Monday, 12 March 2046
Tuesday, 13 September 2022
On the Town (1949)
1988 MGM/Turner Hi-Fi VHS: Detailed and natural.
2008 R1 Warner DVD - Frank Sinatra Collection: More muffled due to noise reduction.
2015 Warner Blu-ray: Like the DVD but with a treble boost. Also a lossy transcode.
Thursday, 8 September 2022
Sunday, 4 September 2022
The Stranger (1946)
1998 Image Entertainment LaserDisc [ID8631TU]: Quite muffled and bass-shy, but not much more than the average modern release. I believe this was the film's second non-public domain home video release, after the 1992 Turner VHS tape.
2007 R2 MGM DVD: So much noise reduction that warbly artefacts can be heard throughout.
2013 Kino Lorber Blu-ray: Most of this audio track is an unadulterated transfer of a 35 mm print from the Library of Congress, and it sounds excellent. However, a few sections (the longest running 5:20) resemble the MGM DVD.
2017 Olive Films Blu-ray: Less noise reduction than the DVD but more than the LaserDisc.
Friday, 26 August 2022
Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
1984 CBS/Fox Hi-Fi VHS: Very clean and free of distortion and other artefacts, but this lacks high-frequency detail.
1988 Warner LaserDisc [NJEL-99206]: Similar to the CBS/Fox VHS, but mushier and with even less high-frequency detail.
1990 MGM LaserDisc [ML101741]: Very detailed and quite natural-sounding, with no obvious heavy-handed mastering. Every subsequent mono track resembles this one.
1992 MGM Hi-Fi VHS: Brighter than the 1990 LaserDisc but otherwise similar. The 1990 LD can be EQ-matched to this pretty easily.
1993 Warner LaserDisc [NJEL-52732]: Like the 1990 LaserDisc.
1993 MGM LaserDisc [ML104539] - Connery Collection: Identical to the 1990 LaserDisc.
2000 MGM DVD - Special Edition: Slightly different EQ than the 1990 LaserDisc.
2006 MGM DVD - Ultimate Edition: Slightly different EQ than the 1990 LaserDisc, possibly with further noise reduction. The end credits sound significantly worse and have been made much louder.
2012 MGM Blu-ray: Slightly different EQ than the 1990 LaserDisc. I think it fares quite well (certainly much better than the previous film's BD mono track), but the LaserDisc sounds marginally more natural. A ~3-minute segment about an hour in is much louder than the rest of the film.
Monday, 22 August 2022
Monday, 15 August 2022
Sunday, 14 August 2022
Ulzana's Raid (1972)
1991 MCA LaserDisc: This sounds a bit muffled. Having been released in the early '90s, it was probably subjected to some form of digital noise reduction.
2003 R2 Universal DVD: Strong noise reduction. The worst among these.
2020 Kino Lorber Blu-ray: Segments with music have less noise reduction than the rest of the film - and indeed less than the LaserDisc. They sound substantially more detailed here. Dialogue-centric scenes are slightly more muffled than in the LD mastering.
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