were merely trying to help you figure out why your system sucks balls at mono, and you claim they're making you the "bad guy".

Sucks balls LOL, you are a dick.

My opinion is I do not like mono audio, so there, WTF! why in the HELL would I want to limit myself to 1 channel when we have so many more now.

Yea, it is SUPER COOL! SUPER!

Hehehehe!

Am I the only one that is suffering from a severe side ache due to laughing so hard over these last few pages?

DJ, it's cool, we get it, you don't like mono. Oh, and I am going to go ahead and ignore that uncalled for personal insult you threw at me.

Moth3r said:

dark_jedi said:

Sucks balls LOL, you are a dick.

Personal attack - you have been warned. Please read the sticky: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Guidelines-for-Post-Content-and-General-Behavior-Or-How-Not-To-Get-Banned/forum/2/topic/12074/

Cool, Thank you very much.

DJ, all people were doing was helping you understand why mono sounds lacklustre on your system. You don't like mono because it plays from your centre speaker only, but ideally mono shouldn't be playing from your centre channel only, so your distaste for it is based on an improper equipment setting. In fact, you could probably set it so that mono sound is played back by all 5 speakers; I don't know if Pro Logic does this or if that was just for two-channel situations, but there may be a solution.

When you see a mono mix in theatres, it isn't just playing from one speaker at the front of the house, it is played back by all the speakers in the building, it's just one discrete channel and so there is no effects separation. A lot of amplified concerts you see have this production--there may be a wall of PAs on stage, but everything coming at you is mixed into one single wave of sound, delivered by multiple speakers but without discrete channels.

Sometimes, mono mixing can be much better than stereo or 5.1 mixing. Most people have only heard the Beatles in the stereo mixes, but the stereo mixes were done after-the-fact, the original releases which are highly prized in the collectors market mixed the sound in mono and are usually considered more natural sounding. I think they released the original mono mixes on CDs a while back though, because of the building demand in the collectors market.

Again, the mono mixes aren't supposed to be played back through a single channel. Like concerts of the day, they are amplified by many speakers, typically two if you have a living room because that is all that is needed to fill the space perceived by your left and right ears. But, there may also be some setting you could play with to utilize the surround speakers, at lower volume levels so as not to disrupt the volume balance, if you want a more "immersive" quality of sound.

Again, no one is trying to paint you as a bad guy or anything. You just haven't really been listening to mono sound in the way it was meant to be heard, like playing back a 5.1 mix through stereo speakers and remarking how out of balance the levels are. That example would yield a more noticeable difference, but all I am saying is that I wouldn't both with mono if it was just putting out through my little centre channel. You need a pair of good, three-way tower or bookshelf speakers, which it seems you have. If you have one of those all-in-one player/receiver home theatre combos your mixing/playback options may be more limited but as I said, it is pretty standard to be able to send the mono signal through more than one speaker. Try it out and see if it sounds more tolerable.

Thanks zombie for that post, but with my new receiver(granted it is still very new, I have NOT learned all with it yet) I have it set to straight, that gives me straight audio from the BD, receiver is not changing it in anyway, it just plays it the way it is directly on the BD, so I get beautiful DTS-HD MA 5.1 or Dolby TrueHD 5.1

When I go to my Star Wars BD(the Blu-ray Set I am currently working on) and switch to that 1 channel mono it plays out my center speaker alone, I am pretty sure no front left and right towers, I will check, but when I play a movie that has DD 2.0 mono, it plays out both front left and right towers and maybe the center as well, again, I will have to check, but I lose all my surround and subwoofer, and to me these are very important for great sound.

When I watch movies, I want to feel the rumble of the ships when they go by, I want to hear when an explosion happens behind me, and only behind me, I want to hear that ship go racing by on the left of the screen and hear it out of only that surround speaker and no other, mono audio does not do all that, and if you say it does, than I guess I need to do some research.

No, mono has no true discrete directional effects, because it is a single channel for all the audio. Done well, of course, you don't need to have directional effects to immerse you in the audio; if it is played at sufficient volume with sufficiently good equipment, you won't be paying attention to it because the quality of the mix itself is good. This is much like if you've ever been to a rock concert, where there is a 50/50 chance the mixer is sending one mixed channel to all two dozen speakers in the venue. In the case of Star Wars, unfortunately, the mono mix is a handmade slapped-together version made out of various sources, none of which were designed for home theatre viewing, and so it is understandable to find this less than enthralling. It was reconstructed as a historical curiosity more than anything. But, since all viewable versions of Star Wars are of equally subpar quality, I find it to be surprisingly consistent when paired with the image.

