Star Wars coming to Blu Ray (UPDATE: August 30 2011, No! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!) — Page 142

zombie84 said:

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

zombie84 said:

One way to appreciate what good mono would sound like is to simply listen to a good stereo mix in mono;

Really?  In some cases, listening to a stereo mix in mono will cause some low end phase cancellation, depending on if the stereo mix was engineered specifically to be listenable in mono or not. The better mono mixes are separately-made mixes produced with mono listening in mind.

By the way, the mono mix used in the PG was from the 16mm film, not from VHS.

 I agree. But for someone who's main point of reference comes from the Belbucus restoration as DJ's does, the clarity and fidelity of a stereo fold-down offers a clue as to the potential quality of a true professionally-presented mono mix of a more recent film. A lot of releases from the late 1970s-early 1980s, when mono mixes were done separately alongside stereo mixes at the height of the technology, have not been released, opting for the stereo mixes as a substitute. Instead, you normally have stuff from the 1960s and earlier, which lacks the fidelity of the twilight of the era starting around 1975. Mono mixes from the latter 1980s were usually stereo fold-downs, and so are suplerfluous. This is why I wonder about the availability of stuff like Taxi Driver, Close Encounters, or maybe ST: The Motion Picture and Alien. If you want to hear a good mono mix, listening to King Kong and Citizen Kane, with all of their recording and layering limitations, are not necessarily going to bowl you over. Some releases never even had distinct mono mixes, like Superman, which I believe only had a stereo mix in its original release.

I thought the Dolby mono playback issue was technically moot by 1979, eliminating the need for a mono mix?

I can think of only one theater I went to that probably didn't  have Dolby in 1982, and it was the very model of a crackerbox that should have been demolished. If Spielberg had known E.T. was running in that hole, he would have cried!

Interestingly enough, a lot of early RCA videodiscs are mono, and make a point of having the disclaimer "mono sound for videodisc" somewhere on the label for films that obviously were released in stereo. You have me wondering if they used fold downs or not for certain films...

zombie84 said:

... 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.

Centre channel speakers should be matched to the other speakers, and not be weaker.

You can listen to mono soundtracks through the left and right speakers (effectively creating a "phantom" centre) but this is not ideal - you need to be sat dead centre between the speakers. It's better to use a "real" centre if you have one.

1.0 tracks default to the centre speaker because that is the ideal way to hear them.

Moth3r said:

Centre channel speakers should be matched to the other speakers, and not be weaker.

You can listen to mono soundtracks through the left and right speakers (effectively creating a "phantom" centre) but this is not ideal - you need to be sat dead centre between the speakers. It's better to use a "real" centre if you have one.

1.0 tracks default to the centre speaker because that is the ideal way to hear them.

This is how I listen to some of the mono tracks I have, but I do know it can sound off on some peoples setups, dialogue in particular. What I still don't get is why do most of the releases including a mono track, include it as a 2.0 mono track when the guide at the Dolby-site states it as an "incorrect" and unnecessary way of encoding a Dolby mono track. Any special reason behind why most companies do this? I think many of the Criterion releases have them as 1.0 though.

msycamore said:

Any special reason behind why most companies do this? 

I doubt it. Probably just a default in encoding hardware - the same reason why nearly all Dolby Digital soundtracks have dialnorm set to -27dB.

msycamore said:

Moth3r said:

Centre channel speakers should be matched to the other speakers, and not be weaker.

You can listen to mono soundtracks through the left and right speakers (effectively creating a "phantom" centre) but this is not ideal - you need to be sat dead centre between the speakers. It's better to use a "real" centre if you have one.

1.0 tracks default to the centre speaker because that is the ideal way to hear them.

This is how I listen to some of the mono tracks I have, but I do know it can sound off on some peoples setups, dialogue in particular. What I still don't get is why do most of the releases including a mono track, include it as a 2.0 mono track when the guide at the Dolby-site states it as an "incorrect" and unnecessary way of encoding a Dolby mono track. Any special reason behind why most companies do this? I think many of the Criterion releases have them as 1.0 though.

How does an analog tube TV with stereo speakers play a 1.0 track?

If it comes out of only one speaker, I can see how the DVDs would convert the mono to 2.0.

My guess is that many mono releases are 2.0 because many cheap systems have a cheap center speaker. Knowing that, a mono playback is more likely to sound good in most people's homes if they force playback on the better mains.

PG is mono 2.0 because I didn't know any better.  Now that I do, I probably would still encode that way.

The thing about those Dolby 2.0 mono tracks is that if you have your pro-logic decoders play them, it automatically steer it to the center if you not force it to the L+R, which makes it confusing for people not in the know how, especially when discs by Universal even display the two-speaker configuration on the back of most of their cases.

Sorry to interrupt your discussion on the various sound formats (please don't stop on my account, I'm actually enjoying it) but I just wanted to bring up something I read about the blu-rays today.

Check out this article:

http://www.bigpicturebigsound.com/A-Destiny-Revealed-Star-Wars-Media-Day-Brings-Blu-ray-to-Town.shtml

For those who can't be bothered to read it all, it's a quick report from someone who managed to catch some footage from the actual blu-rays. Now I'm going to admit that I got a little hopeful when I read the following from the 2nd paragraph.

Well, at a private event in New York City last week, our friends at Lucasfilm and Fox pulled back the curtain all too briefly for an exciting peek at the Blu-rays as part of the 2011 Star Wars Media Day. Two clips were played (one from a classic film, one from a prequel) to demonstrate the quality of the brand-new 1080p/DTS-HD Master Audio 6.1 remasters, on a Panasonic plasma and over a Panasonic HTiB system. It was really just enough to whet our appetites (as if we weren't drooling enough already), but I am now very optimistic: the clips that we saw of films both of the original trilogy flavor and the newer prequels were stunning.

