hairy_hen

guiser said:

Harmy said:

- "Introducing the Soundtacks"

I'd dearly love to include this one but I cannot with clear conscience attempt to do it myself - I could do the video side of it, but not the audio side and the script. The request for help with this still stands.

I thought hairy_hen was going to write the script for this?  My apologies if it was someone else (or if he ran out of time) I can't find the original post and don't want to step on anyones toes.

I just really enjoy reading his posts on the subtle changes and differences in the various versions of the soundtracks and mixes.  It always amazes me how much information he can discern about these things from just listening to them.

You know, sometimes I amaze even myself.  ;)

Heh, speaking of that, I'll give you a new example: just a few weeks ago I discovered that a delay processor was used on the Emperor's voice in ESB.  Listen closely, and you'll hear that every time he speaks, a slightly softer repetition of his lines occurs just afterwards, giving Clive Revill's voice a thicker, slightly echoing sound.  This is a trick commonly used on vocals in popular music to make them stand out and sound larger than they otherwise would; and though subtle, the effect also works well here.

This delay effect can be heard in the 35mm stereo and 1993 versions of ESB (which were sourced primarily from the same 4-track master), but it is missing altogether from the 1997 SE remix.  In that version, the Emperor's lines do not have this echoing effect as they do in the original mix—evidently they completely forgot about it when doing the remix.  Another indication as to how making changes to old work isn't always a good idea . . .

Anyway—I'm still interested in doing a documentary on audio changes to the films.  Whether I do or not is only a matter of whether I'd have enough time to do it properly.  If I did, it would be primarily audio-based, since that's how I perceive things most clearly, so I wouldn't write it in a visual-oriented way.  Actually, the main obstacle I'm faced with may be that I actually have too much information about the mixes: I've found so many differences that cutting it down to a manageable and understandable amount that can be readily explained to others is kind of daunting!  To really do that justice, it would have to be a separate project: for the purposes of what Harmy wants to include as a special feature, only a basic overview of the most obvious differences could be included.  I'll see what I can do about it in the next few weeks.

The colors of the TeamBlu version are pretty close to what the '97SE is supposed to look like.  It also has the added benefit of never having touched the 2004 master in any way, so none of that version's weirdness shows up in color or contrast anywhere.

It was most likely done a few years ago, while they were working on the Blurays, but not specifically for that purpose.  It's actually frustrating for me to have to be so vague, because I know exactly who did the transfer and why, but I'd get people in trouble if I said anything more specific about it!  I may never get to hear the results myself, but the original soundtracks have definitely been preserved for posterity—that much I can say with absolute certainty.

I have no information on whether the same has been done for the foreign language dubs, but I would hope so.  If they've been digitizing their archives as I've heard, then it seems likely.  I don't think they'd go to the trouble of remixing them over again, though, unless they had a specific commercial reason to do so.

I haven't heard anything about that, since the conversation concerning this information was only about the three English mixes.  But I believe Lucasfilm has been digitizing many of their stored materials, so it's at least a possibility.

So did I.  ;)

Actually, in all seriousness, I have it on good authority that the original mixes have been digitally archived from the master tapes at 24-bit, 192 kHz resolution, and that copies of them are safely stored in good hands.  I'm not at liberty to say how I know this (no, I don't have them, nor could I share them if I did), but rest assured their legacy lives on . . .

Even if they can handwave it away as not technically being a direct contradiction, it still doesn't jive with the intent and tonal presentation of what is said in ESB.

Obi-wan's choice of wording implies that Yoda instructed him one on one, the same way that Luke is taught.  ESB also shows Yoda being a hermit, who meditates and lives peacefully away from civilization.  The prequels show him as essentially a public school teacher for young children, living in the big city.  It's a jarring inconsistency, and it just doesn't feel right.

