35mm VS 70mm Mixes (And where to find them?)

[allldu]

Die Hard - DVD

The 1999 US DVD's 5.1 audio has mono surrounds so it must be a 7omm mix.

Raiders Of The Lost Ark - DVD

There was a lot of controversy as to whether the 70mm mix had mono or split surrounds, but then it was confirmed that originally surrounds were split, when they mixed the film. And it is also said, the 5.1 track presented on DVD is in fact a 70mm mix (with split surrounds, as was intended by the sound guys).

[borisanddoris]

Although I have not heard Raiders in 70mm mag, I know someone who has and they confirm that the DVD mix is about as close as you can get and even plays back well in a far field cinema environment. It's a really good track.

[zoidberg]

As has been documented countless times on here the Die Hard DVD is a remix, although the surrounds are mono a lot of the front soundstage effects have been mixed to the centre channel. The more obvious ones are Argyle loading the cassette in the limo and Hans dry firing the empty Beretta.
Yeah those Mi Casa guys were snake oil through and through. Did you know a living room is different to an auditorium? That's what the b-chain was for, seeing as even theatres could vary massively in size. Pretty much any dynamic range control/midnight mode on an AVR would do a better job

[borisanddoris]

THX Re-eq was also supposed to help with bright mixes. I still utilize it and it works very well.

Regarding Die Hard, was just the DTS pressing theatrical or was the AC3 pressing as well? I have the AC3 pressing and always found that it sounded terrific.

If a studio wants to remix, fine but at the very least include an original track as an option. Even throw it on there at 384kbps AC3 to save space: it will still sound great provided the mix is great.

[stwd4nder2]

Even throw it on there at 384kbps AC3 to save space: it will still sound great provided the mix is great.

Lossless or bust 

[spoRv]

I just finished to compose a simplified theatrical mix audio flow; it's v0.1 so please be forgiving if I made some mistakes here and there...


of course on the home tracks I did not add encoding nor eventual remix "enhancements"

[spoRv]

• The Thing (1982) - the studio stated: “NEW 4.1 Audio Mix Created From The Original 70MM Six Track Dolby Stereo Soundtrack” - pay attention to the word Created... I still don't think that the 4.1 track is very faithful to the 70mm track; too long to discuss here, you can take a look at the article I wrote: http://blog.sporv.com/disentangling-the-thing
  
• Alien (1979) - the laserdisc AC-3 track should be the 70mm Sensurround test track; IIRC the 70mm track (if there was a non-Sensurround non-test version) featured on BD (UHD-BD?) was remixed using also the director's cut track; I compared the English and Italian tracks from my BD, and the English was quite different from the laserdisc 2.0 upmixed to 4.0, while the Italian (taking of course in account the differences due to the translation) was quite similar - with no dialogue leaks on the surround
  
• Die Hard 1988 - IIRC I read somewhere that the laserdisc AC-3 (and/or DTS) has not the effects remix in the center
  

[zoidberg]

AFAIK Die Hards 1 and 2 have 35mm mixes on the early LDs, and 70mm mixes (including fold-downs for 2.0 PCM) on the THX re-releases. The DTS LDs came slightly later but are not THX certified for whatever reason.

The 2-disc Big Trouble in Little China R1 DVD has a 4.1 AC-3 track as does the first Tron R1 DVD.

Did the DTS Anamorphic DVD of Predator have the original 6-track? I can't remember.

Although there is an AC-3 LD of The Abyss it's the Special Edition so may not be the true 70mm mix, but used as the base with additional scenes added in.

Obviously the later LD releases of T2 include a 5.1 track purported to be the CDS mix, there were 70mm prints as well and as far as I know there has never been a true comparison of the 70mm/CDS theatrical mixes (as CDS is essentially a dead format)

[LucasGodzilla]

Although there is an AC-3 LD of The Abyss it's the Special Edition so may not be the true 70mm mix, but used as the base with additional scenes added in.

I can't seem to find the original post anywhere, but I've read an interesting post not that long ago where someone said that apparently, The Abyss Special Edition audio was a rather weird situation (can't recall what format it referred to specifically; I think it was a seamless branching DVD release).

If that post was correct, apparently, the 2.0 stereo mix for the Special Edition was a proper Dolby remix made for the limited 35mm re-release that did a better job hiding the seams between the two cuts audio-wise, whilst the 5.1 surround mix was the original Theatrical 70mm mix with the audio for the new scenes awkwardly spliced in.

Whether or not that description is a load of crock, I have no idea at the current moment. I do have some old DVD copies of the movie so maybe I'll dig one of them up and see if this holds any water.