Well shit, than that is probably my issue then, I am basing what I know off the SW amateur made created mono mix, well this to me sounds like shit LOL, I know and respect that a lot of people here love it, hence why I include it in my releases, but for the life of me, I could not figure out why, because played on high end equipment(which I have now) it really does sound bad compared to our other choices.

So what Blu-ray, or maybe DVD's, I have not seen mono on Blu, or at least none I own I think, and I have 600+, but what DVD has good mono audio that I could test out?

See, and I am getting grief over this, and being told my system "sucks balls" when I have been sampling a mono audio that "sucks balls".

Yeah, the SW mono mix as far as I remember is mainly based off an old VHS recording from a European tv broadcast in the 1980s, and the Story of Star Wars LP record from the late 1970s. The completed reconstruction sounds listenable, but it's basically a 1980s VHS recording in terms of quality, so this should explain a lot about why it lacks bass, sounds muffled and has poor dynamic range. It had a lot of noise clean-up too, which may have taken some of the edge off of it in other respects. It would be unfair to expect it to compete with a new, professionally ripped mix.

One way to appreciate what good mono would sound like is to simply listen to a good stereo mix in mono; most receivers have the options of "monoizing" any sound input so as to fold both channels into a single one and then play it back from the left and right speakers. The mixing levels might not be right, but the sound quality in terms of its crispness and bass might give you an indication. In theory, a mono mix, a stereo mix, and a 5.1 mix all made today would be 100% identical in quality, just utilizing more directional effects depending on the format. Of couse, most if not all mono mixes are from the 1980s and earlier, and so the recording quality of the master is not as good as today, so they won't be able to completely compete with a new mix in whatever the format is. But, properly presented, the sound quality should be good.

dark_jedi said:

See, and I am getting grief over this, and being told my system "sucks balls" when I have been sampling a mono audio that "sucks balls".

 This is not totally correct, in that even a good mono source played through the centre channel will sound poor. The centre channel not only gives you bad audio spread, but it's a very weak speaker. Ideally you should be playing it back through at least one left and one right tower/bookshelf speaker. So, it's more that your equipment setting sucks balls. I don't know why they put the default to be centre-channel though, that's probably a consequence of compromsing for 5.1 defaults or something.

So do you know of any good movies, with a good mono track I could test out for the hell of it, I certainly can't think of any LOL.

Well for the record, my center is not small(or I should say weak, it is pretty powerful)and is a lot better than my old one I just upgraded from.

dark_jedi said:

See, and I am getting grief over this, and being told my system "sucks balls" when I have been sampling a mono audio that "sucks balls".

Dj, no one was giving you "grief over" anything. You have a very warped way of perceiving things. You mentioned how much you dislike mono, a few others said how much they liked mono. Differing opinions, so what? Then you talked about how absolutely horrible mono sounded on your system, so a few of your friendly helpful well meaning fellow forum members piped up with information to try to help you set your system up right so mono would sound like it should, which prompted you to start complaining about how everyone was making you out to be the bad guy for having a different opinion than them. 

I found your conclusion to well meaning people trying to help you out comical and ironic, so I tried to point the irony out to you which is when I said, "A few people were merely trying to help you figure out why your system sucks balls at mono, and you claim they're making you the 'bad guy'". At which point you decided you should act super mature and call me a name. 

Notice I wasn't saying "your system sucks balls" nor did I (or anyone else) give you grief about anything. I was saying that people were trying to help you figure out why you system sounded worse than it should (sucked balls) at playing mono.

As to what might be a good mono test drive, Jaws was released a few year ago with the original mono mix intact. Terminator has the original mono as well, but Terminator is a lower budget film that is a bit rough around the edges. Mad Max has the original mono too, but again a low budget flick. I wish I could be more helpful in recommending a good mix. Most films from the 70s, before stereo caught on, haven't had their original mono included, but most classical-Hollywood films from the 50s, 40s and 30s have. I think the DVDs of Robin Hood and Citizen Kane only have the mono, no remixing or anything. It's actually a bit hard to find a really well-preserved mono mix for more recent films, because they usually either remix in 5.1 or present the stereo version instead, thinking no one cares about the mono. It's only in the last five or six years that the practice has started gaining ground, partly in reaction to all the 5.1 remixes (as in the case of Terminator and Jaws). Maybe someone else can recommend something--Taxi Driver or Close Encounters? Star Wars should be the showboat example of mono mixing, but unfortunately it has never been formally released, instead pieced together from second-hand sources by fans. I have a feeling that when the Academy gave the film its sound awards, they were basing it off the mono mix, which not only was the most common but the one considered the best by the filmmakers and therefore more likely for submission.

@ Harmy: My memory is that Puggo's has more clarity, but also a more abbraisive and scratchy sound. This makes sense considering it was from a scratched 16mm optical while Belbucus Mono Restoration Project was mainly from a VHS broadcast tape.