hairy_hen

I never bothered to go through the RotS extras, so I haven't actually seen that, though people here have referred to it several times.  Pretty indicative of Burtt's mindset if he has to make his stuff dominate everything else.  The prequels as a whole tend to have the music at somewhat low levels compared to the kind of prominence it enjoyed in the original films.  Not to mention it is often hacked apart and tracked over scenes it wasn't intended for.

This demonstrates exactly why posthumous remixing of film soundtracks is usually a bad idea.  Oftentimes it is done by people who were not involved in the original production, and have no real understanding of what it was intended to sound like, thinking they are improving the film when it is actually becoming worse.  Or it could be someone who was involved, but didn't get their way initially, and takes it upon themselves to 'correct' the 'errors' made the first time around.  The fact that remixes are quite often the only soundtracks available is especially galling.  If all studios had the courtesy to consistently make the originals available alongside the revisions, it wouldn't be so much of a problem.

That is not to say that all remixes are bad; Toy Story, for example, got a revision that was a definite improvement, and some of the James Bond films sound better simply because the music has greater clarity and stronger frequency response, not to mention stereo presentation (though some of the Bond remixes definitely make things worse in other ways).

If by some miracle they actually did release the original versions of the Star Wars films for Bluray, and even more miraculously use the 70mm audio masters, some amount of remixing would have to be done to fit the current format.  The two boom tracks were used for LFE effects, most notably the Star Destroyer flyby, but apparently also to increase headroom by augmenting bass response that would otherwise go to the main channels, a sort of global crossover at 250 hz.  Present day standards use an LFE channel cutoff at 120 hz, with the effects usually being rolled off starting around 80 hz.  Depending how it was done, it may not be feasible to use the boom tracks directly--the folks involved in the 1993 mixes felt that better results were obtained by adding in bass separately from a sound effects master, and this may also apply to any potential 70mm-derived 5.1 version.  So the LFE levels would be up to the mixers' discretion; some amount of increase might not be unwelcome.  There is also the possibility of introducing stereo panning into the rear channels, but generally the fewer changes made, the better it would be.

This is all hypothetical, of course, as the probability of any of it actually happening as we would want is vanishingly small.  I can only imagine what fresh horrors the new mix will bring, along with who knows what sort of rubbishy cgi garbage . . .

Interesting, I'll have to check on that.  I don't think I ever really noticed it before, though I may have been peripherally aware of it at some point, because that seems vaguely familiar.  Reckon a small patch from the theatrical stereo would probably cover that up pretty well, especially if it is very short.

I'd been toying with the idea of revising the LFE channel for RotJ, since the last time I listened to it there were a few parts that seemed a little excessive.  Guess this would provide another reason to give it a second look.

A 'labour of love' is meaningless if it's made by a tone-deaf buffoon.  :p

At least now I have a name at which to direct my wrath.  He's probably exactly like those idiots in the music industry who 'remaster' old recordings by applying excessive noise reduction and adding all kinds of crap processing to distort the sound beyond recognition.  Cuz that's pretty much what the 2004 mix sounds like . . . and since the new one is being done by the same guy, it will probably be similarly awful.

And that blurb is wrong anyway--while ANH was remixed from scratch for the dvd, ESB and RotJ have only specific changes to sound effects and dialogue here and there.  The remainder of those mixes sound exactly the same as they did in 1997, which is why they fare so much better for the most part.

Since that edit was from a long time ago I don't remember exactly, but I think the sound you're hearing is a repetition of their footsteps as they begin to run.

If I recall correctly, it was the only way it could be arranged so that there was no obvious shift in the rhythm of the background noise, which had a kind of regular pulsing sound.  It would have been easier with discrete channels, since it could presumably be cut from the centre channel only without affecting the rest of the mix, but we are limited to stereo.  Although even some 5.1 mixes have a bit of dialogue overlap into the left and right channels, so who knows.