It should work at least somewhat if the bar has multiple built-in speakers.  I believe they achieve their results aiming the 'surround' outputs out at the walls in a tightly focused pattern and letting it reflect at an angle to the back of the room, such that the sound arriving at the listener's ears actually does seem to have originated from behind and not in front.  They may also use psychoacoustic trickery to further differentiate the rear channels from the front, such as tweaking the phase and EQ to more closely match the way we naturally tend to perceive sounds coming from behind or to the side of us.

I haven't spent enough time listening to soundbars to comment on how effective they are, nor do I know enough about the underlying technology to give a more detailed explanation.  But my gut reaction is that a bar with at least five built-in speakers should do a reasonably good job of approximating what the track should sound like, provided it is used in a small room so that the reflectivity effect can be properly employed.  If it has a lesser number of speakers, then it is downmixing and this is definitely to be avoided, especially if it then employs some kind of reverb or delay processing to create a fake surround out of it.  Given the way I made the 5.1, I'm pretty sure this would sound bad.

But in any case, it's absolutely worthwhile to hook up a subwoofer, because the bass does add a lot to the film experience.  It's probably more bass than the original 70mm track of ESB actually had, but I kept it as strong as I did because the SE bass just plain sounded good.  I spent a lot of time balancing it into the 1993 mix and making sure it felt like it belonged there, and didn't stick out as some kind of unnecessary hamfisted addition.  Every single instance of bass has been edited in some way, some of them quite extensively; and some of them I created myself to fill in gaps where the SE ought to have had bass but didn't.  There are probably more things I could do to improve it even further, and I have some ideas on a possible alternate version that wouldn't use the SE mix as a source at all; but for now I'm very happy with it.  I'm glad to hear others are enjoying it, too.

As has been said, the 35mm stereo mix sounds very good, so if you don't have a 5.1 system, or want to be as strictly authentic as is currently possible, you still have an excellent soundtrack to listen to.  It it sourced primarily from the 1989 SWE laserdisc release, with various defects cleaned up and the dialog level matched to the 1993 version.  It is a considerably more robust track than the stereo mix of the first film, with greater dynamics and a stronger EQ—I chose the SWE version because it was the most powerful rendition of this mix found in Schorman13's laserdisc audio archive, and also because the quality of analog-to-digital conversion was improved over the earlier digital releases.  Unfortunately, it was also more noisy and had more errors (dropouts, clicks, etc), but I was able to eliminate the most obvious instances.  (It's possible there may be some I haven't noticed, but if so I'll fix them at a later date.)  I do like the 5.1 track a great deal—aside from the lack of true discrete channels, it's exactly how I would make the film sound if I were in charge of mastering it for an official home video release—but I can also watch the movie with the stereo mix and enjoy it just as much.

It should be fine as long as it has at least five speakers built in, I'd say.  I haven't actually spent much time listening to sound bars—it's doubtful the surround sound aspect will come across as clearly as separate speakers properly positioned around the room, but it should work reasonably well.

So I checked the audio again, and I think I can safely promise there are no errors, at least none that are of my doing.  The source tracks do slightly distort occasionally, but that's part of the recordings themselves—some of these same problems can also be heard in the SE.  I'm simply not hearing any other problems, so I have to assume they are either nonexistent or are related to playback equipment and/or room acoustics, and not the audio itself.

I should also point out—and please treat this information seriously—that the 5.1 mix was designed for high performance sound systems and may not give ideal results on equipment that cannot cope with wide dynamic range material and high levels of bass.  It will also not sound its best if downmixed to stereo.  Obviously I have no control over how people listen to it, so it was necessary to do a bit of tweaking to the surround channels in order to make stereo playback at least sound acceptable (it would have been quite horrible if I hadn't done this, due to excessive comb filtering from out of phase signals).  But since the 35mm stereo mix is itself very good, I must recommend that anyone watching the movie with a 2-channel sound system choose that version instead, rather than downmixing the 5.1 mix.  Content-wise they are identical, and the greater midrange emphasis of its EQ makes it more suitable for the kinds of sound systems people are likely to have.