Yep, I got  my hopes up when I read that the picture quality was stunning. Sadly, that hope evaporated when I read the sentence immediately following the above quote.

Release of the older films in particular on Blu-ray will be a real challenge for Fox, owing to the limits of cinematic technology of the era, but Episodes II and III should have the potential to truly amaze.

Now, I'm still waiting until September to judge for myself but from the above quote I believe that if you think only modern films look good on blu-ray because they where shot digitally and think all pre digital movies look bad because they have film grain then the OT on blu-ray will look "stunning" to you.

If however, you understand the concept that 35mm film stock can produce a much better quality picture than the current home cinema standard of 1080p, then don't expect anything too "stunning."

Oh, and guess who commented on the article as I was writing this?

dark_jedi said:

Moth3r said:

1.0 tracks default to the centre speaker because that is the ideal way to hear them.

That is what I thought, so my system is playing these correctly, DD 1.0 mono goes to my center, DD 2.0 mono goes to my front left & right towers.

Of course, I described it a few pages back already: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Star-Wars-coming-to-Blu-Ray-UPDATE-May-4th-2011/post/510088/#TopicPost510088

Edit: I am even impressed your system not automatically steer 2.0 mono tracks to the center, most do.

2nd Edit: Damn, I discovered my receiver do exactly the same. ;)

Bobby Jay quoted this from an article:

Release of the older films in particular on Blu-ray will be a real challenge for Fox, owing to the limits of cinematic technology of the era, but Episodes II and III should have the potential to truly amaze.

Geez, statements like that even give sheep a bad name.  Pathetic.

That pesky late 90's film stock TPM was shot on is a real bitch to remaster. ;)

People actually get paid to write this sh*t?

I have nothing to say about that other than I weep for the writer's soul...

The best mono will usually come from LD digital tracks because of higher bitrate and the fact that most were taken straight from a film print. DVD mono is usually added as an afterthought and is very compressed. (DD 2.0 or 1.0 96-192 kbp/s) With that being said, the best DVD mono titles I can think of are Jaws, any Bond pre-1977, Criterion titles, and especially classic titles by Warner Bros. Warner is the studio that always presents even their most bare bones classics in mono. You can spread the signal to the L and R channels on some receivers but not all the time. (Learned this the hard way on my old school's receiver)

Mono should be heard only when there was a specific mix for it. As we know with SW there can be a world of difference. But films that were always stereo would only have had a fold-down or usually older equipment that could only read the safety mono track on the 35mm print.

What I don't get is the desire to remix mono into 5.1. Especially on classic titles. 24 bit audio on blu-ray should mean a more clear presentation of the original theatrical audio. The Manchurian Candidate should not be in 5.1 DTS HD-MA. OVERKILL!!!

This all carries over into music too. Whenever I play a mono record I have to plug my phono cables into a double-Y connection and then run that into my stereo receiver. That maintains the mono signal while playing through two speakers and reduces stereo noise. (I do this because my receiver does not have a mono switch.) Look up any album that you know very well that has a mono mix. You will hear significant differences if there was a true mono mix, and some variations if it was a fold-down.

The simplest way to go mono vs. stereo is The Beatles catalogue. Please Please Me through The White Album were mixed and released in mono. Starting with The White Album the band started mixing in stereo which is why that album has an alternate previously rare mono mix. For all of their early albums, the mono versions were mixed by the band and producer and feature clear elements in one channel. The stereo versions were done separately by studio engineers weeks later and have the vocals in one channel with all of the instrumentation on another. Pick any track on any of the early albums and do a listening comparison.

I will say that discovering many of my favorite things in both film and music were originally mono blew my mind. The Beatles were meant to be heard in mono, which means my childhood of hearing stereo Beatles was a lie...which in turn would mean...that yesterday was a lie....

It really depends on the source, the room acoustics and your system. Do what works best. That being said, I've heard mono in theaters in every way imaginable on films from various decades and the quality of sound depends on those three things.

zombie84 said:

Mono is sent to the centre channel because, being only one channel, it would be weird if it sent it to the left, or to the right. But in a theatrical setting, you aren't hearing it from one speaker at the front of the house. It is playing through many speakers so as to encompass the full room with front-facing sound. This is why, in a home theatre setting, it is appropriate to send it to all your forward-facing speakers, but namely the left and right which are accoustically positioned to fill your listening space.

I don't believe this is the case. A 1.0 mono soundtrack should play solely through the centre channel (on a film - mono music may be different). The centre channel is normally output by the centre speaker - unless your system doesn't have one, in which case a "phantom centre" is created by outputting the sound through both front left and right speakers.

I suppose it depends on room size to a degree. But again, in any sort of concert or theatre environment, there is no single centre speaker that provides audio for the entire room. Centre-default plays to the reality of one-channel audio, in that it is the most appropriate position if one speaker represents one channel, but it betrays the ideal listening experience. Your left and right speakers will be better manufactured as well, even if your centre channel is of high quality--the left and right are always the best speakers in the set-up, and the ones designed for the widest and furthest sound dispersal.

This is incorrect as well. The centre speaker is the most important speaker in a 5.1 set-up - it accounts for 50% of the soundtrack, as well as nearly all dialogue. It would not make sense to have the centre lesser specified than the front L & R speakers.

Another review of the Blu-Ray preview:

http://www.bryanreesman.com/blog/2011/06/28/first-peek-star-wars-on-blu-ray/