hairy_hen

Thanks, frevious.  That was very helpful.

In the end, I decided not to care that much what Mr. Ford thinks of Han Solo.  But characterizing him as dumb just doesn't agree with what I see when I watch the films, and implying that the audience is foolish for enjoying the character is overly harsh and also kind of insulting.

He must have changed his tune at least somewhat to agree to appear in the new film at all.  Really, the money and being able to put an end to him at last are the only reasons I can think of for that to have happened.  Would the promise of increased wisdom alone have been enough?  I'm not sure . . .

Maybe I'm just overly influenced by Timothy Zahn's portrayal of Han, who makes him out to be very clever while still being a charming scoundrel.  Whatever the case, it's clear that the audience's vision of the character does not at all match that of the actor who played the part, which is somewhat disconcerting to say the least.

Good to know that works.  The only thing I'd check to make sure of is whether the bit depth of the DTS-HD MA is being retained: if the original was 24-bit, the decoded output should be 24-bit also.  If it is being cut down to 16 at any point, then obviously that's not good.

It is of course possible to reduce a 24-bit file to 16 bits without much audible degradation, but you have to use dither to do it, so if there is any undithered truncation happening, loss of quality will result.

Can you verify that the audio bit depth is being retained by this process?

I remember reading that interview a while ago and being really disappointed.  Even the people who made Star Wars have trouble seeing its greatness, it would seem.

Eventually I shrugged it off and said whatever, but it still kind of annoys me.  Given Mr. Ford's comments about wanting Han to have died in Return of the Jedi, I begin to strongly suspect that the only way they lured him back to make Episode 7 was to give him a suitable death for his character.

If that is the case, he might be happy about it, but I certainly won't be.

The disappointed annoyance I feel whenever I watch any movie with an opening logo that obviously did not exist at the time the movie was actually made can scarcely be quantified.

So not only was the forum software not updated, it was in fact downdated and has not been restored to its former status.

Quite obvious, really.

Given how different it is from the book (which I read first), I just can't take that movie seriously at all.

Aw rats, I thought this was a joke thread where we intentionally posted things everyone already knew.

It still could be . . . I nominate Fink Olie to start making some obvious statements in this thread.

AAAAAAHHHH!!!!!

Actually, my immediate thought upon first seeing that horrible scene in AotC was, "If R2 had rocket boosters, why the hell didn't he just use them to escape falling in the swamp in ESB?!"

And then later, "Why does he have to be hoisted up into the back of an X-wing if he can just fly up there?!"

Not only did the AotC scene itself suck the dog balls, but from a retconning standpoint it's a complete disaster.  I think there are only two reasons why this change hasn't been put into the SE's: one, the whole live action sequence would have to be basically scrapped; and two, it probably never occurred to them that there was a continuity problem in the first place.

Otherwise, I shudder to think what could have happened . . .

I did some further testing and found that my settings still weren't completely correct: high-passing the surrounds the way I did was effective at eliminating the 100 Hz bass that had been too loud before, but it also had the effect of rendering the frequency response of the LFE channel too uneven.  When the LFE gain was set so that frequencies in the 50 Hz region were at a proper level, information around 70 Hz then became far too loud.

This is due to the slope of the crossover I used and the way the signals of the derived channels were interacting with each other.  Issues of this kind do not appear in theatrical setups, due to the fact that bass management is not employed and most speakers are run full range, with the subwoofer only playing the LFE signal and nothing else.  Home theaters, however, generally send the bass content of all channels to the subwoofer in addition to the LFE, and any phase and level mismatches between them will yield an end result that does not properly reflect what went in.  This is especially true in this case, where surround bass cannot be completely eliminated from the LFE, and the LFE cannot be completely removed from the surrounds.  Unlike in a theater, the final bass level is going to be a sum of the two together, and unfortunately my previous settings still did not balance all frequencies to the same level.

Since the channels cannot be completely isolated, I believe it would be more beneficial to use a shelf filter on the surrounds instead of a high-pass, since this will reduce the entire low end by the same amount.  Therefore all frequencies in the LFE range will still be balanced relative to each other, and not at a slope.  It may also be best to use linear phase filters, which will not be susceptible to phase cancellation between channels as normal filters would be.

So I still advocate a 48 dB/octave lowpass at 80 Hz for the LFE, but for the surrounds I'm now trying a very steep shelf filter which begins at 120 Hz and ends at -10 dB once it reaches 80 Hz.  This probably still isn't perfect, but it seems to give a more balanced result, and I'm no longer hearing any significant problems.