Mallwalker posted in d_j's thread about some errors in the first copy of the '93 pcm that Belbucus later corrected.  I've never heard any of those, so I don't know whether it is worth making another version to fix them or not.  The picture looks like a very small pop or click in the left channel over the course of 6 samples, or 1/8 of a millisecond.  I suppose if I did end up correcting them, I'd put the spit sound back in, since it 'should' be there for authenticity's sake, even if it is a mistake.  I have definitely heard at least one glitch in the '93 mix that occurs during the main title (the beginning of the second phrase of music, corresponding to the second paragraph of text in the pre-ANH crawl), which is also a clicking sound in the left channel.  But since this is also heard in the GOUT, it appears to have always been this way.  Whether the 70mm printmaster itself was a bit damaged or if it was simply an error in the transfer, I don't know.

There are also two such clicks in ESB--one as the probe droid emerges after landing on Hoth, the other as the Falcon detaches from the Avenger.  Both appear in the GOUT as well; no idea what caused them.

I actually have yet to watch the film with the 70mm recreation, so in my mind it doesn't quite have accompanying imagery yet.  I have only heard it played on my computer via optical cable to the receiver.  I plan to watch all three films in 5.1 once the dark_jedi encodes are available, which will be the first time I have seen any of them in several months.  It's been long enough now that I'm quite looking forward to it (I had to take a break from anything related to Star Wars for a while because I was getting overloaded by it, lol).

 "Here they come”!

The door hissing sound! Now does this version have no hissing sound as the stormtroopers lift the door up manually. On the PAL laserdisc the door doesn’t make any hissing sound because the controls have been blastered on the opposite side.

I've never owned a laserdisc player, least of all in PAL format, but the hissing sound of the rising door can clearly be heard in the 70mm in-theatre recording, and consequently in the 1993 mix, as well as this recreation.  I also checked the 35mm stereo and mono mixes and the 1985 home video version and all contain this sound effect, so I'm not sure what this is referring to.

Sorry to say it is on the "Faces" and "DC" LD sets, I just checked.

Blast.  Ah well, for the 5.1 I'll just paste in a tiny section of the gout to cover it up, should be pretty unnoticeable.

It's interesting how the laserdisc versions have that jump cut in the music but the gout and the Faces vhs tape do not.  I guess somebody in LFL's home video department noticed and corrected it, but only for vhs; the gout version must have used the vhs audio master since it was more recent.  This conveniently explains why the ESB gout mix is dynamically compressed compared to the laserdisc, since vhs has a range of something like 80 db compared to 96 db for 16-bit pcm.

I did hear a high-pitch sound after "Shields up" but thought it sounded like Ben Burtt sound effect.

That's the noise I'm talking about, but it's definitely not a sound effect, it's a glitch of some kind.  At first I thought it was caused by my computer crapping out while copying the file, but since dark_jedi's copy was also that way, it must have been introduced elsewhere; maybe an upload error or who knows what.  The replacement d_j sent me from his Faces laserdisc doesn't have this high-pitched sound, neither does the GOUT or my vhs, nor the 1980 mix or any of the SE's, so I can say for sure it's not an effect of any kind.  But I would have pegged it as a glitch just based on the timbre of it alone.

So, we have two glitches in the 1993 mix; one an error in mixing, later corrected by LFL for some later releases (similar to the 'incredible shrinking aspect ratio' but less noticeable), and the other inadvertently introduced in the fan preservation.  Both will be corrected in my 5.1 version, which is very nearly complete; all that's left is to add the fixes, verify that I've set the LFE levels properly, and send it off to be upmixed.

It is very interesting that the Death Star actually did have blue walls, unlike pretty much every home release before the SE.  I always hated the blueness of the 2004 dvd, but it looks like I have to clarify that dislike into the particular shade in which it was rendered, not the presence of the colour itself.  They definitely overdid it to the extreme for dvd, though, evidenced by Vader's armour frequently appearing blue-cast as well, and of course the crushed blacks and pink saber and laser blasts certainly don't help.

It's strange how even within the print the colour varies as much as it does.  Some shots are nearly grey while others are very blue indeed.  Regardless, I can't help but marvel at the lovely contrast and detail; I've never seen it look that good anywhere.  Even though the GOUT colour can't be made to look like that, it would be cool if someone were to take a shot at getting it to a closer resemblance.

