1991 MCA LaserDisc: More natural than the later DVDs and the UHD, but suffers from being an analogue track - distortion, mainly.
1993 CIC Video LaserDisc: The same audio mastering as the 1991 LD, but digital. Of all the editions here, this is my overall favourite. It clearly has some form of hiss management going on, but marginally less than the later editions. It lacks the problematic EQ changes of the DVDs and blu-rays.
1999 R1 Universal DVD: Very similar to the 1993 LaserDisc but with an unfortunate slight treble boost and some bass reduction. The opening music sounds better than the rest of the film (and I think better than the opening first minute of the 1993 LD).
2004 R1 Universal DVD: Probably the worst sounding of the bunch. Slightly more hiss reduction than the 1999 DVD and the 1993 LD. Some bass and midrange boosting that ironically makes the noise floor even louder sometimes. Has some spectral artefacts that suggest an encoding error.
2006 R1 Universal DVD: Same mastering as the 2004 DVD but more competently encoded.
2013 Universal Blu-ray: Slightly less hiss reduction than the 2004/2006 DVDs, but still with the EQ issues. There's honestly not that much more noise reduction here compared to the 1993 LaserDisc; the EQ issues are more noticeable to me.
2021 Universal UHD: Identical to the Universal blu-ray.
of all the non-laserdisc versions the BD is the most preferable because the 1999 DVD has some incorrect music at the end, the 2004/2006 DVD correct that but for whatever reason go back to the censored audio from the pre-1999 home video releases
ReplyDeletethe BD audio has no issues regarding incorrect music or censorship as far as I know
There are various issues with censored or otherwise altered audio on all SD releases, which were fixed for HD. Details here:
Deletehttps://www.dvdcompare.net/comparisons/film.php?fid=2384#overall
yep and it was fixed because of the new restoration
Deletesimilar to Invisible Man, a song change that affected every home video release until the BD, where for the first time in who knows how long the original cue (and sound effects in that scene) were restored for home video
Additionally the 1999 DVD is missing a musical cue at the end of the Opera scene. The 2004 DVD for some reason uses the censored audio that removes Renfield’s death screams and Dracula’s death groans. The bits are restored in 2006 but that mix still suffers from the same quality/encoding etc issues as 2004.
ReplyDelete