It was not a dig or attack on your work in any shape or form. I was just remarking how Lucas and however else manages the music has access to the first generation original recordings and is not preserving them for future generations.
An insult to all John Williams fans and oot star wars fans as well.
Empires originals were so far gone they had to transfer them very carefully and those probably can never be used again. They were rotting in a basement at one of lucas facilties under a bunch of junk and there was water damage from a leak in the roof or some other such thing.
The dude set up an archive for star wars props but it is crazy to think that the films and music themselves are not being given the same care. It makes me furious, i am no historian but these films mean a lot to me and millions of other people.
The thing is if the original analog recordings are not preserved they will never have the starting point in the future for any kind of restoration as a third generation or fourth generation digital copy does not similate the original depth of the recording.
Not only will they lose the only originals in there posession, to have any kind of release in the future they will have to rely on the BAD SE digital copy or else completely re-record the entire scores again.
With modern technology they could put out the highest fidelity recording of star wars trilogy ever heard, from the first gen masters lightyears ahead of the truncated 70s and 80's album arrangements masters.
The only originals they could not locate during the post production of the special edition and remixing were the jedi original masters and those have since been found. They put out the original recordings for empire but risner botched it so badly i wonder if it was a deliberate creative decision on lucas part.
According to a report ken wannberg says only star wars SE release is close to what they would have heard in the recording booth, all recordings for empire and jedi released leave a lot to be desired in terms of an audiophile release.
At least that is what i remember reading from someones article who did personal correspondance with the original people involved.
Supposedly the empire release would be perfect if not for the improper mixing of the multi track elements and the reversed channels on some songs.
As for Return of the Jedi they had a copy of what the anthology team had access to, a further generation from what even the anthology people had. Then they put it through further equalization and noise reduction filters. It sounds horrible possibly the worst CD i have ever owned of a symphonic score, period. So bad i took out my record player and put on the LP from Return of the Jedi which sounds phenomenal by the way.
For which the album masters have never been located by the way, the polydor people from overseas could not be bothered to look for them, so they are assumed lost. Some tracks on the anthology believe it or not were taken directly from the CD,lol.
Someone did a LP rip once but it is no longer active on a certain site. I wish i still had that or the equipment to do my own.
It is just plain sad that the re-recordings done for jedi by various orchestras through the years have better sound yet don't duplicate the same performance as the LSO sadly. I think the best ones are the utah symphony, and the npo under charles gerhardt, even the Boston pops sound better and less ruined by overfiltering.
Also for years the best presentation of the empire strikes back music though incomplete was the album released on varese sarabande records under the NPO.
It is obvious the limitations on all the official released recordings in the 70s and 80's was do to the playback technology people owned at home at the time, and the ability to faithfully reproduce what was heard in the recoding studio through to the albums using the technology of the time. These were understandable limitations of the time and would be exceptable if people still used those old analog stereo systems before the advent of digital everything, but when they did the special editions that excuse no longer applied nor does it aplly to any modern release of the catalog of the original trilogies music.
The excuse if they are good enough as they are and lets just keep releasing the same imperfect crap over and over again to make money on our fans who will buy it anyway because they are dumb. After all they ate up the latest table scraps of Lucas the prequels with relish, and finished it with a nice glass of Lucas Kool Aide.