There is also another error in the '93 PCM for Empire.  It comes right at the beginning of the carbon freeze scene--there is a weird jump cut in the music just before C-3PO says, "If only you'd attached my legs, I wouldn't be in this ridiculous position."  The music cue starts and then it seems to start again less than half a second later.  It is distracting and weird once noticed.

Neither the GOUT nor my Faces vhs tape have this error--it must have been spotted and fixed by someone at LFL in '95 (which lends credence to my theory that the GOUT Empire's audio came from a vhs master, hence its dynamic compression).  I don't know whether the Faces laserdisc also has this fix or if it is carried over from the DC, but it's worth checking.

The 2004 mixes of Empire and Jedi sound pretty good most of the time.  They are identical to the 1997 versions aside from specific changes such as Boba Fett's voice and some added sounds.  The main problem with them is that the surround effects are consistently too loud compared to the rest of the mix.  I don't know for sure, but I suspect that this may be have to do with the fact that films are mixed with the surrounds calibrated at -3db relative to the mains, since theatres use an array of rear speakers, while home video versions have all channels calibrated to the same level, requiring adjustment of the source to sound the way they should.  It's possible that they may have forgotten to turn down the rear channels, which might account for the distractingly loud surround effects.

However, it is also possible that there was no technical error, and that the overly loud surrounds are simply an intentional part of the mix.  If so, it would show a disturbing lack of good creative sense; but since the SE's as a whole are an exercise in poor taste and bad judgement, that might not be that much of a surprise.

By contrast, listening to the 1993 mixes through Prologic II yields rear channel effects that come out at just the right level.

I'm very interested . . . anything that improves the already-great sound quality of this fantastic score restoration has my approval.  ;)

Hey I forgot to mention it before, but does this play at NTSC speed?  The reason I bring it up is that the 70mm sound was made for that, so if there is PAL speedup it wouldn't synch properly.

You've probably already thought of that, but I just thought I'd make sure.  ;)

Ah sorry.  It would have been done a while ago, but I needed a bit of a break from Star Wars, lol.  There's just a little bit of tweaking left for me to do (minor adjustments to the LFE channel) and it'll be finished.

Interesting.  I've seen RMS measurement suggested elsewhere as an indication for setting Dialnorm, but I don't really know that much about the specifics.  Commercial dvd's are all over the place with this sort of thing too--I think a lot of them just reduce everything by 4 db without measuring, which is especially irritating if the material is already encoded at a lower level to begin with.  The GOUT audio has certainly been subjected to this, which is the main reason it seems anemic compared to the laserdiscs.  Dialnorm can be a useful device, which Dolby had good intentions in producing, but unfortunately it is too often misunderstood and misused in the real world.  An example their documentation provides is reducing the volume of commercials so they don't sound blaringly loud compared to programs with lower averages, but I don't think it has ever actually been used for this purpose!

When combining segments of the '77 stereo mix with the '93, adjustment was required nearly every time to get them to blend.  I used Belbucus' level-matched version, which plays at a similar volume to the '93, but even that was not identical because of the differences in dynamic range.  Most of the time reducing the '77 mix by 1 db provided the best results, but sometimes even if the dialogue came into alignment the background sounds wouldn't be the same.  Louder sections were raised anywhere from 2 to 4 db to try to compensate for the dynamic shortcomings, but while the results are certainly listenable, the more powerful original can obviously not be recreated.  Strangely, one especially quiet moment had to be raised 6 db in order to fit.  This was done from looking at the waveforms, with further fine-tuning by ear as needed.

You'll never get an exact level match between the various mixes.  Dialnorm can certainly help to even them out, but it's only an approximation.  Still, as long as the averages are in the same general area, that's what matters.

I do think the 70mm mix probably had more dynamic range than its '93 downmix, owing to having multiple discrete channels, and evidenced by the occasional brief clipping of the '93.  16-bit pcm has a pretty good range, but sometimes it does fall a bit short of what is needed to convey sound without compromise.  Present day 5.1 tracks have dynamic potential more akin to a 20 bit range, I believe.

No other differences, aside from the narrower imaging and flattened dynamics associated with the 35mm replacements.  It's also possible that some instances of LFE bass may not have been in the original, or were mixed in a different way, though it's impossible to say for sure, of course.  In any case they sound like they could have been there, or should have.

