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Remasters of the First 6 Star Wars Soundtracks now available (Shawn Murphy / Disney Records 2018)


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35 minutes ago, Bespin said:

 

...with much and less success, talking about the quality of the sound... Today when they remaster those early digital recordings... they are happy to discover that an analogue tape sometimes exists too...So when it exists, they generally use the analogue tape instead of the digital recording to do their new remastering.

 

The 2nd set of the Goldberg variation by Glenn Gould (1981) is a good example.  Thank Good, at the time they recorded it digitally, but they also recorded it (for safety!) on an tape...

 

The early digital recordings did indeed have problems, but the technology was improved a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away).

 

And btw: I love the remaster of Gould's 1981 Goldenberg!

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Agreed. The old "digital vs analog" debate had more sense in the early days of digital recording up until the 90's, I'd dare to say. Now it's pretty much pointless. Digital is clearly superior in every sense.

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The "transition period" from the late 70s to mid 2000s where some things were recorded analog, some digital, and some both, is a major quagmire of different recording equipment, differing bit rates, and differing sample rates to wade through.


it seems for the most part, when the specialty labels are expanding anything from that era, they ignore the digital recordings if they can find and afford to get fresh transfers of the 1st gen analog tape masters, as a fresh 24/192 digital transfer of those tapes made with modern equipment is simply going to be better that digital recordings made in that era.  Most of those digital recordings are 16/441 and the actual equipment to create them was still new and not as perfect as today's equipment, while the simultaneous tape recordings were perfectly fine as they had been for decades.


Of course nowadays, every score is recorded directly to hard drives in super high resolution and sound perfectly fine.  

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Yes. And also the fact that early digital recordings were made on tape. I think it was like that all the way into the 90's. And even though it's a digital recording, the quality can be affected by the deterioration of the material. So not only it was limited to CD resolution (which is more than suitable for the finished product that is aimed to the consumer, but not so much for the recording process) but had the imperfections of the analog medium which was stored, such ticks and dropouts. MM himself clarified that regarding E.T. when the digital recordings couldn't be located and they went with the analog instead, even for the OST portion: "A digital master would only have been at 44k/16bit. The original recording tapes would also have been in that format, but we would have had the material in 3-channel. But without that, and only stereo to work with, we were better off with a hi-res tape transfer than with a 35 year-old digital master that probably would have been full of ticks and dropouts." "But there is no doubt in Bruce [Botnick]’s mind that using the uncut set of mag transferred at 192k 24bit would give us far greater quality than the 44k 16bit tapes would have if we had located them. In all likelihood they would have had a lot of ticks and dropouts on them."

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Yea exactly.

 

I like the sound of Varese's Predator more than Intrada's because Varese used a new transfer of the analog tape it was recorded on, while Intrada used the 16/441 digital it was simultaneously recorded onto in 1987.  The tape just holds more detail than that 1987 digital recording.

 

The most annoying part of the "transition period" was when something was recorded ONLY onto digital, and its forever locked at 16/441 or sometimes 16/48 or 24/441.  I think BTTF2 is one such score IIRC... other ones aren't coming to mind right now.

 

I believe every score Williams ever recorded up until either 2004 or 2005 had tape running even when all the concurrent editing and mastering was done digitally at least.

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Makes total sense. Albeit a different medium, a modern 4K film scan of film elements from the 80s will look infinitely cleaner, sharper and more detailed than a 4K scan of the exact same elements done 15 years ago.

 

The technology to scan analog elements has improved dramatically to the point we can now transfer basically all information contained on those elements.

 

And then there's the fact that older digital technology simply couldn't record at the higher definitions which are now commonplace. For all we know, the digital masters of the prequels were actually only recording at 48/16, and the only way to ascertain richer 192/24 masters was by scanning the analog elements (as they're not constrained by the limitations of digital resolutions).

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Same with films. Lucas switched to digital photography way too soon. AOTC and ROTS are stuck at less than 1080 resolution upscaled to a 2K DI. Their eventual 4K release will probably have better contrast and colour but there's only so much they can do with them in future. Meanwhile, studios can pull out anything shot on film from any decade and, with some work, put out a stonkingly good genuine 4K transfer.

 

Edit: Sorry @crumbs. Didn't realise you'd basically made the same point just a couple of posts up :)

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Digital video masters for CGI-heavy films like the prequels and LOTR will only benefit from better compression of the newer codecs like HEVC and MAYBE some better color and contrast, since they're all "stuck" in the 2K resolution and its color space. I believe nothing else can be obtained from those unless they re-render all the CGI again, which may cost a few millions more than just use the 2K files.

