hairy_hen

Cool!  Glad to hear it's all working out.  Are you using a multichannel analog connection?

I seem to recall reading about that version a few years ago, but I haven't seen him around these boards in a while.  I'm pretty sure that the 'fixed' 5.1 audio he mentioned wasn't actually the dvd mix at all, as Neil always maintained (and I agree) that the 2004 audio for ANH was beyond salvage.  His version used the dvd video combined with the 5.1 audio from 1997 laserdiscs, if I remember rightly.

The 97 mix sounds so much better than the 04 it's not even funny.  No idea why they changed it so much.  I've never owned a laserdisc player; the only 97 version I have is stereo vhs, but I'd love to have the 5.1 version.  Hardly anyone actually seems to have it, though.

Hmm, that's unfortunate.  My receiver works fine with Neo 6 on the AC3 tracks, upmixing to surround and keeping the LFE intact, but I guess it depends a lot on the equipment you have.

They do sound great in stereo mode, but if you have newsgroup access, Satanika made 5.1 versions using the LFE tracks and the Prologic 2 process.  I can't get on newsgroups anymore, so I don't have them myself, but I'm sure they sound excellent.

I don't have a full 5.1 setup, only 2.1 right now, so I can't completely describe the differences between the upmixing algorithms, but from what I can hear with just two speakers, Neo 6 has greater channel separation--the rear channel effects come almost entirely from the back, and the center information is removed from the left and right front channels to a greater extent.  With Prologic 2 there seems to be a bit more overlap between them.  Putting the speakers into the rear outputs, it seems like Neo 6 also removes the dialogue from the rears more as well.  It's tough to find detailed comparisons of the two, but that's what I've been able to find out.  I've heard some of Star Wars in Prologic 2 on a full 5.1 setup once, and it sounded good to me--I imagine both versions deliver good results, just a bit different.  Getting the 5.1 version may be the best thing to do for surround purposes.

Is the 1.017s delay added to these files or do I have to do it myself?

All the files I posted have the correct amount of delay added already.  1.017s for Star Wars, 0.948s for Empire, and 1.015s for Jedi.  All set to combine and synch correctly with the GOUT.  :)

I'll help bump this thread!  I haven't put these on cd yet but playing them on the the computer over optical to my stereo (Polk towers, not true hifi but pretty good, and excellent AV123 subwoofer), I am in love with the sound quality.  Definitely a big step up from what is on the official versions, particularly noticeable on Jedi.

When making my custom OT dvd's, I inserted the deleted music from Luke and Ben's conversation on Dagobah in Jedi back into the movie soundtrack, and used the ABC set as my source.  Used the Izotope algorithm to resample to 48 khz, and it sounds completely awesome.  Thanks ABC for doing such a great job on these!

Seconding confusion about what exactly is being referred to . . . I did no filtering or boosting of low frequencies from the 2.0 soundtracks of any kind.  Those I left strictly alone, except for minor alterations such as getting rid of the breaking glass in SW, etc.  The '93 tracks have some cool bass in places, and I left them just as they were in the main channels where they belong.  My LFE is derived from the special edition dvd 5.1 tracks and synchronised to the GOUT, and thus are true low frequency effects.  I haven't done a frequency analysis but a lot of the content is definitely quite low, 30-40 hz range.  By contrast what appears in the '93 mixes is largely mid/upper bass, more like 60-120 hz.

Just how much of the special edition LFE can be said to be original and how much was created anew, I'm not sure.  Nearly all of it blends in very well with the main channels--it seems likely that at least some of it would have been in the 70mm soundtracks, beyond what already appears in the '93 mixes.  The most obvious new effects were the ones that accompanied changed CGI shots--those I had to tone down significantly to get them to blend--and a few others had to be reduced as well, but less drastically.  A couple times I actually boosted the volume, but those were less common.

