1993 IVC LaserDisc: This sounds excellent. Very hissy compared to every other release, but also usually the most detailed. My personal favourite.
1993 Tartan LaserDisc: Probably the same audio transfer as the IVC LaserDisc but with its high end rolled off severely. I'd say it sounds worse than all the blu-rays - their hiss reduction is applied more conservatively in some scenes, whereas here the roll-off is global.
1998 Criterion DVD: The most muffled release, even more so than the Tartan LD. Probably the same audio transfer, which the booklet identifies as a magnetic track.
2003 Svensk Filmindustri DVD: A new audio transfer of what may or may not be superior audio elements. It's hard to say which because although a handful of segments possess more detail than the IVC LD (and of course there's much less hiss underlying the entire film), there are so many more segments that are substantially less detailed. These are usually dialogue-heavy scenes without music, so it's reasonable to suspect that mastering work is the culprit. Loud moments that distort a bit on the IVC LD have been cleaned up a bit too aggressively, so they're duller here. Interestingly, there's a new high-pitched squeal ~4 minutes into the film just after Max von Sydow says, "My body is, but not my self." Every later edition is based on this transfer with the squeal sometimes filtered out and dialogue-heavy scenes similarly muffled.
2003 Tartan DVD: Identical to the Swedish DVD, just more robustly encoded (224 kbps).
2007 Tartan Blu-ray: Pitched 0.7 semitones too low despite playing at 23.976 fps. Considerably more global noise reduction compared to the 2003 mastering.
2009 Criterion Blu-ray: Criterion's own rendition of the 2003 track. Slightly more hiss reduction than the Tartan BD and lots of scene-specific equalisation and other tweaks that do more harm than good.
2013 StudioCanal Blu-ray: Like the Tartan BD but correctly pitched.
2018 Criterion Blu-ray: Identical to the first Criterion BD.
2021 BFI UHD Blu-ray: Slightly less hiss reduction than the Tartan BD, yet more than the 2003 DVDs. All the problems of the 2003 mastering are obviously still present - for example, listen to 38:55 (UHD timecode) to hear the soundtrack degrade abruptly.
The first clip below is a new one comparing a few dialogue-heavy segments between the BFI UHD and the IVC LD. The second clip is the old one I made in 2017 and compares the Tartan DVD to the Criterion blu-rays.
11/10/2021: Added a bunch
Brilliant write-up, very informative. Thanks.
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