hairy_hen

A better bet would be to use the 1997 version.  Unlike the DVD and Bluray, the first version of the SE used the original mix and added changes on top of it, so it still sounds more like the way it is supposed to, but has many flashy additions in the surrounds.  It isn't as dynamic as the 70, but not bad.  If you want a blend of both styles this is probably the best way to get it.

At one point I did consider editing the '97 mix to synch with the original version of the movie, but I decided that my efforts would be better spent elsewhere.  There's a very slight, vague possibility that I might someday do it, but I could never bring myself to do that for the newer mixes.

Surround usage aside, the 70 has better bass than any of them.  ;)

So . . . the main complaint here is that the Despecialized Edition does not sound anything like the official DVD, despite the fact that the official release was remixed from scratch with no regard to how it was done originally.

The problem here is evident, because as has been stated, the entire mix itself constitutes a massive 'special edition change', so even if it could be edited to remove the more obvious alterations, it still wouldn't wouldn't be anything like what was heard prior to 2004.  Certainly it could never be included in any project claiming to be a restoration of the theatrical release from 1977.

Aesthetic preference for one version over another is entirely up to individual choice.  But I must admit to being dismayed at the dismissal of my work in favor of a remix whose faults—including flattened dynamics, lack of high frequency response, poor balance between background and foreground elements, music cues too low in level or missing altogether, certain effects and dialogue being enormously distorted, incorrect placement of elements within the sound field relative to their position on screen, some effects even being out of synch to the image altogether—are so obvious.

It is important, I think, to keep in mind that films at that time were in some ways mixed quite differently than they are today.  Surround channels were mono and used mainly for ambience, with music and more flashy sounds appearing less often, though always to great effect when they did appear.  The main intention was usually to create a diffuse, wide layer of sound that seemed to emanate from all directions simultaneously, and when a sharper and more noticeable usage was called for, the mixers frequently relied upon a technique known as a '2-4 punch': mixing a loud sound effect into channels 2 and 4 (ie, center and surround) simultaneously.  In a properly calibrated system, this produces a huge, nearly unlocalizable jolt of acoustic energy that fills the room in a startling and satisfying way, and the original mixes of the Star Wars films make great use of it.  Examples include the blockade runner's engine before the ship appears, Leia's cell door slamming shut as Vader begins to interrogate her, Ben's roar to frighten away the sand people, the sound of his lightsaber in the cantina when he defeats the attacking thugs, the landspeeder's entry into Mos Eisley, Luke deflecting the shots of the training remote, the slap-echo of his voice in the Death Star chasm, and Ben distracting the guards at the tractor beam, among others.

It is worth noting that none of these surround usages appear in the 2004 mix at all; they are all much lower in level and confined to the front channels only.  Despite being flashy, the remix pays no attention whatsoever to the original sound design and does not even come close to replicating its vastly powerful dynamic range.

Also, to be fair, the real 70mm mix had discrete channels while my recreation does not; the only publicly available authentic source was a matrixed stereo downmix from laserdisc, which had to be upmixed in software in order to combine it with the custom LFE channel.  It is delivered in 5.1 format for the sake of compatibility with home theater systems (the six-track mix on 70mm prints was actually a '4.2' format, meaning left, right, center, surround, plus two bass channels).  The real thing would have superior imaging, though mine approximates it quite nicely, particularly in version 2.5 where the channel separation is improved.  So while it isn't quite ideal in every respect, it's the closest anyone could get to hearing what the film is supposed to sound like without access to the actual master tapes.

I urge you to keep an open mind and listen to the mix again, this time without preconceived bias in favor of something that bears no resemblance to the intentions of the mixers at the time the movie was made.  You may find it more satisfying, both as an example of the evolving history of film sound and in its own right.  In any event, its sound quality is so far superior to the remix that I would be very happy never to hear the latter again, and would certainly not participate in a version of the movie that included it.  If after this (and perhaps a check to make sure the sound system is properly calibrated) it still fails to impress, then I really don't know what else to say.

