Wild Strawberries (1957)

I previously wrote that the StudioCanal blu-ray audio, while less NRed than the Criterion blu-ray's audio track, is severely compressed. This observation still stands. While the Criterion isn't nearly as scrubbed as some of Criterion's other mastering jobs, it's still much deader and more muted sounding than the old DVDs.

The old Criterion DVD sounds much better than the Criterion blu-ray: it was only subjected to a light amount of high-frequency NR. It's extremely clean.

And then there's the old Tartan DVD, which has no NR at all. The opening music has some strong distortion for two or three seconds (which was evidently filtered out from both Criterion discs -- this can be seen spectrally and heard aurally, with the corresponding reduction in clarity), and there are four instances of  damage throughout the film where dialogue is sometimes obscured for a split-second, but the track is otherwise pretty clean.

The Criterion blu-ray booklet notes:

The original monaural soundtrack was remastered at 24-bit from a 35mm print. Clicks, thumps, hiss, and hum were manually removed using Pro Tools HD. Crackle was attenuated using AudioCube’s integrated workstation.

It's clear that all three tracks were sourced from this same film element.

 

 The Criterion blu-ray and the Tartan DVD in sync with each other: