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


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1 hour ago, JTWfan77 said:

So what's the overall consensus, are we boycotting these releases? Or buying them to encourage Disney of the viability of C&C releases later on?

The last sets I bought were the 1997 ones. Had these latest ones on pre-order but decided to cancel and see how they turn out first.

 

Karil

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1 hour ago, JTWfan77 said:

So what's the overall consensus, are we boycotting these releases? Or buying them to encourage Disney of the viability of C&C releases later on?

 

That's always the question isn't it? Not enough people buy the release, and they determine there's no market for it. If it does well, it just reinforces the the notion that they can put out a sub standard release (or the same old thing) and people will buy it anyway, so why try harder?

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1 hour ago, crumbs said:

 

I doubt he'll say a thing, for exactly the reason you said. I'm sure he'd be understandably frustrated by the lack of quality control though.

 

Unless, of course, this really is the best they could achieve with Empire. It's conceivable that better quality masters were damaged/unrecoverable and we're now stuck with this. Rather strange that two of the OT scores would turn out fine but only one would have this many issues?

 

Agreed. Matessino would NEVER Dismiss a collegue's effort in any way on any forum or panel. We don't know what went wrong and what happened under the existing circumstances in which the tapes were found and located etc..

 

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I see at least the 2016 ESB is still up for sale on my Google Play Store, hopefully I'll be able to snag it before they take it down (waiting for my salary to clear).

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They're on Spotify!

 

 

2 hours ago, JTWfan77 said:

So what's the overall consensus, are we boycotting these releases? Or buying them to encourage Disney of the viability of C&C releases later on?

 

41 minutes ago, Nick1066 said:

 

That's always the question isn't it? Not enough people buy the release, and they determine there's no market for it. If it does well, it just reinforces the the notion that they can put out a sub standard release (or the same old thing) and people will buy it anyway, so why try harder?

 

I'm sure they'll sell well enough whether or not we buy them.

 

:P

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Good grief The Asteroid Chase sounds fucking AWFUL. Like, 1997 SE ROTJ awful.

 

Thankfully we have the vastly superior 2016 version of the track but ... wow. How did something so rubbish pass QA??? And the reverb... were they trying to cover up the lousy audio quality with excessive reverb?

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1 hour ago, Nick1066 said:

 

That's always the question isn't it? Not enough people buy the release, and they determine there's no market for it. If it does well, it just reinforces the the notion that they can put out a sub standard release (or the same old thing) and people will buy it anyway, so why try harder?

 

The bass in the imperial march is way too exaggerated to the point that it sounds unnatural. I'm cancelling my order of TESB. ANH and ROTJ still stands.

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I don't understand why so many here pre-ordered these sets? No set is going to be good enough until a label gets their hands on it and release a comprehensive edition.

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I did it because the OST programs are good, and they were super cheap at amazon.co.uk. :)

 

Anyway, here's comparative playlists for the OT. For each track title the 2015 Sony remaster comes first, then the 2018 Disney remaster follows immediately after.

 

 

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Google Play still has both versions of Empire on their streaming site

 

image.png

 

Oooof, a side-by-side comparison of Asteroid was rough.  I'd love to hear come anyone who has the actual CD yet to confirm it's just as bad on that format.

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19 minutes ago, JTWfan77 said:

@Jurassic Shark, how did you manage to combine the 2016 and 2018 releases into your playlist? Didn't Disney take the old ones down? Will they leave them on there?

 

All I know is they're both available on Spotify - let's see how long that lasts.

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As long as it lasts until tonight so I can still snag ESB 2016. I've already chewed 3 of my fingernails down.

 

Is the general consensus that SW 2018 > SW 2016?

 

Edit: Shit. SW is already gone from my iTunes.

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Going to pick up RotS, AotC and SW when they are in stores over here, the rest can go burn in hell!

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3 minutes ago, Arpy said:

Going to pick up RotS, AotC and SW when they are in stores over here, the rest can go burn in hell!

 

But AOTC has excessive added reverb?

 

Which ESB cue has the music where the Falcon escapes from Hoth?

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3 hours ago, crumbs said:

Geez, Star Wars sounds bloody good though, doesn't it? The best it's ever heard, no doubt.

 

Agreed, but SW has always sounded excellent to my ears.. Anthology, SE, etc.  Certainly better than TESB and ROTJ even though SW is the oldest.

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5 minutes ago, JTWfan77 said:

 

But AOTC has excessive added reverb?

 

Which ESB cue has the music where the Falcon escapes from Hoth?

It sounds fine to me. 

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4 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

 

If the masters were indeed damaged they could have gone back to the album masters which Sony used in 2015. Therefore, my guess is it's a case of incompetence.

 

Weren't the TESB masters confirmed to be found and preserved?  Or am I thinking of the SW masters? 

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14 minutes ago, someonefun124 said:

 

Weren't the TESB masters confirmed to be found and preserved?  Or am I thinking of the SW masters? 

 

The latter I believe.

 

Does The Heroics of Luke and Han have the Falcon escape cue or is it Rebels at Bay?

EDIT: Never mind, I just bought them both.

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5 hours ago, crumbs said:

Unless, of course, this really is the best they could achieve with Empire. It's conceivable that better quality masters were damaged/unrecoverable and we're now stuck with this.