Given how well the LFE integrates overall, I'm pretty sure that in many cases they simply took the original sound elements, pitch-shifted them downwards an octave or two, then amplified the hell out of them.  I like to think that my results achieve a "70mm-ish" feel for the three movies, but I don't claim that this exactly represents those versions.  It just sounds really cool.  :)

That's what I thought, but I wanted to make sure before just saying it outright.

dark_jedi:  earlier I had posted the AC3 files that I've been using, which are 448k versions with special edition lfe added in.  The 2.1 channel format I used is unusual and apparently doesn't play nicely with some setups, plus some folks wanted to use these in PAL-land, so I posted the source pcms so that anyone who wanted to could make their own version.  Having the original stereo source and putting it through a Prologic 2 or similar upmixing algorithm, and then adding the bass, to get a 5.1 channel format, will work better for those who don't have a receiver that will properly upmix a 2.1 track and keep the bass intact, or whatever other issues there might be.  I tried to create a 5.1 version myself but have been having trouble getting such schemes to work on my computer.  Hence the pcm.  ;)

LOL  ;)

I posted these in my thread, but I thought I'd put them here too, in case anyone was interested.  These are the '93 laserdisc tracks, but with a few minor alterations.  In Star Wars, the cell bay shootout has been replaced with the equivalent section from the '77 stereo mix, to remove those annoying smashing glass sounds, and part of the 'deceleration' sound from the mono mix has been added as a rear-channel effect when the Falcon emerges from hyperspace.  In Jedi, the deleted music from Luke and Ben's conversation on Dagobah has been re-inserted.  No changes to Empire.  Multiple RARs due to file size, which will combine into FLACs.

Star Wars:

part 1: http://www.sendspace.com/file/itfina

part 2: http://www.sendspace.com/file/gnbf1j

part 3: http://www.sendspace.com/file/9jtnuo

part 4: http://www.sendspace.com/file/ya3hxb

part 5: http://www.sendspace.com/file/rvfgb8

part 6: http://www.sendspace.com/file/31hskl

Empire:

part 1: http://www.sendspace.com/file/7r82og

part 2: http://www.sendspace.com/file/8wfiyr

part 3: http://www.sendspace.com/file/pt4l44

part 4: http://www.sendspace.com/file/n2kgq4

part 5: http://www.sendspace.com/file/rxjzqe

part 6: http://www.sendspace.com/file/x78fin

part 7: http://www.sendspace.com/file/g6c5bk

Jedi:

part 1: http://www.sendspace.com/file/tiv49t

part 2: http://www.sendspace.com/file/8r4atz

part 3: http://www.sendspace.com/file/bprgwj

part 4: http://www.sendspace.com/file/qt356m

part 5: http://www.sendspace.com/file/akul85

part 6: http://www.sendspace.com/file/dw0ab0

part 7: http://www.sendspace.com/file/khatw9

As promised, here are the PCM tracks for the 3 movies.  NTSC speed, the proper amount of silence at the beginning to synchronise with the GOUT, hifi, ideal as a source for upmixing and conversion to PAL speed.  They have the same edits I mentioned earlier for the AC3 files--ie, no breaking glass sounds, Ben's music in Jedi, etc.  They are broken into several RARs because of the large file size; unrar-ing will result in FLAC files.

Star Wars:

part 1: http://www.sendspace.com/file/itfina

part 2: http://www.sendspace.com/file/gnbf1j

part 3: http://www.sendspace.com/file/9jtnuo

part 4: http://www.sendspace.com/file/ya3hxb

part 5: http://www.sendspace.com/file/rvfgb8

part 6: http://www.sendspace.com/file/31hskl

Empire:

part 1: http://www.sendspace.com/file/7r82og

part 2: http://www.sendspace.com/file/8wfiyr

part 3: http://www.sendspace.com/file/pt4l44

part 4: http://www.sendspace.com/file/n2kgq4

part 5: http://www.sendspace.com/file/rxjzqe

part 6: http://www.sendspace.com/file/x78fin

part 7: http://www.sendspace.com/file/g6c5bk

Jedi:

part 1: http://www.sendspace.com/file/tiv49t

part 2: http://www.sendspace.com/file/8r4atz

part 3: http://www.sendspace.com/file/bprgwj

part 4: http://www.sendspace.com/file/qt356m

part 5: http://www.sendspace.com/file/akul85

part 6: http://www.sendspace.com/file/dw0ab0

part 7: http://www.sendspace.com/file/khatw9

And to go along with these, the link for the LFE-only FLACs again: http://www.sendspace.com/file/70v75n

I'm not sure, when altering the speed for PAL playback, if it's better to do it analogue-style and let the pitch shift upwards, or keep it the same.  Probably depends a lot on the quality of what you use to change the speed.  Maybe someone more knowledgeable could chime in about that, along with what the best conversion tool to use would be.

