The anomaly is the Russian Close Up blu-ray from 2011, which sounds wonderful: crystal clear, yet free of any ticks or pops. It's clearly been restored but its frequency range is completely intact. It's a different A/D transfer (different sync -- arguably better, though obviously this means little since the dialogue was done in post!), which may have been produced by Mosfilm for the restoration. Bizarre that it appears on just one disc.
It's also on the 2018 single-layer re-release. For better or worse, the video bitrate was dropped to 1/3 the original bitrate while the sound is exactly the same as the original 2011 release.
ReplyDeleteDoes the Mosfilm youtube upload also use the better audio track?
ReplyDeleteI'll try to compare both since I've finally managed to track down a copy of the 2011 edition. The YouTube version shouldn't be superior in any case since they use aggressive A/V compression with a low bitrate, lossy AAC codec for audio.
DeleteVastly superior fidelity on the russian disc when directly compared to the YouTube stream at 4K quality preset on the same headphones at the same volume. So that's settled.
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