Bad Audio on Blu-ray: For a Few Dollars More (1965)

Thursday, 16 June 2022

For a Few Dollars More (1965)

Speaking about the English mono track included on each of these -

1982 CBS/Fox LaserDisc [4675-80]: Much less detailed than the Key Video VHS, with a similar level of time compression.

1984 Key Video Hi-Fi VHS: This tape sounds outstanding. A fair bit of distortion during loud music passages that's undoubtedly always been a part of the mix, but the clarity here (gone from every later release) is staggering. The source elements used sound pristine - a very clean transfer. The tape is time-compressed by a factor of ~0.958702 (slightly more than PAL speed-up).

1991 MGM LaserDisc [ML102226]: Probably the second best among these, even though it doesn't sound nearly as good as the Key Video tape. Clear signs of global noise removal.

1998 R1 MGM DVD: More noise reduction than the 1991 LaserDisc.

2005 R1 MGM DVD - Special Edition: Even more noise reduction than the earlier DVD - an obscene amount.

2011 MGM Blu-ray: Identical to the SE DVD.

2013 Universum Blu-ray: This appears to have been derived from the '98 mastering (with more noise reduction, but less than the SE DVD). The missing segments have been spliced in from another source that sounds similarly poor. This track is a lossy transcode.

2019 Kino Lorber Blu-ray: Like the SE DVD. Also a lossy transcode.

2022 Kino Lorber UHD Blu-ray: Like the SE DVD but with the missing segments spliced in from at least two other sources. I believe the longest segment at ~1:40:00 comes from the Universum blu-ray. The track has evidently been cut up and looped wherever appropriate to improve the A/V sync of gunshots and other effects. There's no real way to do this more elegantly, but some of the loops here were poorly done.

I don't care for the Fistful remix, but at least the fidelity of its dialogue and effects is acceptable. This mastering from ~2005, though, sounds gross. It's usually difficult to discern that something can sound significantly better than it does without juxtaposing it against a superlative track like the Key Video VHS, but this sounds objectively bad even in isolation. (As always, the praise it's received is baffling, though not surprising.) This is a lossy transcode.

Disregarding its absurd modern foley additions, the 5.1 mix has similar fidelity to the SE mono.