I'll get set on uploading my PCM tracks as soon as I can.  That way anyone who wants to will be able to upmix them and/or convert to PAL speed as they see fit.  Just combine with the LFE-only flacs I posted earlier and you'll be all set.  :)

Satanika - I did as you suggested and patched over that section of Empire with the GOUT mix.  It's only for a couple seconds when the Falcon is making its "attack" run on the Avenger, and even knowing where the transition is I can't hear it, so I think nearly everyone should find it quite unnoticeable.  I still don't know what exactly caused that glitch, but I suspect my computer crapped out for a second when it was converting to Apple Lossless, and unfortunately I foolishly deleted the rars for the wav file before realising there was a problem.  All the GOUT mixes are dialnorm'd about 4 decibels down compared to the laserdiscs, but for some reason Empire also has dynamic range compression while the others don't.  But I got it to a point where it shouldn't be a problem at all.

Jonno - that review is correct that these mixes are ProLogic encoded.  My concern about getting these into a workable surround format is mainly for the benefit of others who have such a setup (myself when I can afford to get a centre and rear speakers added; right now 2.1 is my system configuration).  A while ago I took my gout dvd for Star Wars into Ultimate Electronics and played some of it on a 5.1 system with ProLogic 2 enabled.  My impression was that a lot of the time it sounded pretty similar to stereo playback, but it just filled the room more, greater ambience, etc.  Hard to describe it specifically, because it's not going to sound like the best discrete 5.1, of course.  The rears made themselves known whenever there were surround cues built into the soundtrack.  I couldn't actually say how DTS mode compares--shouldn't be all that different but I think it separates the channels a bit more.

It might actually be easier for me to do the PAL speedup myself and upload new AC3 files--wouldn't take as long to upload.  But then, if you had the PCM files to work with, you could put them through an upmixing algorithm like the one Satanika posted above to get five channels and then combine with the LFE to get 5.1 format, since some receivers might not like 2.1 files.  I might have done that myself, but none of the processes I've tried have worked on my computer, although I'm sure they would work on other people's computers.  I experimented a bit with doing it manually, ie combining them at various volumes and using phase cancellation to derive each channel.  I think it sounded reasonably good, but the channel separation wasn't that high, certainly not when compared to what Prologic 2 or Neo:6 can accomplish, so I ultimately concluded it wasn't worth continuing, at least not for my setup.

Crud, I hadn't thought of that . . . these are NTSC speed.  I suppose you could decode these into their separate channels and speed them up, then re-encode to AC3 again, but that would be more of a quality loss . . . or I could apply the shift to PAL speed myself, going from the original PCM files directly, so there will only be one lossy encoding stage.

Edit: Adywan posted before me--I didn't realise you could do that with BeSweet.  Does that involve re-encoding, or is it a lossless process?  If so, that would be the easiest and best way to go.

Realising that not everyone has the main channels from the 1993 laserdiscs to combine with the LFE tracks I posted above, I decided to upload my AC3 files for each film to make this more accessible for those who might be interested in it.  They are all in 2.1 format, encoded in Aften at 448 kbps using all the maximum quality settings, split into several RARs.  See above comments about using DTS mode to achieve surround sound if desired.

Star Wars:

part 1: http://www.sendspace.com/file/s8ngzo

part 2: http://www.sendspace.com/file/nc68mk

part 3: http://www.sendspace.com/file/xdz3x5

part 4: http://www.sendspace.com/file/rqfjek

Empire:

part 1: http://www.sendspace.com/file/0shomm

part 2: http://www.sendspace.com/file/ij36cx

part 3: http://www.sendspace.com/file/1u5q1b

part 4: http://www.sendspace.com/file/1l6eci

part 5: http://www.sendspace.com/file/hyc1gf

Jedi:

