Vertigo (1958)

The 5.1 remix on the DVDs is one of the worst remixes ever made. Fortunately, the studio took notice of the vehement complaints made after its release and chose to rectify the most glaring issues (modernised gunshots) for the blu-ray’s surround mix.

The 5.1 mix on the blu-ray sounds murky. Despite being a legitimate remix, it's clearly been subjected to a fair amount of noise reduction along the way (most likely during its mastering, to the entire track after it had been mixed). I say this because not only is the dialogue and other stuff that would have been recorded on-set muffled (the bits that are usually hissiest), but everything is muffled -- including Herrmann's score. It's odd for the music in a true remix to be as murky as it is here, given that restorers Robert Harris and James Katz used the original performance elements of Herrmann's score to create the remix (...according to them in the 1997 'Obsessed with Vertigo' restoration doc).

The detail on the DTS mono track on the US blu-ray is astonishing. There is certainly a more-than-usual amount of hiss present--but this is understandable given the age of the film at this point--and it sounds like very little processing work was done to it at all after it had been initially restored.

As for mixing differences, I did catch a couple instances where the music cues go on slightly longer in the remix. The added foley effects have indeed been turned down a notch compared to the old DVD surround mix, with new sounds now being limited mainly to ambient street effects. Some reverb has been added to Stewart's and Novak's dialogue at the end in the tower, too. There are surely many other differences (although in its new rendition here, it isn't a bad remix by any means), but I haven't the interest to continue comparing it, because...

The mono wipes the floor with the 5.1. It's better in every possible way fidelity-wise (again, I can't help but marvel at the dynamics and power the score has here--it now has bass!). And I can't imagine why anyone would prefer the 5.1, since any added multichannel separation the remix brings is severely hampered by its atrocious fidelity.