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Don Davis' THE MATRIX (1999) - 2021 Complete Edition by Varese Sarabande (2xCD / 2xSACD / 3xLP)


Jay

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I haven't listened to the OST album for years. I will do this weekend and see if I enjoy it. Then I nicht be able to enjoy such an expansion even more.

If not, then it's probably not for me. 

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Anyway, they added this to the SACD page:

 

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The Complete Edition Matrix soundtrack comes on two Hybrid SA-CDs (Super Audio CDs).  These Hybrid SA-CD’s contain a CD layer that can be played on any CD player, and a hi-resolution SA-CD layer that contains DSD audio in stereo and surround versions. The audio on the SA-CD layer has been upsampled from 48 thousand samples per second 24bit PCM audio to 2.8 million samples per second 1 bit DSD audio. When these disks are inserted into an SA-CD player or a Blu-Ray player that can play SA-CD’s, you will hear up-converted hi-resolution DSD audio in stereo or surround and realize the sonic enhancement that comes from the up-conversion.

 

Karol

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And if you enjoy the score any Blu-ray has an isolated track with composer's commentary as well. :)

 

And yes, the original album is actually pretty good.

 

I would recommend watching it with the film as it is a brilliantly spotted and scored movie. The balancing between score and sound effects is also great. 

 

It also makes a very interesting live to picture experience. You really get to appreciate what the score is doing for the picture. 

 

Karol

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Right, and the isolated score is cool because it's not just Davis's score on that track, but the actual film edits and mixes of all the other songs too - and some of Davis's score is actual overlays meant to mesh with the techno music (like the track "The System" debuting on this release)

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3 hours ago, Jay said:

Anyone else see this film in theaters on opening day?

I was 6 when this movie came out, so the only movies I watched in theaters that year were from Disney lol (Tarzan and Toy Story 2). 

 

But I wish I was born a few years earlier because 1999 was an awesome year to go to the theaters: The Matrix, Sixth Sense, Fight Club, American Beauty, etc. 

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Yea I was 19 (20 for the last 4 months) and saw every great 1999 movie in the theater, and it was awesome

I remember seeing The Matrix on opening day on a Friday afternoon on my way home for the weekend from college to work or something, and by the time I got back I was telling all my friends about it and I saw it in theaters again later that week with them.  It was PACKED by then

 

Same thing happened with Fight Club

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There was also Magnolia, Eyes Wide Shut, The Iron Giant, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, The Green Mile, Being John Malkovich, Almodovar's All About My Mother...

 

Yeah, 1999 was one of the best years for movies in history, tied with 1975.

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Funny, I went to see this in a multi-ex.

Some idiot decided it was appropriate to bring their baby to this R rated film.

The.kid started screaming almost from the start so I bailed after a few minutes.

Never did see the rest!

 

 

I'm satisfied with the single track on VARESE 25TH Anniversary set.

😆😅😝

3 hours ago, TSMefford said:

 

Indeed. I'm 99% sure it was a VHS or a Fullscreen DVD, which may have been open matte. I don't recall. The resolution and sound were poor though. Lol.

Silkscreen is better.

This was one of those terrible Super 35 films that severely cropped the image

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44 minutes ago, Edmilson said:

There was also Magnolia, Eyes Wide Shut, The Iron Giant, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, The Green Mile, Being John Malkovich, Almodovar's All About My Mother...

 

Yeah, 1999 was one of the best years for movies in history, tied with 1975.


I saw all those in the theater!  Except for All About My Mother, which I still haven't seen

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6 hours ago, Jay said:

Anyone else see this film in theaters on opening day?

I can’t remember if it was opening day, but I remember seeing it on a giant screen in NYC when visiting family. I was 9. It was epic!

 

To all those complaining about the cover… it most likely has no actors on it to avoid approvals and other entanglements. There’s only so many times you can use the scrolling code as well.

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5 hours ago, Marian Schedenig said:

I saw it as an XVID (or whatever the standard format was back in the day) on my PC screen with stereo speakers. Probably the first pirate download film I've watched.

