Saturday, 18 December 2021

The Leopard Man (1943)

The Shout Factory blu-ray looks fantastic but sounds dreadful. There's quite a lot of noise reduction that makes everything murky and uninvolving. There's a constant low-frequency hum/buzz that selectively underlies all dialogue, which sounds almost like a distant airplane or that sound worn VHS tapes sometimes have.

The old Image Entertainment LaserDisc sounds better because its hiss hasn't been scrubbed away. The hum/buzz is present here too.

Here's the puzzler: the Warner DVD sounds much better than either, with more true bass and treble information and none of the hum/buzz. Warner provided Shout with the 4K OCN scan, so it's strange that Shout might have been also handed what sounds like a known dupe soundtrack. 




2 comments:

  1. Does the WB DVD track match up to the Shout BD? (I mean once the start time has been adjusted if needed) Or does it need resynching within to get a correct match?

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