I'll make a list.

cain spaans said:

only one problem with the 5.1 audio track at the beggining on Hoth it sounded like the track was reverberating and I wonder if that mistake can be fixed.

 What in the world does this mean??

From this time forward, all movies shall feel incomplete without a talking raccoon.

I'm just sayin'.

The '93 mix of ESB contains a few glitches, so I did a bit of restoration work on it since it was the primary source for the new 5.1.  This includes declipping, declicking, and noise removal, all with iZotope RX 3; as well as patching editing mistakes in the laserdisc source.  I shall therefore upload this corrected copy in AC3 form to be included in the MKV.

Similar work was also done on the 35mm stereo mix.  Earlier it was asked whether there was a 1985 remix of Empire as there is for the first movie, and the answer is no: all home video releases prior to 1993 used the same mix.  Different masters of this mix exist, showing different EQ and dynamic characteristics, so I assembled the best possible version of it that I could.

Once I've finished doing such work on all three films, I'll make an archive of all the files that anyone can download, possibly as a myspleen torrent.  I'll also make a thread documenting this work in more detail.

bouvines said:

Hairy_hen, 

A follow-up question re the audio streams. Which is higher quality, the Digital Dolby (AC-3) bitstream or the "core" bitstream from the DTS-HD MA track? (The core stream is all I can ever get VLC to play from a DTS-HD MA track). I'm guessing the DTS-HD MA core is still better since it will still have almost three times the bitrate of DD 5.1 but wanted to ask you. 

This is a tough question, due to the radically differing nature of the audio codecs and the way they store/process the sound.  Both Dolby Digital and DTS are capable of delivering excellent results when used at their maximum bitrates (640 kbps and 1509 kbps respectively), so any demonstrable difference between them is going to be quite minimal.  Go with whichever one works best for the format you're watching in, and don't worry about it.

It doesn't explicitly say anywhere that they ended that exact year.  However, Mr. Zahn did state that he asked Lucasfilm about it when he was first outlining the Thrawn books, and was told that the Clone Wars had taken place 35 years before the first movie.  Given that the Empire did not form until around the time of Luke's birth (about 15 years after this), the conclusion that the wars did not directly lead into the Emperor's takeover is obvious.  He must therefore have used the chaos and destruction they left in their wake to gradually create a politically advantageous situation for himself.

Since the 'official' version of what happened in the Clone Wars is so outright terrible, it is frustrating that Mr. Zahn was not able to go into too much detail about the scenario he'd come up with.  The tantalizing hints he was able to include are most intriguing, and point to a far more interesting story than what we actually ended up getting.

I strongly advise against letting a conversion program make AC3 out of the DTS-HD MA.  Dolby Digital encoding has several user-defined parameters which I specifically set a certain way to optimize the sound quality as well as to maintain the integrity of the mix.  It is quite likely that the results will be subpar if this kind of transcoding is performed, because it won't follow my intentions and the result will not match what it is supposed to sound like.  The level and relative phase of the surrounds and LFE can be harmed significantly if this is done incorrectly.

Also, the official Dolby encoder has a more capable algorithm than any freeware version, so my AC3 will definitely be better.  As has been stated, remux the video and audio into the required format without re-encoding either in order to maintain quality and deliver the proper results.

DTS-HD MA tracks for the mkv have now been uploaded.

Edit: since ABC is responsible for the music restoration in the isolated score, he should be credited in the nfo for this work.

The scene in the above picture is sheer perfection.  I crack up every single time I see it.

It will probably take a few days to get those out there since I'm currently out of town and don't have as good a connection as I normally do.  It's up to you if you want to wait for that, or have the AVCHD come out right away with the MKV slightly later . . .

AC3 audio now uploaded!  2.0 AVCHD should be out soon . . . really looking forward to it.

