Tuesday, 18 October 2016

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

1998 Paramount LaserDisc [LV6831-WS]: Excellent. No filtering whatsoever.

2003 R1 Paramount DVD:
This sounds mediocre. It has a strong notch filter at 7.2 kHz, which cuts hiss slightly and reduces overall clarity considerably.

2004 R2 Paramount DVD: Like the LaserDisc.

2012 Criterion Blu-ray: Significant noise reduction, making dialogue sound rather muffled, along with bass reduction. 

2013 Paramount Blu-ray: Like the LaserDisc and R2 DVD but with three segments that have been NRed: 13 seconds at 00:41:02, 5 seconds at 01:42:40, and--most noticeably--1 minute and 12 seconds at the end of the film (the closing theme). 

2023 Paramount UHD Blu-ray: Generally more hiss reduction than the Criterion (quiet moments are more aggressively scrubbed, though louder sounds less so) and no bass reduction. Disappointing.







10/22/2023: Added the Paramount R2 DVD and UHD.
1/5/2024: Added the Paramount LaserDisc.

4 comments:

  1. Hope this was ok but I made an audio comparison between both BDs with your audio sample

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqOO3fty1Q0

    ReplyDelete
  2. two things, first is what about the 2020 US Paramount BD? It's not the exact same disk as the UK 2013 release

    also the UHD has two weird dialogue edits you didn't mention:
    the first is at about 52:22 Rosemary says "We went to see The Fantasticks.", but in the UHD it was altered to "We went to see The Fantastick." with no S at the end

    the second is at around 1:55, when Dr. Saperstein says "We're in labor here!", but on the UHD he just says "here!"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The labour line is missing the "We happen to be in labour". The spectrals look pretty seamless, and I can't find where else in the scene the dialogue-free music beneath it could've been taken from, so I'm not sure what happened.

      The Fantasticks 's' was removed by automatic de-essing - you can see the little blip in the spectrals, and there are a few instances elsewhere where 's' sounds at the beginning of words have been attenuated.

      Delete