part 1: http://www.sendspace.com/file/dpyd29

part 2: http://www.sendspace.com/file/zmd91f

part 3: http://www.sendspace.com/file/7bhtmc

part 4: http://www.sendspace.com/file/8ydrdd

part 5: http://www.sendspace.com/file/pkya6l

For the most part these are straight from Belbecus' GOUT-synched 1993 laserdisc mixes.  Aside from the obvious addition of low frequency effects, there are a few other changes I made.  In Star Wars I replaced the cell bay shootout with the equivalent section from the 1977 stereo mix, to get rid of the breaking glass sounds, and made a small and (hopefully) unnoticeable edit to remove the sound of spitting after Luke says, "What good will it do us if he gets himself killed?  Come on."  When the Falcon emerges from hyperspace I also put in a few seconds of the winding/deceleration effect that appears in the mono soundtrack, derived via low-pass filter, mixed out of phase so it will appear in the rear channels.  Since that effect occurs with considerable force in the LFE a few seconds later, it made sense to include it, not to mention it plain sounds cool.  :-)

In Jedi, I put back the deleted music from Luke and Ben's conversation on Dagobah--ever since I first heard it I felt the scene would play better that way.  As it is, they're just sitting there and Ben speaks with his distant echoing voice and the revelation about Leia being Luke's sister sort of falls flat; the music gives it back some dramatic weight--which is not a slight on Alec Guinness.  I really don't know why they decided to cut the music in the first place, but I think they made a mistake.  My source was ABC's remastered soundtrack (props to him for his excellent work!), resampled to 48 khz via the high quality Izotope resampling algorithm.  I considered putting some deleted music in Empire as well, but that would be opening a much larger can of worms than I was prepared to deal with at present.

Hopefully my results will be enjoyable to those interested in this project!  I feel that using the soundtracks I have uploaded (plus the original stereo and mono mixes for Star Wars), combined with the GOUT video processed by G-Force's AviSynth script, will yield an excellent home theatre experience for the entire original trilogy.

Well, after a while of not doing anything with this, I've completed work on GOUT-synched LFE tracks for the entire original trilogy.  When combined with the 1993 soundtracks these make for an awesome movie experience.  The sound becomes more powerful and thrilling while retaining the authenticity and rightness associated with the laserdisc mixes.

I put flac files of each track together into one rar file, which can be found here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/70v75n

I also created a demo AC3 file containing some of the bass highlights.  If you're interested in the bass but aren't sure whether you want to see the movies this way or not, this should give you an idea what it'll sound like.  It includes the opening Star Destroyer flyby, the destruction of Alderaan, the Falcon's emergence from lightspeed, and the destruction of the Death Star from Star Wars; the probe droid launch and the beginning of the battle of Hoth from Empre; and the destruction of the sail barge in Jedi.  Can be downloaded here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/7rt40m

This demo is in 2.1 format; that is to say, the sound will natively play from the left and right speakers and subwoofer only.  Turning on Prologic 2, on my receiver at least, drops the extra bass because it sees it only as a stereo signal.  DTS Neo:6 mode keeps the LFE in place.  Some people prefer the DTS mode for surround, some like Dolby's version better, it's a matter of preference and results probably vary based on the source material.  More advanced implementations such as Prologic 2x might not ignore the LFE, although I can't say for sure.  One could always upmix the soundtracks into five channels on the computer and combine with this LFE to get a 5.1 mix; I am sure that would sound fantastic.

With this release I have improved upon the early version of Star Wars that I put out last year.  The first flyby has significantly louder bass than before--whenever you hear about the 70mm soundtrack the roar of the Star Destroyer is the thing that stands out in people's minds, but in the special edition it really wasn't all that strong.  The Alderaan and Death Star explosions are much better than before as well.  R2's fall with the Jawas is reduced to a more reasonable level, so it doesn't feel like a Star Destroyer just crashed into the planet when he hits the ground.  Empire and especially Jedi needed less work; I only had to change the volume in a few places.

Feel free to comment here on your experience with teh bass, and what kind of subwoofer you've got, etc.