The Thrawn trilogy is amazing—easily the best by far of any Star Wars books that have ever been written.  I too had difficulty with them when I was young, but when I tried again at a more mature age, I wondered why I'd ever passed them over before.  Not only are the story and quality of writing superb, they reference only the original films and do not have to play along with anything else in terms of continuity.  I will always consider them to be the true sequel trilogy (Episodes 7, 8, and 9, if you like), because along with the older movies, they are really the only part of the story that actually matters.

As for what I'm indifferent to in the EU . . . well, nearly everything else, I guess.

I'm actually one half of Jetrell Fo, he's one half of me, and Frink is about two thirds of both of us.  We got the idea for this after watching the Steve Martin film 'All of Me' and decided we should get in on that.

So, I think what that means is that we're all part of each other's socks, and it's hard to tell who's actually who anymore.

Or I might have made the whole thing up.  It's hard to say, these days . . .

Even before the first of this three-film disaster was released, I knew that the only way to undo the damage would be to massively re-edit them all down into one film, cutting out everything that isn't actually in the book and restoring a proper pace and momentum to the story.

As it stands, the whole thing is just an exercise in how to pad something out for length far beyond the point where it even makes sense anymore, as well as a blatant money-making grab by the studio.  I consider it a shameful mistreatment of Tolkien's story.

Since there is some good stuff in there, nearly buried under the weight of Jackson's foolishness but nonetheless apparent, pruning it down to the essentials would certainly result in one film's worth of watchable material.  I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who had this idea, and once all the movies have been released I'd love to see a project like this happen.

I do have to admit that Benedict Cumberbatch as the dragon's voice is an inspired choice.  ;)

@ Jetrell Fo: the reason Ric was great is because Frink is funny and you are not.

I think even those who didn't appreciate the humor as much as me would tend to agree that your whining about it is far more annoying than anything you've complained about.

Ric made this forum a more fun place.  Whining and complaints make it much less fun.

That's really all that needs to be said.

Ric was the man, end of story.  His loss was a great personal tragedy to me, and an abstract one to many others.  That this forum (and indeed, the world) is a sadder place without him in it is an observation so obvious, it is worthy to have been made only by him.

That is all.

There is no me . . . there used to be a me, but I had it surgically removed.

Fink and I switched bodies a while back when he was using his old man avatar, which means that I was also Ric by proxy.

It was fun while it lasted . . .  *sniff*

Your mom waits until 20:26 EST to work on the Blurays.

They do negate the sacrifice of the allied soldiers and make their deaths much less meaningful, and if those neo-nazis took over the territory once ruled by nazi germany, the deaths of the allied soldiers would be totally meaningless.

This has to be one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard, and I've lived with people who think Fox News is actually a credible source of information about the world.

Even the pros have a hard time with this stuff, guys . . . it's impossible to fully separate elements that have been mixed together into one track.  Not that there aren't ways of reducing them, depending how the mixing was done, but it ain't easy.  I admit I don't know a whole lot about this stuff myself.

Just yesterday I had the opportunity to hear a Neve stereo processor intended for mastering use, which among other things is able to perform some very sophisticated mid/side processing techniques to affect stereo imaging.  By splitting the signal into central information and wide information and treating those independently, many tricks and alterations are possible when recombining them into left/right.  This thing can definitely reduce the level of the vocals drastically, which impressed me a whole lot, though it isn't a perfect separation by any means.  Also, it isn't possible to distinguish between vocals and centrally located elements of the music (though some judicious use of EQ could help somewhat), so what's left over isn't going to be a complete version of itself.

If you really want to try your hand at this kind of thing, find yourself a good mid/side processor of some kind and learn how to use it; that's my advice.  But be aware that they're really intended to be used to improve existing mixes by clarifying stereo imaging and things of that nature, so don't expect miracles of separation.

Let's get one thing straight right now: there is no such thing as '85 mixes of ESB and RotJ.

I'll say it again: ESB and RotJ were never remixed in 1985.

How do I know this?  Because a while back Darth Mallwalker sent me samples taken from many different pre-1993 laserdiscs, and try as I might I could discern no significant audible differences between them whatsoever.

