I'm beginning to suspect there is something fishy going on with the original "mono" tracks from both the Warner DVD and Blu-rays.
They are probably all downmixes of stereo tracks, as evidenced by the existence of both the French stereo and American dub stereo on the Blu-ray discs.
Tough it sounds mostly mono, those two tracks offer a different, superior experience to the same ones in 1.0.
I think it's possible that all those 1.0 tracks are downmixes of better sounding stereo tracks.
And maybe, it's possible they are all sourced from old VHS hence why they are all 1.0 as original VHS from the 80's were mostly mono.
That means the Warner DVD 1.0 soundtracks are not original, same as all the 1.0 foreign dub tracks on the Blu-rays.
They probably correspond to mono VHS rips.
Remember, even if a film is mixed for mono, it goes at 2 tracks on 35mm. There might be slight differences on the tracks.
If you fold it down, you do not reproduce the exact same experience as the film theater experience.
I checked the 9 Laserdiscs released, there is a french LD release in 2.0
https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/27963/61170LD/Mad-Max
I think this may be the source of the 2.0 track on the US R1 Blu-ray.
That's why they put it on the American Blu-ray, it makes for a nice bonus.
So as of right now, we're all good with the American dub (2.0 DTS-HD on the Blu-ray) and French dub (2.0 from the US Blu-ray, probably sourced from french Pal Laserdisc).
But we only have a 1.0 Australian original track from the Warner Europe DVD, which I think by high degree of probability is a downmix of a better sounding 2.0 track.
During the 1990's, Warner Home Video (UK) Ltd released a VHS version of the film not only containing the original dialogue, but presented in the original aspect ratio of 2.35:1. This video is PAL also. The catalogue number for the video is PES 12545. This was re-released around 1995 under the Beyond Vision label, with the product code SO12545.
So it could mean if this UK tape from 1992 was recorded in stereo, it could offer the best Australian original mix ever released.
[Image: mad-max-5-dv.jpg]
[Image: mad-max-warner-home-video-3-dv.jpg]
Jonno, could you check if this tape has stereo channels? No indication on the sleeves.