For my personal version of Star Wars, I replaced the first cell bay shootout from the 1993 mix with that section from the original stereo mix in order to get rid of the annoying broken glass effects.  The rest of the '93 changes are good, or at least tolerable, but changing this part gets rid of the "glaringly inauthentic" feel it otherwise has.  The result combined with the bass gives it a decidedly "70mm-ish" vibe.  :)

It was me who did the JarJar voice, regarding the lower class British accent version.  It's kind of shocking to me that it was a couple years ago, before I moved, before that computer crapped out . . . where's time gone anyway?  lol

I'm not surprised it needs to be re-recorded, but I'm glad the lines themselves sound good (ie my American voice isn't betraying itself :p).  I can probably re-do it in better quality--I'll just need the lines and possibly the older recording for reference, seeing as that computer died and I don't have them anymore.

The only Star Wars novels I really like are the ones by Timothy Zahn.  The Thrawn trilogy and the Hand of Thrawn set were awesome and I don't think any others will be as good as that.

The RotS novel was pretty good; Dark Lord, if that's the one where Vader tracks down and kills the leftover Jedi, was pretty cool too.  Other than that I can't stand any prequel era stuff.  The New Jedi Order was rubbish too, and the ones after where they killed Mara Jade and had Jacen turn evil, forget it.

Thanks for the mono mix, ChainsawAsh!

As far as using AviSynth to create a cleaned up, anti-alias'd, anamorphic GOUT, I'm pretty sure it can be done on a Mac.  I use one myself, and I was worried for a while that it wouldn't work, but after reading around I discovered that AviSynth, DGIndex, and HCEncoder will work if you use Crossover/WINE.  I have these installed currently and it went without a hitch (although I haven't actually tested them since the encoding takes so long).  I'm not sure if all the other programs you'd need also work, but there are Mac equivalents for many of them.  I'm confident that I'll be able to get a better version of the GOUT up and running.

If you need AC3 for your DVD's, I recommend Wav to AC3 Encoder 3.  It also works like a dream in Crossover.  The encoding scheme is based on the ffmpeg implementation, but it has many advanced settings for achieving the maximum sound quality, which are described in detail in the settings.

I finished downloading all of these last night.  Haven't been able to listen to everything yet, but what I have heard is quite impressive.  First up was the ANH vinyl transfer.  When the first notes of the theme hit me, my first reaction was that it had been sped up, or otherwise pitch-shifted in some way.  When I played it again I realised that no, of course it hadn't been, but the difference in tambor and sound quality was so startling that I didn't really recognise it at first.  It took a little while, but as I became accustomed to the sound, its sonic superiority became increasingly clear (even with the soft background of crackling one associates with LP's).

The improvements in EQ to the CD versions are also quite good.  In some places subtle, in others startling and revealing.  I've definitely heard details and even entire instrument parts that didn't seem to be there before, or that I'd only heard on other recordings.  The Throne Room from ANH is a revelation--I'd got so used to hearing it sound strained and harsh, but now it really sounds lovely.  Luke's defeat of Vader is RotJ is excellent as well.  In the game Jedi Outcast, that music is used as you prepare to fight the final boss--even as a lofi mp3, it sounded better than the CD version because it had a different equalisation.  Now it sounds much more like how it should.  I'm not even sure what's different about it specifically, but it's just better.  Thanks so much to ABC and 7FN for making these available!

My only gripe would be that I don't especially like the alternate take for the opening theme in ANH; I found some of the other ones on the CD more satisfying.  But I suppose that's a minor point.

I'd be interested in obtaining the SW restored mono mix, ChainsawAsh.  I downloaded it from a torrent some time ago, but unfortunately the computer I used has since crapped out, and I now only have a 192 kbps AC3 version.  This sounds fine, but having the uncompressed file would be nice, definitely.  I don't need it as urgently as I do the 93 versions of Empire and Jedi, but I'll take any mixes that get posted, be they 93's, 77 stereo, mono, whatever.  I wish I'd downloaded more of these when they were first available, but I didn't know how to make custom DVD's then.  Blast.

I downloaded the ANH uncompressed soundtrack some time ago, but to my recent chagrin I never got around to downloading Empire and Jedi.  If anyone could upload them I would really appreciate it.  I am unable to connect to newsgroups, so rapidshare or a similar site would be preferable.  Thanks!