 

On the other hand, people nowadays stream films on their mobile phones, while I refuse to watch a film if it's not in its original language on a screen at least 2m wide… :P

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5 hours ago, Edmilson said:

There was also Magnolia, Eyes Wide Shut, The Iron Giant, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, The Green Mile, Being John Malkovich, Almodovar's All About My Mother...

 

Yeah, 1999 was one of the best years for movies in history, tied with 1975.

 

I wish I had been older and financially independent by 1999 so I could have caught some of those gems in theaters (at least The Matrix, Fight ClubThe Sixth Sense, and The Insider). Unfortunately, being a 5th grader with no allowance meant having to wait until they arrived on cable TV; I saw Matrix for the first time on a family friend's VHS tape

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11 hours ago, Jay said:

 

The original score album is a brisk 30 minute jaunt through all the score's highlights.  He did a good job of picking which highlights you'd want if forced to choose 30 minutes (he basically took 35ish minutes worth of the best cues then edited down some of them to make it all come out to under 30).  But the full 100 minutes is pretty good all the way through

 

Watching the film is fun though because the original score is only one part of the musical pallet, a bunch of techno and rock songs play an important role too

After listening again to the OST I can confirm that. At listening to it again it reminded me partly of 90s Christopher Young scores. It is not necessarily music to be heard in its own. But it is really a brillant score in combination with the movie. 

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In addition, 30 minutes OST might not be that much Matrix music. But I have the OSTs of all three Matrix movies. That probably more than enough for me. But if I hadn't all of these this edition would be definitely my favourite option.

When I wanted to hear a Matrix score I usually listened to the Revolutions score because for me this was the most consistent listening experience even though it misses the great tracks from the first one like "Welcome to the Real World".

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Just now, Jurassic Shark said:

If this new release sets my house on fire, I'm asking for a refund.

It depends on what you try to play your SACD in. Because your regular drive won't play that layer, that's for damn sure.

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21 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

If this new release sets my house on fire, I'm asking for a refund.

 

Whatever you do, don't stick the SACDs in your toaster (though it seems about as compatible as a modern PC).

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5 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

I've always found it annoying that CD-players didn't come with SACD support as default. It's not a significantly more expensive technology, but I guess there's a licence to use it that's not exactly free...

Considering all that, I'm sure it was decided to be totally financially better for Varese to invest in an SACD version over producers who can play a file at the right speed and better artists/image licences so they don't market their supposed premium product with... this thing.

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While I would not call SACD outdated (there are still compatible players made, and for 5.1 Blu-ray sounds about the same) I am surprised at this as well. The big advantage of SACD is backwards compatibility to CD, so you have to make only one disc for everybody, like the classical recordings from BIS, for example. If you produce a separate CD release you might as well do a Blu-ray for hires multichannel since now there are probably much more BD players in homes than SACD compatible ones. Either way I am very happy that finally a soundtrack is release in proper hires surround and will buy it, once I read the review if the SACD offered an audible advantage here. Unfortunately earlier Soundtrack releases on SACD or DVD Audio like E.T. And A.I. did not seem to offer a much better sound. I hope, with the Matrix they got better masters that can take full use of the potential of SACD.

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That's fascinating about the speed of the music in the samples. Maybe something happened when making the sample files, not when making the new album itself? Are the Paycheck samples that correct speed? 

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5 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

At listening to it again it reminded me partly of 90s Christopher Young scores.

 

Well, both do take a lot from the James Horner playbook.

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34 minutes ago, Jay said:

That's fascinating about the speed of the music in the samples. Maybe something happened when making the sample files, not when making the new album itself? Are the Paycheck samples that correct speed? 

 

Paycheck samples have the common 15.735kHz frequency.

 

image.png

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Well, looks like something happened in the transferring, editing, mixing, or mastering process for The Matrix that caused things to be the wrong speed.  This is a bummer to learn :(

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1 minute ago, Jay said:

Well, looks like something happened in the transferring, editing, mixing, or mastering process for The Matrix that caused things to be the wrong speed.  This is a bummer to learn :(

Your idea could still be correct - maybe they finished the disc master properly but didn't pay as much attention when exporting the samples.