I did observe the same phenomenon earlier mentioned here, which is that the waveforms sometimes look rather different from each other, but there are explanations for that which have nothing to do with remixing, and everything to do with the properties of analogue audio.  In addition to making new video masters, they seem to have gone back to the source tapes and copied them again every time a new home video release was made, and it is indisputable that no two analogue recordings are ever going to be exactly the same as each other.  The reasons for this are plentiful, including small variations in the speed of the tape machine during playback, imperfections in the physical nature of the tape and how it may shift over time, the fidelity of the electronics inside the recording equipment and how that may change over time, the fact that tape compresses transients and adds harmonic distortion when recorded at higher levels, and other things of that nature.

Additionally, early analogue-to-digital converters were less accurate than what is used today and may have introduced alterations of their own into the sound.  The result of all this is that no two copies will show identical results when looked at in a waveform editor, even though they are obviously still the same mix and the actual audible differences between them are quite subtle.  Going purely on listening to the stereo balance and mix levels, I find no reason at all to think that any kind of remixing of the latter two films was ever performed until 1993.  All versions showed the same overall dynamic range and had been panned inwards in a similar fashion to the '77 stereo mix of SW, which I'm certain was to minimize crosstalk in the surround channel when upmixed.  No version showed the full width stereo spread that the '85 version of SW contains; for ESB and RotJ this kind of imaging can only be found in the '93 mixes.

Speaking of the '93 versions, there is no real reason to avoid them, because unlike the first movie there aren't any sound effects additions.  ESB is missing the snowspeeder crash sound for some reason (I reinserted this for my 5.1 track), and RotJ may have its music mixed slightly lower than the original sometimes (I'll have to check this more thoroughly to be sure about it), but on the whole the huge dynamic increase is certainly worthwhile and they both 'feel' authentic; though unlike SW they were not taken from their respective 70mm versions and aren't quite the same as what those would have been.

edit: duplicate post.

Oh yeah, there was a question about links for the new version: I'll probably post them in a new thread since it's for several tracks together, but I'll link to them here.

Of course it isn't authentic.  But then, neither is the lack of true discrete channels from the actual 70mm version.  This isn't a real 5.1 mix, after all—upmixing of any kind results in crosstalk between channels, because it isn't possible to fully separate a stereo downmix back into its multitrack components.  Prologic II gives a more convincing representation of this than other processors, but it in the end it's still a compromise based on limited source material.

It's true that the original Prologic gives a mono surround channel while its successor adds a greater number, but do not assume from this that it would sound closer to the discrete channel version.  It does not.  Prologic II is capable of panning surround effects between rear channel speakers if the stereo source has been encoded that way, but when playing a track like this, where the surround effects from the original mix are all in mono anyway, they simply get sent equally to both rears.  The stereo content in the back is only whatever duplication from the front that isn't fully separated out, which mostly turns out to be the music.  All content sent to the rear speakers is delayed in arrival time so that any such correlated signals will be perceived as coming from the front, with the rear version simply coming across as ambience.

The fact that there is any music coming from the surrounds at all is inauthentic to the original, because back then these kinds of films were mixed so that the surround channel contained only sound effects, and the music was entirely confined to the front soundstage.  When you listen to the 1997 mix, which mostly comes from the four-track master, you can hear that it is a true discrete version, and this comes across somewhat differently than any upmix from stereo ever could.  It actually sounds a bit strange to me because I'm so used to hearing it this way . . . but in that respect it is unquestionably more like how the real 70mm version would have sounded.  I did briefly consider trying to use it as a source when putting my mix together, but I quickly realized it was virtually unusable (aside from the LFE) because it had been dynamically compressed to a great degree compared to the 1993 mix, which has virtually no limiting whatsoever.  The great number of additional sound effects would have made working with it more trouble than it was really worth, also (and of course there isn't a lossless version of it, either).  So I decided that the compromise of sacrificing discrete channels in favor of vastly extended dynamic range was a worthwhile tradeoff.

In any event, what really matters is that it sounds as good as it possibly can given the source materials available, and if it succeeds in that regard then I'm very pleased.