On an entirely unrelated note, does anyone else find it hilarious that there are "Cure Your Gout" adds on this site?  lol

This sounds like an awesome project!  I'm a huge fan of the books--the movies, not so much.  When they get things right, they're spot on, but when they're wrong, they're way the hell off, not to mention plain awful.  My biggest gripe is with Gollum: he is completely mischaracterized in my opinion.  The movie oversimplifies him into "good Smeagol, bad Gollum", which while not contradicting the books directly, really misses the point.  Gollum does not really have a split personality; he merely argues with his conflicting feelings about how best to get the Ring.  In a way it's as if the "two sides" are Gollum and the Ring arguing, the Ring being his temptation to slip back into his old ways, which of course he ultimately succumbs to.  There is no "evil persona" that is separate from the rest of him--I really hate the way the movies portrayed that.  It reminds me a lot of similar scenes in Spiderman, and that's not a good thing to have to compare it to.  I don't know how much can actually be done about it, but if there's any way to reduce the parts where he argues with mirrored evil versions of himself it would probably go a long way towards rectifying this grievance.

Another thing to consider is to try to eliminate Saruman's reference to "the union of the Two Towers" near the beginning.  Not only does this go along with what you were saying about making Saruman be out for himself, but I dislike the way it misrepresents the title of the story: what the two towers actually are.  In the book the two towers are Isengard and Cirith Ungol, the place where Frodo is captured and imprisoned before Sam rescues him.  Since this is shown in the 3rd movie, where it lines up chronologically, while in the books it is at the end of the 2nd, the change I suppose makes some sort of sense, since Cirith Ungol isn't actually seen in the 2nd movie, but I still don't like it.  It just . . . sounds dumb.  That isn't Christopher Lee's fault, he's brilliant as always, but it just isn't a good line.

My other big gripe about the movies is the way Frodo is made into an ineffective weakling, cowering and wimpering away from the Nazgul and from Gollum instead of bravely facing them, even when gravely injured.  Unfortunately, I'm at a loss of how to make that any better.  It happens so many times--Weathertop, the Ford, Mount Doom, to name a few--that it's probably unfixable.  Alas . . .

At any rate, I'm quite interested in this project.  Keep at it!

I've uploaded the LFE channel as a FLAC file for anyone who wants it.  To use, simply combine with the 1993 PCM soundtrack from Belbecus.  It already has the 1.017 seconds of silence at the beginning, so make sure your PCM has this at the beginning as well.  Then simply load your wavs for each channel into the AC3 encoder of your choice.  For those without high-end software, I recommend Aften (or a gui thereof) as it's free and easy to use.  I encoded as 2/0 + LFE format at 448 kbps, to preserve the best possible quality for DVD.  If you have the ability to derive 4 or 5 channels from the stereo mix, using some kind of ProLogic/ProLogic 2 emulation software, feel free to do so.

If you are working on a GOUT-synched preservation project using HD footage and creating a custom 5.1 mix using the '93 and '97 soundtracks, please feel free to use this if it's to your liking.  (lol)

Here's the link: http://www.sendspace.com/file/zchhv8

Moth3r: I looked all around for a way to extract the ProLogic channels from the stereo PCM, but didn't have any luck, particularly as far as Mac options.  If you've got a way to do that, though, I'm sure it would sound great.  Of course I'd like to have a proper 5.1 mix, but I think creating such a thing is currently beyond my capability.  Since my system right now is stereo speakers with a subwoofer the 2.1 file suits it perfectly.  Eventually I'll be adding a center and rears; I'm hopeful that using DTS Neo:6 will provide good enough results on that account.

Calamari: Congrats on the awesome sub!  I bet this will sound really awesome played on that.  My sub isn't nearly that big, but it's got really good sound quality.  28 hz is enough extension for most movies, but I'd love to get a big SVS that rocks down to 15 hz someday.  :)

For anyone who is interested in this, what form would you like it uploaded?  I currently have the LFE track saved as a FLAC and in Apple Lossless.  The Apple format only takes up 9.3 megabytes, but the FLAC is over 20, if that makes a difference in terms of downloading capability.  It's completely synched to Belbecus' PCM track, including the 1.017 seconds of silence at the beginning to line it up with the GOUT video.  If necessary I could try uploading my AC3 file, in case someone wants this but doesn't have the main channels to match it with, but that is 388 megabytes, so it's less convenient.  Just let me know . . .