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I really, really hope that theory is correct.

 

I'll be absolutely gutted if this release has been mastered at the wrong speed, after waiting all these years for a complete expansion :(

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@BryonDavis says

 

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I pushed for SACD/Blu Ray Audio releases for over 10 years. I am glad that Cary heard me on this and we got to release this in 5.1. Anybody who knows me knows how passionate I am about high res offerings. If I can make it work at NFN I may look into revisiting some scores in SACD (2-channel and 5.1 if possible and cost effective).

 

https://filmscoremonthly.com/board/posts.cfm?threadID=143595&forumID=1&archive=0

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28 minutes ago, Jay said:

Well, looks like something happened in the transferring, editing, mixing, or mastering process for The Matrix that caused things to be the wrong speed.  This is a bummer to learn :(

Again, I don't think you can notice it. It's nowhere near the inconsistent speed of some IJ Concord tracks :P

 

When looking at a track from the original album, it does have the same unusual 15.75kHz frequency:

image.png

 

So maybe the album was also running at incorrect speed?

 

I also checked if the new Varese uses the OST master for that track but it doesn't seem to be the case.

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6 minutes ago, Jay said:

 

I'm all for 5.1 releases, it makes sense (especially for scores that were actually mixed that way; hell, modern scores are mixed in 7.1!)

 

I just wish it wasn't locked behind a format like SACD.

 

That said, I'm sure if Varese were able to release it as a high-res download, they would (and I would gladly buy it).

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So the film itself, the composer promo, and the 2008 Deluxe Edition run at one speed, while the old OST album and the (website samples of the) 2021 Complete Edition run at a different speed?

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Just now, Jay said:

So the film itself, the composer promo, and the 2008 Deluxe Edition run at one speed, while the old OST album and the 2021 Complete Edition run at a different speed?

Yes exactly.

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8 minutes ago, Jay said:

I wonder what happened to cause this

 

Interestingly, the speed difference is identical to that between 24 frames per second (film standard) and 23.976 (digital/home video standard for NTSC).

 

So my best assumption is an incorrectly configured editing timeline.

 

Again, I really hope this is just an issue with incorrectly exported samples and not a problem with the release itself.

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Ah OK well that explains it.  Someone used the wrong setting in a piece of software somewhere along the line

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1 minute ago, Jay said:

Ah OK well that explains it.  Someone used the wrong setting in a piece of software somewhere along the line

 

Indeed, especially when most editing software defaults to 24 fps.

 

They might have been using a 23.976 fps version of the film as their reference, resulting in some inadvertent conversion of the music speed.

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I assume the LLL editions of Reloaded and Revolutions are the correct speed?

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17 hours ago, Edmilson said:

There was also Magnolia, Eyes Wide Shut, The Iron Giant, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, The Green Mile, Being John Malkovich, Almodovar's All About My Mother...

 

Yeah, 1999 was one of the best years for movies in history, tied with 1975.

If I may add Wing Commander please.  A definite popcorn movie. Acting was well, anyways lol I love the bombastic score by Kiner. 

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24 minutes ago, Jay said:

I assume the LLL editions of Reloaded and Revolutions are the correct speed?

 

Yes...

 

Reloaded:

image.png

 

Revolutions:

image.png

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The " best thing" about theses DELUXE releases is it often results in the previous oop, htf, $$$ ost becoming easily available. I've purchased DIE Hard 2, MIMIC and  DOLORES CLAIBORNE cheap, after the DE came out!

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12 hours ago, bruce marshall said:

I've purchased DIE Hard 2, MIMIC and  DOLORES CLAIBORNE cheap, after the DE came out!

 

I didn't get the Die Hard 2 expansion because the OST album was so lousy, and now I regret it.

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Had anybody the chance to listen to the 5.1. mix yet? I am curious if it is a conservative mix with just some reverb in the surrounds, or more adventurous with instruments surrounding the listener. With this score I would welcome the latter.

 

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