Friday 10 September 2021

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)

The Warner Archive blu-ray and the Warner DVD sound the same and have plenty of noise reduction.

The Amazon Video download, however, doesn't have any. Strangely, a 12-second segment in it starting at 00:46:30 (blu-ray timecode) has some music that's out of sync relative to the dialogue and that glitches partway before repeating and continuing. It's also missing entirely a 27-second music cue starting at 00:52:50, in the scene where the men are digging wells. The track's lopsided waveform (not audible) can be corrected with a simple phase rotation (also not audible).

There's also a relatively untouched version of the film that was on the BBC iPlayer that sounds worse than the Amazon download.

Update (9/17/2021): The Image LaserDisc, while extremely clean and less distorted than the later editions, has no real bass detail at all. I played around with EQing it, but that information just doesn't exist down there. It's the only version that has the full opening music just after the Selznick logo intact; the DVD, Amazon download, and the blu-ray are all missing a few seconds of music at about 00:00:15.000. The scene with the well-digging has the intended music cue, like the blu-ray and DVD. The Amazon download sounds a lot better overall.




2 comments:

  1. do the glitches of the Amazon audio apply to the Blu-ray too or is it unique to the Amazon master only?

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