 

But when I say the "digital vs analog" is pointless today, I meant in the sound capturing field. Now, in the image capturing field, I believe there's plenty room for debate. Not so much in still photography, but in motion picture.

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Yea, like how all the new CGI for Star Trek: TMP: Director's Edition was only rendered at 480p!

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Yes the latter two prequels are a great example of short-sightedness on Lucas' part. For all his bluster about the advantages of digital technology, the inevitable 6K modern scans of the original trilogy will ultimately supersede the prequels (forever locked at 1080p). Now that's irony!

 

Interesting titbit on Lord of the Rings too, Jay! I feel like there are untapped advantages to these super high audio resolutions that we're yet to unlock, but might discover in decades to come as audio technologies evolve. Mike Matessino planted an intriguing seed in my mind when he raised the notion that filmmakers could scan old multi-track masters and remix music into newer formats like Dolby Atmos, regardless of how long ago the score was recorded. Granted digital resolution and number of tracks are two different factors but we don't yet know what benefits these higher resolutions might yield in the future.

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The CGI for the director's cut for The Motion Picture is definitely awesome but does suck they made it in low resolution. In order to make it higher resolution ILM would have to go back and redo everything from scratch.

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I'm sure there's still plenty of wiggle room in the LOTR recording masters, should anyone wish to do a full remaster and rebuild down the line (fingers crossed). 24/48 is still a high-res recording that most people probably can't even hear the full benefit of on their systems. Also, we've only heard 1 version of those mixes outside of the films so far. They sound great as it is but I bet they could sound even better.

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I believe audio recording is reaching its pinnacle already. There won't be anything that is completely revolutionary in the future, same way it hasn't in the past years. I mean, when was the last time you heard about a new audio format that made you go "woooooowww"? :) You can say "Oh, what about Dolby Atmos?". Well, it's all PCM.

 

Now for video, since it's much more complex than audio, there'll be plenty room for improvement in the years to come. Just for comparison, the best video medium today in Blu-ray 4K, and it delivers us video in 10bit. Now, can you imagine 10bit audio?

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1 hour ago, Trent B said:

The CGI for the director's cut for The Motion Picture is definitely awesome but does suck they made it in low resolution. In order to make it higher resolution ILM would have to go back and redo everything from scratch.

Not ILM.

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A lot of early digital recordings apparently can't even be played back as the technology doesn't exist anymore. I seem to recall this was the case with Horner's STII when FSM did the C&C release.

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I'm sure by now any notable score that fell under that criteria has been transferred to a proper digital archive stored on hard drives

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In another hand, let's keep hope, they can really delete by error the prelogy movies. :D

 

Ooops! Do we have a backup of this??? :o

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3 hours ago, JTWfan77 said:

A lot of early digital recordings apparently can't even be played back as the technology doesn't exist anymore. I seem to recall this was the case with Horner's STII when FSM did the C&C release.

 

I think about this sometimes regarding movies that were shot and mastered digitally and whether there'll be comparability problems in access and playback in 70 years from now.

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13 minutes ago, Richard said:

Really? Abbey Road wasn't digital, by 1999?

Probably was, but Shawn Morphy chose to record the prequels in the analog domain. He used 24 track tapes running at 15ips with Dolby SR noise reduction.

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More likely it was Gelb sighing audibly in the control room, exhausted by another dissatisfactory revision of Across the Stars.

 

"We need the new Duel of the Fates, John! Fuck! Harpischords aren't fucking marketable to our target demographic! Where's the fucking choir?!"

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9 hours ago, phbart said:

Probably was, but Shawn Morphy chose to record the prequels in the analog domain. He used 24 track tapes running at 15ips with Dolby SR noise reduction.

 

I'm not sure he's the best qualified to compare the two technologies at his age. He's probably not able to hear above 4kHz - and that's not a joke:

 

image.png

 

 

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11 minutes ago, phbart said:

Is there really a hiss problem with AoTC? I don't listen to it since 2002...

 

I remember the original CD sounding a bit hissy. Was it suggested back at the time that it might have had something to do with the copy protection?

 

The recent 24bit download version sounded great though!

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Yes, I remember at the time some problems with a copy protection scheme on the discs. I think it was even written on the cover "will NOT play on MAC/PC", or something like that. Do you think they added that after they realized they messed up with the master?

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I'm not sure why AOTC sounds so hissy but I am sure the May 4th remasters will sound fine.

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46 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

I don't see how the copy protection would cause additional hiss.

 

Me neither but I thought I remembered someone mentioning it back in the day. I'm thinking back to 2002 though so I might be way off :lol:

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