The settings in Ozone to achieve this shelf filter are: 100 Hz as the center point, - 5 dB, and a Q value of 15.  'Surgical Mode' must be enabled to be able to use a filter with this level of steepness; otherwise the slope will be much more shallow.  I do not know if other processors are able to use a filter of this kind, but I don't think it's critical for it to be exactly the same as what I've done, since less severe settings seemed to give reasonably similar results.  Using an EQ plugin that provides a visual representation of the frequency response can be helpful for dialing in the settings.

I'm still trying to figure out exactly how to measure the LFE.  When I tried making a downmix in another program, the result ended up being 10 dB louder than when Pro Tools performed the same task, so it seems that settings from one application may not translate very well to another.  +17 dB still seems like a good setting in PT, but elsewhere it was only +7 to achieve the same result, so I'm a bit confused by this . . .

As soon as I get around to doing it, and as soon as Harmy gets enough 35mm footage to properly despecialize RotJ in high-def.

According to my teacher, 'vibrational corrective maintenance' is a proven method for getting the moving parts of a mechanism unstuck, so this is certainly a justified trope.  It can be as effective on decades-old analog audio gear as on the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy.

One comment I received was that my older version of ANH was lacking the 'punch' of the version TeamBlu used on their release, when the only difference was I had adjusted the LFE to only contain more relevant frequencies and reduced the overall volume to something more in line with a home release to match better the existing Dolby 5.1 and 2.0 surround tracks.

That's not surprising: I have found that it is shockingly easy to be fooled by level differences when trying to assess whether a track is more dynamic or has more bass (the most obvious qualities that make something seem 'punchy'), and that even a small gain change to the whole track can cause otherwise rational people to swear that something major has been altered . . . when in fact all that happened was someone turned the volume knob slightly.

As an interesting anecdote, Roger Dressler of Dolby Labs once reported that he was comparing the Dolby and DTS releases of Twister on DVD, of which everyone swore the DTS version was so much better (using the most hyperbolic terms, of course).  Even he at first thought the DTS was more powerful—until he measured the outputs and found that its gain had been mastered half a dB louder.  When he corrected this discrepancy at the playback stage, the apparent differences vanished, and he could no longer tell them apart.  So even the most experienced professionals are not immune to this phenomenon: the difference is that they are aware of it as a potential issue, and know how to account for it when it comes to their attention.

When you think about it, the entire 'loudness war' in music mastering can be explained by this simple fact of how easily fooled we are by level differences.

Given your information here, I think I'm going to go back and take another look. Thanks for this information, hairy_hen, I'm still relatively new to this kind of sound work (I'm primarily music production and live sound, all in stereo!), so I may have some questions for you soon. It seems at some point I lost sight of the fact that we don't have DTS theatrical audio systems in our homes, something that I was emphatic about that when I first started with cinema DTS. You are absolutely correct about getting this right. ;)

Heck, I don't even have a job in this field yet: I just go to school and intern at a studio part-time.  Most of that experience has been with stereo music also; the only things I know about 5.1 are what I hear when watching movies, and what I've read online from Mr. Dressler and others like him.

I will certainly be glad to help with anything else that comes up.  Ultimately, the idea of using cinema DTS tracks is to be sure of hearing a real theatrical mix at the highest bitrate obtainable, but since we don't have the hardware it is expected to be decoded with, or the knowledge of everything it would be doing internally, careful listening seems to be the only way to make sure it comes out right.  Assuming that any available AC3 releases use the same mix, there really shouldn't be much if any difference between them aside from compression issues, once the levels have been matched.  I'm hopeful that my settings will prove applicable to all soundtracks found on these DTS discs.

Does this mean we need to redo Jurassic Park again too?

I'm not sure.  It seems that way, but I guess it depends how they mixed it in the first place, whether the surrounds had bass in them that is being sent to the LFE and boosted too much or not.  Since JP was the first movie to be shown in DTS, presumably it would have been heard on the early units, which sounded different in the crossover region from the later ones.  It's hard to say at this point.

In this case the lfe.wav would have to be disregarded, and a new one created.  This would be done by duplicating the two surround channels, summing them to mono, applying the low-pass filter, and raising the gain by the appropriate amount.  In order to know the amount by which to boost the LFE, it is important to know first whether the process of summing to mono keeps the level at unity, or causes a gain increase of its own.  In the first case, the +17 dB increase would be correct; but if the resulting mono is 6 dB louder, then you'd only raise it by 11.  (I know it's confusing; it took me a while to wrap my head around all this.)