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Obviously the later LD releases of T2 include a 5.1 track purported to be the CDS mix, there were 70mm prints as well and as far as I know there has never been a true comparison of the 70mm/CDS theatrical mixes (as CDS is essentially a dead format)

I always assumed that the CDS mix was the 70mm mix transferred to digital as CDS, at least after reading this post from OT.

From the way the bass is used, it is clear that this mix was intended to be used on 70mm prints, because it uses the same techniques that were employed on the boom tracks for other films before the advent of Dolby Digital.  Rather than containing only isolated instances of bass derived entirely from the sound effects, as is now customary, the boom channel contains a sum of all the bass from the entire mix, low-pass filtered at 125 Hz, and plays continuously throughout the entire movie.  Specific bass effects also appear for parts that warrant additional reinforcement, though not with the sort of levels heard in the newer version.  Because the boom track plays continuously, many scenes have a sort of 'rumbling undertone' to them, which gives an interesting effect that is a somewhat different than the remix.  The percussive nature of the score benefits from this.  (A similar, though less noticeable, undertone can be heard in the 1993 mixes of the Star Wars films, which the other versions do not have).

If I had to venture a guess, given how short-lived the CDS format was, it probably wasn't enough time for studios to really try and experiment with the format and rather just utilized it as a means of playing the 6-track mix in a non-analog format for both 35mm and 70mm.

It was obvious that the new format would have to be digital as only a digital system could offer all the desired benefits: six discrete channels, consisting of five full bandwidth channels and one subwoofer channel; full audio bandwidth; and the reduction of noise, flutter, and distortion to the vanishing point. No envisioned optical analog system could offer all of these.

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CDS covers the entire audible frequency range from 20 to 20,000 Hertz with a consistency and flatness only a digital system can attain. The improvement in high end clarity over what can be attained with current analog optical tracks will be truly significant.

Distortion and flutter are two defects in audio quality that are reduced to the vanishing point in the digital CDS system.

CDS will deliver six channels of crystal clear sound, free of distortion, hiss, pops, and other noises on either 35 or 70mm print film. It is, in effect, the motion picture equivalent of the compact disc sound we now enjoy at home.

So the way I see it, the CDS mix was born out of practicality rather than anything ambitious. If the movie was made a couple of years later when DTS-CDs were becoming prevalent, I wouldn't be surprised we'd see something more interesting (in a way, that's probably what some of the later remixes were all things considered).

I'm no expert on the matter though. I would much sooner say @pipefan413 is the one more knowledgeable on the matter. I'll partially quote his summation on the T2 audio situation below for anyone who wants to go see the original post as it is a very neat compilation / report on all the movie's available mixes.

Trying to clarify all this but I'm missing some info (mostly around the sources used for the TeamBlu version). I'm making some assumptions here that I would like to make sure are correct before I get deeper down the wrong path, if they're not. There's a lot of info in this thread at this point, and a lot of info that isn't (as far as I can tell), so I thought it might be good to try to summarise everything (I think) I know about these to see if it's helpful to anybody else as well.

What I *think* is as follows...


CINEMA DIGITAL SURROUND MIX (5.1)

There are at least three encodes of the original 5.1 Cinema Digital Surround (CDS) mix repurposed for home video releases: a Dolby Digital one from that same 1997 US DVD, a 1509 kbps DTS one from the 2003 JP DVD, and a slightly more processed / cleaned up DTS-HD Master Audio one that was featured at least on the French HD-DVD and 2-disc French BD from 2008 (this was later restructured into a single-disc version with seamless branching that formed the basis of the 2008 JP BD and 2009 Skynet Edition BDs, which necessessitated replacing the theatrical audio with remix audio because of the special edition / extended edition branching; the UK got a single-disc version that only had disc 2, the special edition, without the theatrical cut and therefore without theatrical audio).

The version used by TeamBlu was synchronised by jonno to the Skynet Edition then given to TeamBlu to use with their release. However, I'm not certain which video TeamBlu used, so I couldn't know without checking if they did any resync / delay. Comparing the files, it seems not, so either they used a Skynet Edition (which seems unlikely) or they used the slightly earlier 2008 JP BD (less DNR etc.) and it happens to have the exact same sync as the Skynet Edition (which would not be that surprising given it appears to be the case that the Skynet Edition was extrapolated from that same master).

I hope he's doing well though I may add as a side note.

[borisanddoris]

I did a rip and sync of my US T2 AC3 LaserDisc pressing in hopes to compare it with other sources, but never got around to it. My ears always told me it was better, but I'd be interested for someone to more scientifically compare them. I also got the LPCM track too and that's the real star of the show: it sounds phenomenal!