Streets of Fire (1984) - Best audio?

[BDgeek]

Hi there!

I'm starting this thread to gather information on the various soundtracks for Streets of Fire, aftertall this one is all about sound!

I was very happy with the DTS-HD MA 2.0 mix on the Shout Collector's Edition until I found out yesterday, to my surprise, that the it was reissued in Steelbook with the addition of a DTS-HD MA 4.1 mix "created from the 70mm Six Track Magnetic Audio"(quote removed directly from a photo of the back cover).

In my immeditate quest for information about this track, the quotes bellow were all I could find and they do sound very promising:


"The new DTS-MA 4.1 track is a noticeable improvement over the old DTS-MA 5.1 track. The new track is much more balanced and less strident, with the new 4.1 track having better bass and significantly higher fidelity. The old track sounds more dated and hollow in comparison, although both are listenable - that being said while the old 5.1 sounded good on the first release, its hard to go back to listening to it after hearing the new 4.1. The new track is also recorded at a lower volume level and seems to have improved dynamic range."

"Listening to multiple sections over and over the 4.1 mix is clearly the best followed by the 2.0 Stereo and the 5.1 is just LOUD."

Has anyone else here been able to sample this track? 

Also, regarding the 1996 Wiscreen LD, I'd really appreciate if any of our members here can offer some information on how it sounds.

Thanks a lot! 

[HippieDalek]

I love Jim Steinman's work on this film, but sadly I don't actually own it on any format. I really need to get around to picking up a copy some day. At the time I just assumed that the steelbook was a reissue, hadn't realised it was a new master.

[BDgeek]

HippieDalek,

the Steelbook is not a new master, in fact, everthing else is the same. The only difference (but it' such a huge one for fans) is the inclusion of this new track.

[pipefan413]

Woah, hang on, from magnetic 70 mm Six Track Dolby Stereo to 4.1? I'm guessing the 2 surround tracks are the same or something, in which case you'd be left with L, C, R, LFE, S? I was just assuming that Six Track would mean that the surrounds would be unique (because why not if you have a separate track for it available?) but this threw me. How interesting.

The versions I've got are a dodgy old PAL DVD (god knows what's on that) and a Second Sight BD which apparently has the 5.1 and what I assume must be the 35 mm Dolby Stereo in 2.0 LPCM (I believe it was the LPCM I heard when I watched it). I wonder what that 4.1 track is like!

[zoidberg]

A lot of 70mm 6-track is mono surround. Some is split surround.

(The original Todd-AO 70mm 6-track was 5 front channels and one surround channel)

[pipefan413]

A lot of 70mm 6-track is mono surround. Some is split surround.

(The original Todd-AO 70mm 6-track was 5 front channels and one surround channel)

That's blown my mind.

I'm assuming for Streets of Fire it was presumably something like this? Basically a mono surround instead of stereo but otherwise equivalent of 5.1?

[BDgeek]

Yes pipefan413, that's pretty much it.

From what I picked up over the years, most 70mm 6-Track are mono surround. Split surrounds are the exception.

Even though Second Sight LPCM 2.0 is 16bit as opposed to Shout's DTS-HD 2.0 24bit, if you could share this track, I'd really like to compare them.

If you're interested, I can get you the Shout's tracks as well, with the exception of this so promising 4.1 that's not on the first press release.

From the back cover information, the Shout's release is from a 2K interpositvie scan and going by cap-a-holic comparisons, it's the best version PQ wise.

[zoidberg]

Even in the Dolby Stereo (matrixed LCRS) years screens would have banks of surround speakers along the side walls to cover all seating positions. So it was a mono signal played through multiple speakers.
A lot of laserdisc AC-3 tracks mastered from 70mm 6-track have mono surround. It was convention at the time to encode it as 5.1, I guess it's just the way the encoder was set up (even mono on some special features would be 5.1 but with only an active centre channel). 4.1/4.0 wasn't a thing until DVD

[captainsolo]

4 track masters were the norm. 70mm Dolby onwards either rerouted or made a special cutoff track to have the boom channels playback the low end frequencies of the main channels. Surround was always mono unless specifically mixed in split stereo. Only certain films did this and moreso by the end of the 80's. Just look at in70mm.com's list of prints by year and they identify which had split stereo surrounds. It's often surprising what did and didn't. Red October-Yes. Batman-No.

[The Aluminum Falcon]

I've got the steelbook and thought it sounded fine. Though I believe there's an international release that claims to have an even better soundtrack, would not be surprised if the LD was better either.