Chimes at Midnight (1965)

While the Mr. Bongo Films blu-ray looks awful, its audio track is great. It has plenty of ticks and pops, but it's remarkably clear and immediate. The Criterion is comparatively muffled and distant.

Is the Mr. Bongo track more compressed or clipped? At first look, it might appear so, but it really isn't. The high-pass filter used by Criterion to attenuate low frequencies has the secondary effect of making their track look more dynamic, but it's still equally limited. Applying a similar filter to the Mr. Bongo gives us:

...Dynamics?! Nope. This is the same reason why many people think vinyl pressings of contemporary albums are more dynamic than their CD/digital counterparts, when that is very rarely actually the case.