2023-12-19, 05:08 AM
(2023-12-18, 10:23 PM)stwd4nder2 Wrote: How can you tell it's just stereo and not matrixed?
(2020-11-07, 03:12 PM)pipefan413 Wrote: […] I'm also convinced that it actually is an at least slightly different mix from the Dolby Surround track seen on the US releases (which I presume are from the 1979 35 mm Dolby Stereo track off the theatrical re-release).
The first thing I did was flip the phase of the left channel and mix down to mono to cancel out anything that was mixed straight down the middle, in order to see visually on the waveform (and by listening to it) what was left after the "mono" bit of the signal was removed. I did the same thing with the US LD's Dolby track, and the US DVD's Dolby track, which I assume are the exact same track except that the LD is lossless 44.1 kHz PCM and the DVD is compressed 192 kbps 48 kHz AC-3 (they even have the same catalogue number, "1007"). They look nothing like each other, for a start. But rather than the "stereo" track being more or less mono with little stereo separation, and the Dolby Stereo track being more of a diverse sound field, it's actually the other way around; I suppose theoretically that might be because the Dolby mix is obviously matrix encoded with phase manipulation stuff going on to put all the dialogue and much of the other audio straight into the centre channel when decoded correctly, and the surrounds are more or less phase flipped from that too, so there might just be a lot of stuff that has less left/right separation because of that when the matrix is not decoded as intended and it's just treated like a plain left/right stereo track. Or it could just be that the stereo track is a new mix made for this particular release in 1996, whereas the Dolby Surround track is most likely the one mixed back in 1979, and they got a bit fancy with the stereo mixing in '96. Anyway, that's point 1.
Secondly, I just did a quick listen through bits of the tracks, comparing how they sounded against each other. This wasn't particularly scientific or empirical, I was just having a quick listen to see what seemed to be apparent to my ears (bear in mind I don't have studio headphones at the moment or anything like that, I'm just using a crappy "gaming" headset here, but it at least doesn't try to do anything fancy with fake "surround" or whatever). There's a moment about 9 mins or so into the film where somebody in Iraq just about runs Father Merrin over with a horse-drawn carriage. On the US Dolby Surround track, the cart sits mostly in the centre of the sound field (though when it rushes past it abruptly shifts slightly to the right briefly, presumably to give some impression of fast movement), but in this weirdo 1996 JP stereo track it starts off with the sound of the cart very noticeably pulled over to the left as it approaches from the distance, then it shifts toward the centre as it rushes past, and finally drifts slightly toward the right as it moves away. It's more gradual, there's better clarity, and you get more of a sense of the cart starting out way out in the distance then moving closer then bludgeoning your ears as it just about kills Merrin, before it moves away off in the opposite direction from whence it came. A short while after this, there are wee pockets of background excavation noises / general bustle that are pretty much perceptible as dead centre in the Dolby track but shift radically to one side or the other in the stereo track. The clarity and separation of the stereo mix just seems to be significantly better than either the mono or Dolby mixes. Wait, am I... am I *praising* a revisionist 90s remix here? I think... I think I might be! What's happening to me?!
So it would appear that I was perhaps half-right: this does indeed appear to be a unique mix presumably created for the 1996 release, but it's not got much of a resemblance to the mono mix because the level of clarity and stereo separation is quite impressive. Which is sort of good and bad, because it means I've found a whole new sound mix for the film that I actually seem to really enjoy, but it may not necessarily be the ideal patching source for the mono track considering the mono track sounds like what it is – a scratchy old 70s mono mix made for 35 mm optical tracks – and differs significantly in terms of clarity, dynamic range, and (obviously by definition) directional separation. I think what I'll probably do is sync the stereo track as its own thing entirely, but use the time-compressed mono for whatever patches I can and then the US LD version of the Dolby track for the remaining patches, with noise floor from the mono mixed in as initially planned.
