To be honest, I've never heard the differences in audio quality between the different editions of Empire and Jedi--the only deficient audio quality I recall off the top of my head is in some of the previously-unreleased music on the Jedi Special Edition ("Forest Ambush," for example, sounds like they were recording the LSO over the radio).
I did use many of the Arista cues for my own listening copies, though, since in many cases the Arista set has more sensible track breaks than the SE sets.
I'm actually surprised you never have heard the differences. The "Special Edition" Empire has duller sound with less dynamic range. It is still fairly listenable, but disappointing after the crystal-clear Arista discs. The "Special Edition" Jedi, on the other hand, sounds completely horrific throughout, with little stereo separation and muffled sonics, with loads of hiss.
An A/B comparison of the same cues (which happened as a matter of course during this project) is disheartening. It made me wonder what this music could sound like if the same attention that was placed into the Blue Box could be focused here. Unfortunately, the major chance for a remastering, the transfer of the titles from RCA to Sony, went by without preparing a new master
( ... )
Sorry I didn't respond to this yesterday; as it turns out I forgot to copy the Arista set onto my work computer along with the SEs, and I had to wait to listen to these tracks with my spiffy headphones.
After comparing some individual tracks, I definitely hear the differences in "Into the Trap" and "Scout Walker Scramble"--the brass is far clearer in the Arista tracks (and for these scores, murky brass is death). There's also far more hiss in "Sail Barge Assault (Alternate)" in the SE set.
Perhaps I hadn't noticed many of these things because I took most of my typical-listening tracks from the Arista to avoid the humongous tracks. The "Battle of _____" tracks in particular are unnecessarily long, and in the case of Jedi arbitrarily broken up; the musical sequence in the film is continuous for, I think, the last forty-five minutes or so, and while I understand the desire to make the CD similarly continuous it makes the tracks hellishly difficult to listen to separately.
I think my versions are what you're looking for - all of those ridiculous "Battle of Hoth/Endor/Sleazy John's Greasebucket Planet" tracks are broken down into their components with the crappy sounding excerpts from Star Wars removed from the Jedi sequence. And all of the channel issues with the stuff from Empire have been resolved.
...I suspect that those Sennheisers are much less forgiving than any previous headphones you've ever used either...
I find it interesting that one of the things that escaped notice in all the liner notes is how the second half of the original Jedi album track of "Han Solo Returns (At the Court of Jabba the Hutt)" is the concert arrangement of "Jabba the Hutt" Williams wrote; the track on the "Special Edition" is the original intention, but even that was tracked over in the film.
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I did use many of the Arista cues for my own listening copies, though, since in many cases the Arista set has more sensible track breaks than the SE sets.
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An A/B comparison of the same cues (which happened as a matter of course during this project) is disheartening. It made me wonder what this music could sound like if the same attention that was placed into the Blue Box could be focused here. Unfortunately, the major chance for a remastering, the transfer of the titles from RCA to Sony, went by without preparing a new master ( ... )
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After comparing some individual tracks, I definitely hear the differences in "Into the Trap" and "Scout Walker Scramble"--the brass is far clearer in the Arista tracks (and for these scores, murky brass is death). There's also far more hiss in "Sail Barge Assault (Alternate)" in the SE set.
Perhaps I hadn't noticed many of these things because I took most of my typical-listening tracks from the Arista to avoid the humongous tracks. The "Battle of _____" tracks in particular are unnecessarily long, and in the case of Jedi arbitrarily broken up; the musical sequence in the film is continuous for, I think, the last forty-five minutes or so, and while I understand the desire to make the CD similarly continuous it makes the tracks hellishly difficult to listen to separately.
Reply
I think my versions are what you're looking for - all of those ridiculous "Battle of Hoth/Endor/Sleazy John's Greasebucket Planet" tracks are broken down into their components with the crappy sounding excerpts from Star Wars removed from the Jedi sequence. And all of the channel issues with the stuff from Empire have been resolved.
...I suspect that those Sennheisers are much less forgiving than any previous headphones you've ever used either...
I find it interesting that one of the things that escaped notice in all the liner notes is how the second half of the original Jedi album track of "Han Solo Returns (At the Court of Jabba the Hutt)" is the concert arrangement of "Jabba the Hutt" Williams wrote; the track on the "Special Edition" is the original intention, but even that was tracked over in the film.
Sorry for all of the edits.
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