Actually, I wonder if it would have been better to use the '85 mix for the replacements instead of the '77.  It sounds like it is an exact transfer of the 35mm version (with C-3PO's extra line dubbed on top of it), but it is reported to have wider stereo imaging than the original.  I haven't actually heard it in a while (never bothered to obtain a pcm copy because I didn't think I needed it before).  Seems likely the wider image would have been obtained through some kind of post-processing, so it's probably not an exact match to the '93, but it might have been closer and made it a bit more seamless.  Oh well.

The imaging discrepancy with the 35mm segments is more noticeable in upmixing than in 2-channel, because sometimes you can clearly discern that more information is coming from the center and less from the sides and surrounds.  I suppose if your speakers are all perfectly voice-matched (which they really should be) it would stand out less.  Still, it's only really apparent for a few of the edits, and it's a small problem in the scheme of things.  Your mileage may vary, of course, but I tend to find it less objectionable than some of the extra junk foisted on the '93 mix.

lol, I guess that makes sense about the hair.

Were you able to get a new receiver yet?  I hope you'll be pleased with the 5.1 mix.  ;)

The spitting sound was something I edited out on a whim last year for a previous soundtrack attempt, and the edit seems to have found its way into this version also.  I'm surprised you noticed!

The spitting was obviously a mistake--they must not have noticed that it was a part of the dialogue track until after the mix was complete.  They had Mark Hamill redub that line for the mono version, and this error is not heard in that mix.  Why it was never removed from the SE mixes I don't know--guess they forgot and didn't notice again.  It had sort of bugged me after Darth Editous pointed it out a few years ago, so I deleted it by looping a section of background noise.  Not having it in the film is no great loss; I'm certainly not going to produce a new version just to put it back in, lol.  But yeah, I guess the oversight does make it slightly inauthentic for that brief moment, alas.

I've done some comparing of Dolby Prologic II and DTS Neo:6 as output by my receiver, and for the most part I'm hard pressed to hear any significant difference between them when not listening ultra-critically.  The DTS version does have a greater degree of channel separation, though it comes at the expense of the sound field being slightly less 'stable'.  But they both provide pleasing results with matrix-encoded Dolby Surround tracks, and it wouldn't be easy to tell which was being used in a blind test.  For non-matrixed stereo, the results vary by the nature of the source material.

RMS stands for "root mean square".  Rather than a simple average, it involves finding the average of the squares of the values being measured, then taking the square root of this value.  I believe Dolby recommends using this method for Dialnorm because it more accurately reflects the characteristics of human hearing.

I used a program called Wave Editor to find the RMS values when comparing the '93 mix to the mono, though this is only available for Mac.  But no doubt there are pc programs that can perform this function as well.

However, it probably isn't necessary to actually go to the trouble of measuring them.  Using a Dialnorm setting of -27 for the mono mix and the '85 will give a 4 decibel reduction which should bring them closer to the level of the existing stereo and 70mm mixes dark_jedi already has.  It won't be exact, but they will be less obviously loud when switching audio tracks on the disc, which is the goal of using Dialnorm in this case.  As long as they're pretty close, it shouldn't be a problem.

The Dialogue Normalisation option of AC3 encoding can be used to reduce the playback volume.  The ideal way to determine how much reduction is needed would be to measure the RMS level of the audio files.  For example, a while back I compared the '93 PCM to the mono mix, and found the '93 (and consequently also the 70mm) to have an RMS value of -25.1 db, while the mono measured at -20.5 db.  This means that the mono file will sound 4.6 db louder with the receiver set at the same volume level.  Using the Dialnorm function to reduce the mono version by 4 db or so will compensate for the discrepancy, making them sound closer during quiet sections.  This will also cause the superior dynamics of the 70mm to be much more apparent.

The setting for no reduction is -31, so a 4 db reduction would be obtained by choosing a Dialnorm of -27.  I imagine a similar setting would probably work for the '85 version also.  Make sure, however, that dynamic range compression is not used for any of the encodes.

The Dialnorm function is something that can cause confusion among casual listeners, because the inclination of the ear is often to associate "louder" with being "better".  The AC3 audio on the GOUT is lowered by 4 db compared to the laserdisc PCM, and it is easy to mistake this difference for a reduction in dynamic range.

