I found this a bit interesting. Heres a few quotes from Van Ling, who was involved in the creation of T1’s 5.1 mix, and also pushed for the mono track to be included on the MGM SE DVD. I guess hes been outvoted on subsequent releases.
" a new sound mix a nice, true 5.1 We even had composer Brad Fiedel come back in and remix his music masters, and MGM hired Gary Rydstrom at Skywalker to do the overall remix on my recommendation. So MGM really put their money where their mouth was on this title."
" Yeah, the movie was mono originally. And there were a number of faux-stereo things out there. In my discussions with Lightstorm and talking with Cameron about it, we would always say that it would be cool to have something in stereo, but only if it was done right;and doing it right require some diligence, because you want to stay true to the mix and stay true to the balance that people have come to expect. But at the same time, you want to broaden the soundtrack a little bit. You don’t want to do something that is totally different because maybe part of the appeal was a way it sounded in mono. And that’s one of the things that was really important and one of the things that led Jim to say, “If you’re going to do it, do it right.” Its not just a matter of panning the mono right and left like some of the earlier faux-stereo mixes. And if I have my way on the disk configuration, MGM will also include the original mono audio as a separate track for the real purists."
Another one from over a year ago where he even says he prefers the mono.
“A tough question, but I think I lean towards the mono just because it was the original. I was the producer of the initial remix done by the great Gary Rydstrom back in 2000, and while I think he did an excellent job, there is something monolithic yet raw about the original mono mix that fits the film. Also, we found out later that there was a glaring omission in the remix, which was the metallic sounds—almost like that of a sword being drawn from a scabbard—of the letters in the title sliding past each other in the main titles. It turned out that the reason they were missing in the remix was that they were not on either the sound effects or the music masters for the film… they were on the dialogue stems for some reason. And those stems had been muted during the remix since there was no dialogue during the main titles! Lame explanation, but true.”
One more from 2011.
“I plead not guilty! I had nothing to do with the release of the Blu-ray version of Terminator – even though the publisher included part of my bonuses off the DVD edition. You may remember, when this disk was released in 2006, there were so many problems with the Blu-ray format (which was not ready and was rushed to avoid HD-DVD taking its place), that the programmers cut the discs down to the bare minimum. I don’t understand why they cut out the bonuses. Probably to save space…. They only used an extract of my documentary. Why not use it all? Well, it’s all in the past, a new HD digital restoration of the film, re-mastered using the original negative has been launched. I will do my utmost to ensure that the original mono mixing is on it, all the old bonuses incorporated and include new ones, such as unseen TV trailers for example or live BD extras. It should also include a bonus tribute to Stan Winston. We were in the process of working on it last year when we had to stop following MGM’s financial problems. So, for the time being the project is mothballed.”