If there is clipping in the mono track, it certainly wasn't caused by me.  It looks like a very mild limiter was used to prevent it from exceeding digital maximum, but perhaps it didn't fully prevent it on every single sample.  In any case, it's so brief that some software may not even report it as clipping to begin with, and anyone who says they can hear it is probably a liar.

The DTS version in the mkv should read a peak level of -3.2, since that's how much I lowered it to level-match with the other audio tracks.  Proper dithering was used to ensure that no quantization distortion was introduced by the gain change (POW-R with noise shape setting number 1, in case that makes any difference).

I'm glad to hear the isolated score is being enjoyed . . . I'm rather pleased with it myself.  ;)  It isn't lossless here but it probably will be for the eventual Bluray version (dark_jedi already has it this way for Project Blu), though at 320 kbps you'd be hard-pressed to tell it apart from a WAV most of the time.

I'm able to encode TrueHD, but for whatever reason this format isn't commonly used and may cause compatibility problems of its own.

For creating AC3, by far the easiest way to get access to a Dolby-certified AC3 encoder is with the Compressor application from Apple.  You'll get the superior sound quality the official algorithm offers as well as a host of video options, all quite affordably.  I've compared its output to that from Dolby Media Encoder and they are quite indistinguishable at a given bitrate as far as I can tell.

One of the things I like about using Compressor for AC3 is that it can encode straight from Apple Lossless files without having to go to WAV or AIFF first, which is useful for me because I often archive things in Apple Lossless to save hard drive space.  Compressor does, however, have the drawback of defaulting to a DialNorm value of -24, which equates to a 7 dB reduction in volume, so you have to remember to set it back to -31 if you want your levels to remain unaltered.  By contrast, Dolby's own encoder now starts at -31 instead of -27 the way it apparently did in the past. 

Both programs have a setting for -3 dB surround channel attenuation, which is used for lowering the rear channel levels from theatrical to home calibration standard and is necessary for most 5.1 film mixes when transferring to home video.  This is not needed for any mix that I have created, and so should be unchecked—otherwise the rear channels would come out too low.  Similarly, the setting for 90-degree surround channel phase shift should be unchecked for my stuff, since I already accounted for such things when putting the 70mm version together.

I guess I never did actually mention it here, having only talked about it sporadically in other threads, but there is indeed a new version of the 70mm mix out there.  The changes from the previous revision are minimal, with the main improvement coming from having used the Dolby Media Decoder application to upmix the laserdisc audio into five channels with Prologic II, which results in greater channel separation and consequently a more believable sound field.  (The better the acoustics of your room and the more accurate the sound system, the more likely it is that you'll notice the improvement.)  I also changed the level of one bass effect in the LFE channel so that it would blend better with the rest of the mix, but everything else is exactly the same as before.  The other two films will eventually receive the same treatment.

I'll be posting in more detail about this and about optimizing the other audio tracks later on, so watch for that if you're interested.  Links to all the new files I've made will be provided.

I'm definitely still interested in making a documentary of sorts about the various audio tracks; it's simply a matter of finding the time to actually do it.  There's a lot to talk about, and I would certainly try to present as much information as possible (both about the tracks themselves and what was done to optimize them), but without going into so much obscure detail that it would confuse people.

Hmm, I didn't know there would be issues with DTS in mono . . . but yeah, it sounds like it's probably an issue with the equipment being used to play it, not the file itself.

By the way, the DTS is not an encode of the same mono mix file that's been out there for the past few years.  In addition to splicing in the film version of the Fox fanfare to match the other mixes (the existing track took it from the soundtrack CD, but I figured this would be more authentic), it has been reduced in level by 3.2 dB so that the dialogue throughout the movie is at approximately the same level as it is in the 70mm version.  To properly calculate a digital gain change involves expanding the word length to 24 or even 32-bit precision, so I dithered the result in order to maintain quality in rendering a new 16-bit file.  So if you analyzed it in comparison to the original, it certainly wouldn't be bit-identical.