If you like, I can take care of all that and send you the results—all I'd need is the 2.0 PCM (synched to your video) to line it up with.

For matrixed surround, it's really only a matter of telling the receiver what to do with the signal.  When using a Dolby or DTS encoder, you can specify whether it should interpret the input as an LtRt or regular stereo.  It's just a single bit in the metadata being flagged as one or the other—the actual mix doesn't change at all.  PCM tracks don't have any flags, so you have to manually choose which mode you want the receiver to play back in.  Not a hardship for me, since I tend to switch modes based on what I'm listening to anyway.

Concerning theatrical DTS, I don't mean to potentially throw a wrench in the works, but I just discovered a problem concerning subwoofer crossovers and level calibration, which leads to the mixes not sounding right.  Read about it here.

I was listening to the cinema DTS tracks for the Star Wars special editions recently, and made a somewhat alarming discovery: namely, that theatrical DTS is an inherently flawed system in how it handles the bass content.  I haven't yet been able to listen to any of the other DTS preservations that have been done, but based on what I've heard with the SW films, there is a good chance some of the specifics of DTS calibration may not have been set properly when decoding these tracks.

Since it is not a completely discrete channel system, the LFE information is stored in the surrounds and intended to be low-passed out to the subwoofers at 80 Hz; while the surrounds are high-passed at the same frequency.  I spent a lot of time reading all the DTS technical papers I could find; but unfortunately DTS gives no specific information about the kind of crossover that is used with their system.  So I then did some research about the Linkwitz-Riley crossover technique, which is the only method of maintaining constant level and phase between all frequency components.

Believing this must have been their intention, I applied an 80 Hz Linkwitz-Riley crossover in iZotope Ozone by applying two second-order Butterworth filters in series (this means cascading two 12 dB/octave filters, one after the other, for a total slope of 24 dB/octave and with 80 Hz as the -6 dB point).  Once I had raised the resulting LFE signal up to its proper level—which initially had to be done by ear since I didn't know the precise amount of gain that should be applied—I discovered, to my alarm, that the sound of the bass was completely wrong in some scenes.  Further listening revealed that in any scene in which the surround channels contained bass at frequencies in the vicinity of 80 to 120 Hz, this content was mixed with the LFE signal and then boosted to a level far beyond that at which it was intended to be heard.  I proved this conclusion by listening to the 5.1 AC3 tracks from the SE laserdiscs, which have a true discrete LFE channel, and sure enough this issue of improper bass-management in the surrounds is not present.

The only way I could 'solve' this issue was by using a completely different crossover scheme, one which surely does not measure correctly by any usual standard, but which nonetheless seems to be the only way to make the mix sound like it is supposed to.  I'm not the only person on the internet who has noticed this as a potential problem, so after reading some comments on another forum, I arrived at the solution of using a 48 dB/octave low-pass at 80 Hz for the LFE signal, and a 12 dB/octave high-pass at 120 Hz for the surround channels.  Later DTS units apparently implemented a steeper filter than earlier versions (which were probably the same wrong-sounding 24 I'd been using), and the surround setting corresponds to the natural rolloff found in the sort of rear speakers found in most movie theatres.  My settings duplicate the way a typical DTS installation actually performs acoustically, which sounds 'correct' because it is using both phase shift and speaker limitations to prevent the offending frequencies from becoming too bloated.  In other words, theatrical DTS has a design flaw, and I figured out how to cover it up.  ;)

I also tackled the issue of subwoofer levels, since going by the usual specifications for level calibration, the numbers given in their papers make no sense.  DTS do not specify at what level the LFE signal is to be mixed with the surround channels, nor do they indicate what method is being used to sum the results of the low-passed stereo surrounds into a mono subwoofer—this can result in a net gain change of 0, +3 dB, or +6 dB, depending how it is done—so clearly their unit is programmed to take care of all this without any expectation of the user having to understand what it is specifically doing.  Their specified calibration levels only work along with the programming of the hardware device, so for us trying to decode these tracks at home, we're pretty much guaranteed to get it wrong without careful listening tests.