In the course of comparing the ESB '93 and '97 mixes to determine how best to edit them together, I came to an interesting realisation--some of the edits actually work better in the film than I had previously thought.  I'm thinking in particular of the transitions from Dagobah to the Imperial fleet after the cave scene and the X-wing rise; if you listen to the music on its own, the edits would sound bad, but in the film they work well.  The Imperial march theme is already bordering on overuse in the film as it is, and by adding two more bombastic statements it becomes too much, especially since there isn't anything happening onscreen to merit such loud music at those moments.  The more subdued segments that were spliced in call less attention to themselves.

So . . . what that means is that I've changed my mind about using the SE mix to replace those two parts of the soundtrack.  I will still be replacing Boba Fett's departure from Bespin, though, because the editing in that part is really choppy and I don't like hearing it.  It will be arranged in such a way that the only apparent change is the unedited music as heard in the SE, but with none of the dialogue differences (ie no extra Chewie vocalisations when Lando is being strangled, and no extra yells from Luke when he is pwned by Vader in the following scene).

Fans of the original stereo mix will be pleased to know that the 5.1 will also contain the snowspeeder crash sound as heard in the 35mm version.

Ugh.  I can only imagine what other craptastic changes will be forced onto the film sound this time.  Though from one perspective, it could be good that they are remixing, because the 2004 version sounds like such garbage that almost anything not completely screwed up would be a considerable improvement.  But it's hard to imagine that anything resembling good taste will be exercised, considering their degenerating track record with such things.

Whatever it sounds like, though, it almost certainly will not resemble the 70mm mix in any way, alas.  I would dearly hope that if they ever did see fit to restore and release the original version of the film, the 70mm would be the primary source for the audio, since it sounded so damn good to start with.  But who's going to hold their breath on any of that happening?

He did create a whole scenario for the clone wars, but wasn't allowed to describe it in any great detail.  Keeping it mysterious works for the purposes of the story, though, and is justified by references to many historical records having been lost, either to the rampant destruction or in an attempt by the Empire to rewrite history to reflect their own perspective.

But yeah, I really would like to know exactly what it was that he came up with.  Interestingly, his first outlines had the character that would become Joruus C'baoth originally being an insane clone of Obi-wan!  That could have been a really weird and twisted story thread, but he wasn't allowed to do that either, and of course it works very well in its final form.

Yeah, I have to agree, as mediocre as some of the 90's era stuff was, it was still only based on the original trilogy, and the writers didn't have to deal with feeling like they had to tie it all into the prequel garbage, or retcon the hell out of the existing stories when the continuity started to go to hell.  Not to mention the filth of the New Jedi Order and later things had yet to happen, so the name of Star Wars EU hadn't yet been sullied to anywhere near the degree that it has now.

Even Timothy Zahn, whose work I adore, hasn't been immune to this problem.  It's very bizarre to hear Luke and Mara suddenly talking about separatists and droidekas when previously they had known virtually nothing about the clone wars era aside from the fact that the clones had been the enemy of the Old Republic.  Frankly, I like that idea a lot more than anything the prequels presented, and in my mind Zahn's original ideas are how it 'really' happened back then.  Also, Vision of the Future was such an awesome grand finale that it should have been the conclusion of the entire Star Wars story (and can still be regarded as such).

It just blows so much that the official publications have to be made to fit with each other, when that is becoming ever more of a joke and impossibility.  I don't even think rebooting the EU would be any good, because then it would just have to start from scratch based only on the officially recognised material, which is the SE's and prequels, and wouldn't be true to the original conception of what Star Wars was all about in any way.  Selective nihilism is the only way to go if you want to retain any enjoyment of the things that actually are good.

If some folks wanted to, say, write their own unofficial stories that only made use of the good stuff and discarded the rest, that would be brilliant; but then of course you run into the problem that 'fan fiction' has a bad name with a lot of people, due to most of it being written by illiterate thirteen year olds.  Although it's an amusingly disturbing truth that the better fan-created works often surpass published material in quality . . .

