Tuesday 27 August 2024

Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

198X Paramount LaserDisc [LV 6830-2]: Not bad for an analogue track - fairly natural sounding - but this lacks detail and is at times quite distorted.

1994 Paramount LaserDisc [LV6830-2WS]: Excellent. Seems to be an unfutzed-with transfer of the original magnetic mono track.

2003 R1 Paramount DVD: The 5.1 has strong noise reduction over everything. The music is spread to the surrounding channels. I spotted a few minor missing sounds, like some gasps and background foley. There is at least one new modern gunshot (58:34 - UHD timecode). At 2:04:36, the cymbals in the score have been mixed so low that they're nearly inaudible compared to in the original mix. The music in some, but not all, sequences is very limply mixed with too much reverb and doesn't mesh well with the rest of the film. 

The mono track is a downmix of the 5.1, or perhaps a new mono reduction with all the above problems. It sounds extremely murky next to the '94 LaserDisc.

2011 Paramount Blu-ray: Identical to the DVD mono.

2024 Paramount UHD Blu-ray: Identical to the DVD mono but with some further filtering at 13.9 kHz.







1 comment:

  1. I'm surprised you didn't mention at the end the BD mono playing the incorrect music during the end credits

    ReplyDelete