Note also that DTS changed their LFE mix level in 1999, lowering it by 3 dB and requiring a corresponding 3 dB increase in subwoofer output to yield the same acoustic gain.  This was done for the purpose of greater compatibility with the way printmasters were being produced, and it definitely affects any projects using a cinema DTS track from these years.  All films from 1999 and later must have their LFE signal gained up an additional 3 dB compared to films released from 1993 to 1998, or they will be incorrect.  (These calibration oddities only apply to cinema DTS, not the home video version, which follows the more sensible method established by Dolby.)

The numbers I arrived at for correct LFE level came to +17 dB for the earlier discs, and +20 dB for later ones.  (This is assuming unity gain when summing to mono, not +3 or +6.)  I haven't really 'measured' this per se, but this sounds correct when comparing to the Dolby Digital tracks.  I'll probably want to test it some more before calling it 'final', but I'm pretty sure I've got it right, or at least very close.

Since I'm doing this in Pro Tools, my specific method (a combination of iZotope Ozone and the program's own Downmixer plugin) may not specifically apply to what other people are using, but I can try to help in finding settings that yield the correct results.  It is very important to get this right, or else we won't be hearing the level balance of these mixes the way they ought to sound.  I think I've finally figured it out, and I want to make sure we all know how to do it properly.

When blending multiple sources together into one continuous file, you must take care to match the level and EQ of the replacement sections to that of the primary track, or they will stand out.

The Match EQ function in iZotope Ozone is good for this . . .

Supposedly, the MUSE LD have the same CDS remix; but instead of 5.1 DD 384kbps, it has uncompressed 4 channel 15bit 32Khz PCM track... which *could* sound better in some ways than the DD counterpart... or not?

I'll admit I don't know anything about MUSE tracks.  If it is 4 channels, that probably means it is an LCRS layout, meaning the stereo surround information will be summed to mono, and the boom track may be absent altogether.  (Though it could possibly be added to the L and R, but almost certainly at a reduced level from the six-track version.)

The 32 kHz sample rate is worrying . . . unless the anti-alias filtering is very good, there could be audible digital distortion happening in the treble range.  Whether this would be less objectionable than lossy compression is hard to say.  However, editing PCM is certainly easier than trying to resynchronize an AC3 stream without re-encoding.

Thanks for the write up hairy_hen. Your audio expertise knows no equal.

Heh well, I don't know if I'd go that far: I'm lucky enough to be mentored by one of the best music mixers in the world, whose knowledge of analog gear and instinctive ability to understand how a mix should sound are absolutely incredible.  Compared to him, I am an utter novice.

Still, I appreciate the sentiment.  ;)

I've definitely heard the German version with the music . . . so that means there must have been a concerted effort during the preparation of the GOUT to get rid of it from all the international dubs containing that music.

Why certain countries got the music back then while most didn't remains a mystery, but it seems certain that somebody really doesn't want it to be there.

I've done a fairly comprehensive comparison of the 5.1 AC3 from the first DVD release (thanks to everyone who PM'd me about that) with the remixed Surround EX version found on subsequent releases.  I have absolutely no doubt that this in fact the original CDS mix, as disclord had indicated.

Gary Rydstrom's description of the differences between the two in the Widescreen Review article linked to above is accurate.  The remix has a lot more noticeable usage of the surround channels, and the amount of LFE bass (or 'boom', as they like to call it) is amped up considerably.  I only have a standard 5.1 setup since there's no room for additional surround speakers, but there was some interesting stuff going straight back that is certainly intended to appear in the EX channel.  Plenty of side to side panning in the rears as well, and the boom track made everything satisfyingly powerful without going overboard.  There's a lot to like about the remix, for sure.

In comparison, the original version may come across as being slightly disappointing in some ways.  There isn't as much bass in the explosions or gunfire, and the surround usage is more limited.  That's not to dismiss or impune it in any way, however, because it is a very good mix in its own right, and everything about the sound design that works in the remix sounds as good as it does because they 'got it right' originally.

As Rydstrom indicated, there are no changes in content between the two versions whatsoever.  None.  All of the sound effects are exactly the same, including the gunshots.  The balance between the various elements can be a bit different at times, but not hugely so: sometimes elements that were panned to the surrounds in the remix are emphasized with greater level than they were before, but never so much as to become overpowering.  The overall dynamic range is about the same in both, with a lot of transient power.

The original mix is definitely a real 5.1, not 4.1.  There is distinct usage of the stereo surrounds in certain scenes: more subtle and less frequent than the remix, but definitely there.  Note that this stereo panning only applies to sound effects and not to the music, which is heard as mono in the rears throughout.