The masters for my tracks are 24-bit, 48 khz .wav files, with sample rate conversion from the laserdisc 16/44.1 performed by Weiss Saracon.  The 35mm mix's gain has been adjusted so that the dialog level matches the 1993 version, to ensure there is no distracting change in volume when switching audio tracks, and a slightly modified form of Dolby Prologic II in Movie Mode created the main channels for the 5.1 mix.  The LFE channel is a heavily edited version of what is on the Bluray release, with a few additional bass effects created by me through the use of a subharmonic synthesizer.

In order to reduce the file size for distribution while maintaining quality, the main tracks of the MKV will be dithered to 16/48 and encoded with DTS lossless compression, while the AVCHD will contain high bitrate AC3 encoded from the 24-bit masters.  Since the source tracks were all 16-bit to begin with, there is no real quality loss by downconverting in the end—processing at higher bit depths simply allows for greater precision when changes are made to the files, keeping more of the original quality.  Both the 5.1 and the stereo mix sound really good, so I think you'll all be very happy with them.  :)

I never called them 'purist'.  That was a term someone else came up with (I don't remember who), and for some reason it stuck.

The main source of the '93 mix for ESB was not the 70mm version, since that contained various editing differences, but instead a 4-track master that conformed to the 35mm version in length and content (with the exception of the missing snowspeeder crash sound, which was likely unintentionally omitted due to being an early generation copy that didn't have it; I've put it back in since all released versions of the film contained this sound effect).

Aside from small differences here and there, the 70mm mix of ESB did sound very similar to my 5.1 overall.  Since it is not an exact replica, however, I gave myself a little more leeway in terms of whether the added bass was always 100% authentic or not, relying on my best judgement of what sounded good.  In general, I would say that my version is what the 35mm version would sound like if unrestricted by the technical limitations of stereo optical format.  So even though it doesn't duplicate a theatrical version in the strictest sense, it 'feels' quite authentic.

I'm not sure exactly how to describe it in less words than that.  It may be best just to call it '1980 5.1' and leave it at that, I suppose.

As an update on status, I just realized I made a slight mistake in settings while I rendered it, so the 5.1 came out 3 dB quieter than I wanted it to.  I must therefore correct this mistake and re-encode with the levels adjusted.  It won't take long, since it's an easy fix.  The actual work on it is all done at this point.  "Almost there . . ."

Oh, that's what you meant.  Yeah, I've noticed that before, but the only way it would help anything is if I had them in lossless form.  Even then they could only be used sporadically at most.

Space Hunter M said:

At the same time, the foreign stereo track is missing a couple of the mono additions. The added breakdown noises to Red Leader's X-Wing crash are not present.

 I still have no idea what track you're referring to.  Can you elaborate?

Hmm . . . well, just from the few comments that have been made here, it is clear that opinions on which mono additions are important to the film and which are not vary widely.  Obviously there will be no consensus on this issue.  Nonetheless it may be helpful to determine which ones are generally viewed as being the most significant so I know what to focus on.  Keeping in mind, of course, that I can't possibly include them all, and that my own personal preference is likely to play a part as well.

I'd also like to hear some opinions about the two possible methods I outlined above.  Which do people prefer: the 70mm with some things added to it, or the '97 SE mix de-crappified?  Either one is a viable possibility for a potential hybrid version.

The only reason for me to make a new one is that the sound quality will be improved by using the most recent version of ABC's score restoration, which he made after the GOUT-synched version was already completed.  Other than that, it should be pretty similar.

For now I'll just go with the existing isoscore, and put out a new one when once I have enough time to make it as good as it can be.

Argh.  Bad news, I'm afraid: the issue of varying playback speed is making the isolated score take longer to complete than I thought it would.  I don't want to half-ass it by going too quickly and getting sloppy, and I don't want to delay the release of v2.0 unnecessarily by making Harmy wait for me to finish something he didn't ask me to do in the first place.  Seeing as how I have to go out of town soon for a while, I must therefore postpone the isolated score's release until I'm able to do it properly.  My apologies.

So, Harmy, you might as well go ahead and put out v2.0 as soon as I get the other tracks uploaded.  I will certainly have it ready for the next version you put out after that.