[Released] Terminator 2 CDS mix

[MrBrown]

IIRC the japanese 2 BD version was checked, and it did not contain the old mix.

[bendermac]

Regarding the French 5.1 you're talking about, what about the music when the T1000 enters the corridor following John. The suspenseful cue "bang, bang, zing" (starts at 26'55") that's repeated does echo in the rear channels in the English CDS mix, while it sticks to the front in the remixes.

I just got hold onto the french HD-DVD and the english DTS-HD MA sounds like the CDS mix. The scene described by Beber is exactly like that.
But Beber later mentioned something about problems with that mix. What kinda problems, compared to the Japanese DTS DVD?

[Chewtobacca]

Discussion of the differences between the JP DTS and the track from the French HD DVD can be found by scrolling back through the thread.  There weren't specific problems with the latter: I simply decided that the former looked less processed and decided to sync that, but I make no claims to be an audio expert.  In fact, we could use more such experts around here.  There's no end of work we could have them do.

[bendermac]

I saw the discussion now. Did anyone sync the HD-DVD audio to the 2015 Lionsgate BD?

As for the D-Theater version of T2, it doesn't have the CDS mix.

[Chewtobacca]

^ As far as I know, no one did that.

[little-endian]

Of course a lossless audio file would be better then a lossy one. The preference for the CDS has nothing to do with lossless vs lossy. It's the actual content.

Well of course, maybe my former post lacked lucidity on that point. It is almost only the content for sure and even that "almost" is only left in the sentence just in case anyone will in fact be able to succeed in a blind test distinguishing a DTS core from it's lossless counterpart.

Would I or the others here prefer a true lossless version of the original theatrical mix, coming directly from the master tapes? ABSOLUTELY!!

I'd even dare to say that lacking a lossless source for the CDS mix I consider to be a rather academic problem. After all, even the CDS data would be lossy if we ever get our hands on and I wouldn't trust myself to hear a difference to the original PCM master which also at least "had" to exist somewhere back in the days.

Apologies, I got my wires crossed earlier.

No worries, a relief that I'm not the only one who gets lost in the T2 mixing odyssey.

It's the HD-DVD DTS-MA that had the filtered LFE channel. There was also what looked like noise reduction performed. In general the full bitrate DTS DVD was in better shape.

Very interesting, yet absurd. Thanks for the confirmation. So someone apparently decided to go back to the lossless original and fiddle around with it instead of releasing it "as is" on the BD.

Wow you really did your research!

Well, I have my moments.  

Yeah when monitoring through audacity the surrounds on the DTS DVD playback slightly lower than the AC-3. The content (ie creative choices and mixing decisions) is identical however.

Yes, I can confirm that by now. For the screenshot, I've taken one front channel for the first two tracks and one surround channel for the last two. In the nightmare scene with the thermo-nuclear explosion, the front channels peak about 0.5 dB higher on the DTS track while the surround tracks peak about 3 dB lower. If the levels are different in general, I'd assume it's due to the decoder differences, but here only the surround channels are apprently different, strange.

I don't know if this is down to dialnorm or possibly some slight range compression on the AC-3 DVD.

Shouln't be due to dialnorm as eac3to explicitly removes/ignores it in order to prevent loudness differences for re-enconding purposes but who knows.

I never did get round to doing an ABX (I watched the laserdisc instead  )

Well, I wonder when I'll get to watch mine which is still in transit.

As for the D-Theater version of T2, it doesn't have the CDS mix.

So which one does it have instead?

[Chewtobacca]

If the levels are different in general, I'd assume it's due to the decoder differences, but here only the surround channels are apparently different, strange.

That is indeed strange. I wonder if it relates to some of the discussions that we've had on the forum about how the surrounds should be handled (often, but not exclusively, in the context of cinema DTS), none of which seemed to me to provide a clear and definitive answer.

[little-endian]

Alright, since I also halfway remembered that "there was something", I took yet another search round to refresh my memory, maybe at least partly solving the T2-mixing-puzzle:

Besides that 10dB confusion with DTS (where the LFE get's boosted for movies but not or 'not always' for music), the rear channels in the cinema are/were supposed to be attenuated by 3dB during playback. For what reason is still a mystery to me as in terms of any headroom to be gained, I would it expect to be the other way around like it's done with the LFE channel.

Since the home cinema setups apparently don't perform that kind of attenuation, one can have that adjusted during the encode, provided that the origial cinema mix is used. My wild guess is that this is what happened with the DTS version of Terminator 2.

At first I thought that 3dB attenuation only applies to DTS, but I also found a settings overview of the SurCode AC3 Encoder which shows the very same option. Hence the different formats alone don't explain the 3dB difference in the case of Terminator 2 because then it should have been adjusted to -3dB on the AC3 track as well. Maybe in the one case, someone ticked the setting and in the other didn't - probably we'll never know. As for the negligible 0.5 dB difference of the fronts - that might be indeed due to the slight decoder and format differences.

Further references I found:

doom9 forum, point 4.10
DTS Pro Series Surround Encoder Manual Page 8, Point 5
SurCode DTS DVD Pro Manual Page 5, Point 7.2

[zoidberg]

I'd even dare to say that lacking a lossless source for the CDS mix I consider to be a rather academic problem. After all, even the CDS data would be lossy if we ever get our hands on and I wouldn't trust myself to hear a difference to the original PCM master which also at least "had" to exist somewhere back in the days.

Interestingly enough CDS was lossless. It was encoded using delta-modulated PCM (16bit). The bitrate was approximately 5Mbps(!)

[little-endian]

Thanks for your objection. Seems I've been successfully misguided by those "4:1 compression" claims which are "surrounding" this format, then.

This thread confirms the unexpected high frame rate while the usual suspect comes up with the 4:1 intro.

So to summarize this - with the release of the Blu-ray they had the chance to provide the CDS mix completely unaltered by any format aspects whatsoever and instead decided to apply weird filters to it from what I've read here. *sigh*

Well, the video part is even worse as to that day, one has to choose between an outdated, but halfway natural master and a shiny new, but then heavily filtered one.