 

There is NO WAY this is the best that can be achieved.  They really just didn't do the work properly here.

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Murphy himself already did The Astroid Chase perfectly 13 years ago for that RotS DVD.

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9 hours ago, Drew said:

 

I'm pretty sure TPM was only remastered way back when the 3D theatrical version came out.

 

No, you’d be incorrect, me thinks.

 

 

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The TPM album has never been rebuilt from scratch until now.

 

Any change they would have made for that release would have just been minor mastering on top of the already mastered 1999 final original album  master

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54 minutes ago, Jay said:

 

There is NO WAY this is the best that can be achieved.  They really just didn't do the work properly here.

 

Well I hope you're right. I'm just saying that MAYBE a couple of ESB's master tapes were damaged and that meant several cues had to be sourced from inferior sources, resulting in lesser quality (although as mentioned above, surely they would just reuse the 2016 OST masters if that were the case).

 

It's just really weird that these issues only affect isolated tracks, rather than the entire score. Other parts of ESB sound perfectly fine... Bizarre!

 

Considering Battle in the Snow is comprised of multiple cues, and the entire track sounds poor, it definitely indicates the issues are a mastering fuckup.

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Battle In The Snow is NOT comprised of multiple cues.  It is only 3M3 The Snow Battle in its own track with no edits.

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If they could refrain from remastering the prequels if they ever released the complete scores, that would be best. I just want those raw recordings.

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The correct statement from Murphy would be "the best as can be obtained BY US". I'm pretty sure that another team of soundtrack producers, ones who are really specialized on this field and knows their shit, would take a very different approach.

 

But really, I don't think we should crush this release regarding the sound quality. SW sounds entirely magnificent, while ESB is like 50/50. RoTJ is, for me, a slightly improved 93 Anthology (which is great because the RoTJ Anthology sounds excellent anyway). What really sucks here is the content. Seriously, replicating the albums AGAIN?

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There is absolutely nothing wrong and no reason to complain about reissuing the original album configurations John Williams crafted at the time of each film's release.  They absolutely deserve to be in print and easy for fans to hear if they desire.

 

We of course can complain about performing a sub-par job reconstructing and remastering them, and hope that complete editions are next on their agenda, but it's not really logical to be upset that they wanted to reissue the OSTs first.  It is actually quite logical and makes complete and total sense, from both a business and artistic perspective.

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35 minutes ago, Jay said:

The TPM album has never been rebuilt from scratch until now.

 

 

I'm sorry I haven't been following this thread because I wasn't interested in reissues - but TPM was rebuilt for this?  And the other prequels too I assume?  So sound quality and mixing/mastering should be different now?

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It amuses me that the original Star Wars album has Cantina Band fade out at the end to hide the clarinet squeak. I mean, it was only source music for some obscure science fiction flop, right? 

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18 minutes ago, Joe Brausam said:

I'm sorry I haven't been following this thread because I wasn't interested in reissues - but TPM was rebuilt for this?  And the other prequels too I assume?  So sound quality and mixing/mastering should be different now?

 

Just read the very first, main post of the thread.

 

All six albums were rebuilt from scratch using fresh transfers of the original elements overseen by Shawn Murphy at 192khz / 24 bit.

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6 minutes ago, Jay said:

There is absolutely nothing wrong and no reason to complain about reissuing the original album configurations John Williams crafted at the time of each film's release.  They absolutely deserve to be in print and easy for fans to hear if they desire.

 

We of course can complain about performing a sub-par job reconstructing and remastering them, and hope that complete editions are next on their agenda, but it's not really logical to be upset that they wanted to reissue them.  It is actually quite logical and makes complete and total sense, both both a business and artistic perspective.

The albums were released little over 2 years ago. We don't need them AGAIN.

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You're not thinking things through.  2 years ago all they did was gussy up the '77, '80, and '83 analog-edited album masters.

 

THIS time they've gone back to the ORIGINAL elements and done modern, proper, HIGH RESOLUTION DIGITAL transfers and REBUILT ALL SIX albums.  It's a huge task and well worth doing.


Please think about the bigger picture and not JUST your personal demands for complete score presentations.  The original '77, '80, '83, '99, '02, and 05 albums are artistic expressions by John Williams that deserved to be recreated with proper, modern, high resolution technology.  The fact that they ultimate screwed up doesn't mean they shouldn't have tried.

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For everyday listening, I'm personally still more than happy with the digital files that came with my vinyl boxset back in '16, it'll probably be the last time I buy the original album programs unless they come as bonuses with properly done expanded releases later, but yeah I'm happy that they've gone back to do modern transfers of the original elements.

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I still prefer listening to the complete version of each score more than their OST album, but I wouldn't mind owning a proper, perfect sounding version of each album for the occasional listen.  The original '77 OST album is still a really strong listening experience and all three prequels have music I tend to skip past in their complete forms.

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I can't imagine it will be too much longer at this point.  Disney will want to have a six more products that utilizes the new transfers they just paid for at some point

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My bet's on 2020 and I hope that's pessimistic not optimistic!

 

Of course next year is the 20th anniversary of Phantom Menace (which is crazy), so a tie-in to that could be cool.

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