From the way the bass is used, it is clear that this mix was intended to be used on 70mm prints, because it uses the same techniques that were employed on the boom tracks for other films before the advent of Dolby Digital.  Rather than containing only isolated instances of bass derived entirely from the sound effects, as is now customary, the boom channel contains a sum of all the bass from the entire mix, low-pass filtered at 125 Hz, and plays continuously throughout the entire movie.  Specific bass effects also appear for parts that warrant additional reinforcement, though not with the sort of levels heard in the newer version.  Because the boom track plays continuously, many scenes have a sort of 'rumbling undertone' to them, which gives an interesting effect that is a somewhat different than the remix.  The percussive nature of the score benefits from this.  (A similar, though less noticeable, undertone can be heard in the 1993 mixes of the Star Wars films, which the other versions do not have).

On the whole, the CDS mix is about what I expected it would be, but actually hearing it for the first time was very interesting.  I can see why Rydstrom wanted to remix it (and I think he did a very good job in doing so), but the original stands on its own merit as an example of excellence in the history of film sound.  Certainly it is worth preserving, and even considering the only copies released on home video are in AC3 at 384 kbps, the sound quality is surprisingly good.

(If it is to be used with any fan projects, I recommend using a method of synching to video that does not involve transcoding the AC3 through a second round of lossy compression, in order not to degrade it any more).

I think it's safe to say that some of the talk of differences between versions has been exaggerated.  I haven't heard the Dolby Stereo mix, but I'd very confidently wager that it would sound quite similar to the CDS overall.  That's all for now . . . but if there are any further questions about this, I'll be glad to answer them.

Ocarina of Time's ending is incredible . . .

The end of Twilight Princess never fails to leave me heartbroken and morose.  'Devastatingly final' is the only way to describe it—with Midna leaving forever, you know Link's life will never be the same again.  So much so that he leaves behind everyone and everything he's ever known, disappearing to who knows where.

Everything prior to that is portrayed with subtlety, and from a storytelling point of view I find it really interesting that they were able to do so much with it.  Even though the characters were not 'together', it is strongly implied that they wanted to be, so even though Ganon is defeated and the good guys win, the end feels very tragic.  When the love of your life decides they can't be with you, even if it's for a good reason, it's not an easy thing to live with . . .

Actually, I know very well how true that is, since last year I had a doomed romance that ended in a similar way to that shown in the game.  I've been in quite a bad place for months because of it.  It is very difficult for me to get through the end of TP, because I know what's coming and how it's going to affect me even before it happens.  However, since I have much more of a crush on Midna than I should (lol), that was true even before any of the real life stuff had happened.

I finally started playing TP again for the first time in a long while.  I haven't been able to face it until now; but it's such a good story that I keep coming back to it, despite everything.

I have not.

However, I will concede that baiting Inigo Montoya when he's coming to kill you is an even worse idea.  ;)

Doesn't the German version also have the music in the garbage pit scene?  That too was deleted when they remixed it for the SE, from what I've heard.

Your theory seems likely, that somebody thought it was an error for the scene to have music, not realizing that some foreign dubs actually were made that way originally; either that or they just didn't think it should be there when it wasn't in the English versions.  So they swapped it out from an alternate source: possibly not noticing the difference in voice/dialect, or possibly just not caring.

I don't know the exact times when the various dubs would have been made, but given the facts, this seems the most likely explanation.

TMBTM said:

Best story to me would be if Leia is married to another man at the beginning of episode 7 but still have to ask Han Solo's help somehow. Maybe they even did not see each other for a long time. That way you can still keep a certain romantic/nostalgic tension between the two characters and write some entertaining dialogue.

Maybe Han Solo could even have to deal with Leia's kids (with that other man). You know: he does not like them at first, but they learn to know each others during the movie, etc... (I know it sounds a bit like Indy 4...even if in that movie Mutt really was Indy's son) Could be a bit tongue in cheek, but could work, if done well. And would be more interesting than if they were his own kids, with children/parents usual problems, blah blah.

 That is the worst idea ever.

If anybody has a copy of the first DVD release and wants to extract the AC3 track and send it to me, I will be glad to perform a detailed analysis of it and find all the specific ways it differs from the remixed version.  As those who have followed my work on the Star Wars preservations know, I am rather good at doing that.  ;)

I will post all observations in this thread so we can lay it all out clearly, rather than relying on rumor and speculation.

Laserdisc audio is, shall we say, an inherently uncomfortable topic.

Particularly when payments between different species are involved.