Previously I had tried to make a level-matched mono file, but the software I was using to play it back didn't do mono at the correct volume in relation to stereo, so it ended up being too low.  This time, doing it in Pro Tools, I'm quite certain of its accuracy.  The stereo mix was reduced by 2.9 dB, and the '85 by 5.7 dB (this one was really loud in the source file).  Now the dialogue is pretty much the same in all tracks and the only level differences between them are due to their relative dynamic ranges (made by mixing choices and/or format limitations), and not the average level.  So I think for the first time a truly accurate comparison of all the mixes can now be made.

I'm uploading all my new wavs for everyone, but it isn't finished yet.  I'm also thinking of doing AC3 at a couple different bitrates for possible DVD and AVCHD versions.  In the meantime if anyone is impatient and wants to encode AC3 from the existing mono file, use a DialNorm setting of -28 or it will be too loud relative to everything else.

Don't worry too much about only being able to use the core DTS if that's how it is for your playback system.  The bitrates are high enough that few people would be able to distinguish them with any reliability from the lossless version, and this would require high quality audio equipment set up in an acoustically controlled listening environment (perhaps the most important element, and something many people simply do not have).

Editing to add: I know it's a subject of great passion for us all, and it's easy to get impatient with these things, but seriously guys: it's just a movie.  Chill out and just have fun with it.

Glad I could help out with this.  :)

I believe there was a question about audio bitrates . . . the '85, '93, and isolated score tracks are all stereo AC3 at 320 kbps, while the theatrical mixes use lossless compression and therefore have variable bitrates.  The core DTS tracks contained therein are at 1509, 639, and 384 kbps respectively for the 70mm, stereo, and mono.

My reason for going high on the cores is that legacy DTS compresses audio quite differently than Dolby Digital, having been designed to provide maximum quality within a CD-ROM bandwidth rather than trying to squeeze it down to as small a file size as possible.  It focuses first on compressing without actually removing information, and only then uses perceptual encoding (throwing away parts of the sound that are difficult to hear) in order to get down to the target bitrate.  As such it requires more bits to function effectively, and comparing it to AC3 on numbers alone is meaningless.  With 1509 being virtually transparent for 5.1, I wanted the stereo and mono versions to be comparable, and those are the numbers I arrived at.

Using larger cores does increase the size of the output, but since DTS-HD MA is providing lossless and lossy audio together in one file, that can't be helped if the goal is to obtain maximum quality from both.  I did some brief testing and determined that the file size is actually quite comparable to encoding in Dolby TrueHD and including a high bitrate AC3 track along with it, so in terms of total efficiency for a dual delivery system, both come out approximately equal.

Anyway, I hope everyone will be happy with the soundtracks included in this release, and enjoy being able to switch between them without the volume levels jumping all over the place.  ;)  I'll be making a new thread for all of my stuff where I can discuss them in greater detail if anyone is interested in hearing more about it all.

The rest of the files are uploading now.  My connection isn't going as consistently fast as I'd like, but they're getting there.

Why don't we just do AC3 for the rest?  I figured space would be an issue with the sheer amount of stuff that's going into it, and if the bitrate is high enough the lossy versions will be difficult to distinguish from the source anyway.  Lossless for the three main soundtracks is the most important thing and we've got those covered, and I'll put up wavs for everything in another thread for people who want to have those for themselves.

With the audio tracks at 16 bit (which compresses more efficiently than 24), and the video at 720p rather than 1080, that may not be an issue, but it's always good to keep in mind.  In any event the main soundtracks are the most important for lossless audio, and high bitrate lossy would suffice for the rest if there are any problems.

I have obtained the GOUT-synched '85 mix and created a new file matching its level to the other tracks, so there's now a complete set.  I want to start uploading them all tomorrow if I can.  I guess I'll use DTS-HD MA since Harmy doesn't know what he'll be creating the Bluray with, and it seems to be easier to author with this format.  Hopefully my connection is up to the task . . .

I don't currently have a GOUT-synched copy of the '85 mix, and don't have time to synch the Mallwalker rip that I do have.  I think there's a synched version out there, so perhaps I could get a copy of that and level-match it as I did the other tracks, assuming there's enough disc space to include it here.