You'd have to ask Satanika if you want a precise answer about the exact nature of the upmix, since he was the one who actually did that.  In the past I tried numerous upmixing schemes, all of which refused to work properly on my computer.  (I love my Mac, but when software you want is only available for Windows it can be a bit problematic, I have to admit.)  I believe he used a Foobar2000 plugin called ATSurround; while not actually a Dolby product, the sonic results are very similar to what can be heard with Prologic II.  Actually, ATSurround almost worked for me; it installed and ran perfectly, but while my sound card is capable of multichannel audio, my limited WINE setup will only output 2-channel sound, so I could only record the front left and right channels, and the sound card wasn't receiving the others at all.  Because of that, I needed some help getting the thing into 5.1 format, so Satanika very kindly performed that part, and then substituted the LFE channel to replace the one generated by the program.

Since the 5.1 already has built in a rendition of the sound very close to what will be heard from upmixing at the receiver, with the significant added benefit of the LFE channel, I recommend that version be used if the proper playback equipment is available.  The stereo version will give better results if surround speakers and/or a subwoofer are not present in the system, since it contains no phase changes or time delays.  Such things could compromise the sound of the 5.1 if it were to be downmixed (though I suppose it's down to the individual listener how much a problem that would be).

I ran into a setback on the music edits for Empire, which is that the '93 and '97 mixes don't blend together as well as I thought they would.  It took me a while to notice, because on the surface they sound pretty similar a lot of the time, but the levels of background sounds are actually not the same at all, and this disparity made the transitions between sources very audible and jarring.  Clearly I picked the wrong switching points, so I have to go back and redo them.  Hearing the two versions back to back so many times I'm starting to get confused about which really sounds better for the film, and then questioning whether I should even be doing this at all.  Ugh.  Had to take some time away from it to clear my head.  Oh well, that means more time to work on my writing, lol.  I'll try to have it finished as soon as possible.  I know I keep saying that, sorry!  :)

There actually is a 5.1 version of Empire already that does not contain the music edits--it can be found on dark_jedi's earlier encodes.  Aside from the edits, most of the new one will sound exactly the same.  There isn't one like that for Jedi--it wouldn't be hard to make one, but since it's not actually me that does the upmixes, I can't provide it directly.

The departure of Boba Fett from Cloud City is the most important of the music edits that I'm using from the SE; the others are transitional elements from Dagobah to the Imperial fleet, the first after the cave scene and the second after the X-wing is raised from the swamp.  Both are unique statements of the Imperial march, rather than crudely splicing in bits of the concert version.  There are a couple other small musical editing differences also, but I'm not changing them since they aren't nearly as noticeable as these.

ChainsawAsh is exactly correct in his description.  Putting in the RotJ music isn't a theatrical restoration of any kind, though it does restore a part of how John Williams envisioned the film when he scored it.  I think it was a mistake for them to cut the cue for the Obi-wan/Luke conversation--I have always felt the scene was missing something ever since I first saw it.  It's the kind of scene that needs the additional emotional weight a well-written musical cue can provide (and hey, Obi-wan's ESB scenes all had music, and they were no emotional slouches).  There's a slippery slope involved in changing a film to one's personal preferences--preservation is definitely the worthier goal--but I guess since RotJ is the most flawed film of the three, I feel the least guilty about tampering with it.  ABC's remastered version was used as the source, converted to 48 khz with the high quality iZotope resampler.

Fixing a few botched music edits in ESB is also something I don't feel guilty about, because it makes the transitions smoother, especially if you're familiar with the music on its own.  RotJ has its share of bad music editing as well, especially in Jabba's palace--like ESB, some of these edits weren't necessary for timing purposes, and are thus nearly inexplicable.  I'd change them if I could, but it would be difficult to get a seamless result.

Anyway, what I've done is only a very minor series of alterations; and because they are not part of an original theatrical release, they will be presented in 5.1 format only, since those are fan-created hybrids anyway.  If I could, I would make exact 70mm recreations of those films to go along with Star Wars; but I'm quite hesitant to do so without having real recordings of them to use for reference.  Regardless, for the most part my versions still sound very similar to what they would have been like in terms of dynamic range, sound quality, bass response, and overall balance.