Halloween 4K UHD (1978)

[mad_max2000]

Originally Posted by cuzzin

Three more weeks to release day. (Silver Shamrock!) Hopefully less for Shout! pre-orders.

Fingers crossed! Although I just saw their post on twitter about the "Alone in the Dark" blu ray not getting the wide release today that they'd planned which has me nervous

[BluProofie]

Just got a response after asking for more info on the mono track:

Unfortunately, the producers of the release couldn't go into depth about their choice on this. They typically strive to use the best possible source material, so this may have been the best they could arrange given the rights and access.

I think it doesn’t really mean much since the customer service reps probably don’t know anything, but I thought it was worth posting for that last part about “access”.

[JCRW82]

Originally Posted by BluProofie

Just got a response after asking for more info on the mono track:



I think it doesn’t really mean much since the customer service reps probably don’t know anything, but I thought it was worth posting for that last part about “access”.

That statement is a bit off and somewhat contradictory. So they basically got denied the access to either or both the 35mm Mag Tape and the Criterion Laserdisc mono mix and they are muzzled from being able to provide detailed information. The latter I understand, but to be denied the Original 35mm Mag Tapes from the same company that gave them full access to the OCN is baffling. Yet at the same time they state it was the Shout Factory producers choice on the material they used. How can it be their choice if they are denied material outright?

[BluProofie]

Originally Posted by JCRW82

That statement is a bit off and somewhat contradictory. So they basically got denied the access to either or both the 35mm Mag Tape and the Criterion Laserdisc mono mix and they are muzzled from being able to provide detailed information. The latter I understand, but to be denied the Original 35mm Mag Tapes from the same company that gave them full access to the OCN is baffling. Yet at the same time they state it was the Shout Factory producers choice on the material they used. How can it be their choice if they are denied material outright?

Like I said, I wouldn’t really take this as an official statement. They likely don’t know what happened.

[JCRW82]

Originally Posted by BluProofie

Like I said, I wouldn’t really take this as an official statement. They likely don’t know what happened.

I'm amazed they said as much as they did. I think the summary of all the responses is that we are getting the filtered mono track and they are not going to explain their decision why, admitting there are better audio sources available.

[cuzzin]

I think it's pretty funny how we're being bombarded with talk about the "filtered mono" all of a sudden. Go back more than two weeks in this thread, and there was barely a peep made about it. The majority of the people now complaining had no idea there was even an issue with the previous mono track. It is far too late in the process to think your complaining to Shout! Factory is going to accomplish anything now. If this were the priority that people now make it out to be, it would have come up sooner and Shout! might have actually done something about it, as they did for Halloween 4.

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by Matt89

Sure, but I'll take "rough sounding" original mono over those garbage remixes any day of the week and twice on Sunday. I'm not being an apologist for Shout as the other tracks shouldn't be out of sync if they had proper QC, but the remixes suck so much balls that the mono is the only audio track on that disc that matters.

~Matt

Oh, I'm a big supporter of original mono tracks. It's just unfortunate that the one included on Black Christmas is so rough, especially with the dialogue. Showing it to a friend who has never seen it before, I can't lie - the 5.1 sounds way, way better - the dialogue is crisp and doesn't have any siblance issues, and it overall sounds much better. Sadly, several original bits of sound are replaced which is frustrating.

[JCRW82]

Originally Posted by cuzzin

I think it's pretty funny how we're being bombarded with talk about the "filtered mono" all of a sudden. Go back more than two weeks in this thread, and there was barely a peep made about it. The majority of the people now complaining had no idea there was even an issue with the previous mono track. It is far too late in the process to think your complaining to Shout! Factory is going to accomplish anything now. If this were the priority that people now make it out to be, it would have come up sooner and Shout! might have actually done something about it, as they did for Halloween 4.

I see discussion about the mono track going back to July when the 4K releases were announced. Was it as heavily discussed as the H4 & H5 stereo tracks missing from the spec sheet? No. But the issue was certainly discussed back then and people notified Shout Factory of it. My guess to the difference in action between Halloween and H4/H5 is that SF were already actively looking into and finding the best sources they could for the H4/H5 stereo tracks. They covered themselves by not including the stereo mixes in the specs in case they were unable to obtain them.

For Halloween they already had the filtered mono track and I would imagine the overall work was completed around July when they announced the new release. By the time they were made aware of the issues with the track it was already too late. But they now know that next time they need to work on finding a better source for that mix. This certainly isn't going to be the last time Halloween is re-issued... 45th Anniversary is just around the corner.

[Markgway]

Translation:

Unfortunately, the producers of the release couldn't go into depth about their choice on this.

They don't have an excuse.

They typically strive to use the best possible source material, so this may have been the best they could arrange given the rights and access.

They didn't know.

[BluProofie]

Originally Posted by Markgway

Translation:



They don't have an excuse.



They didn't know.

It’s literally from a customer service rep, you can’t take that as confirmation of anything. I highly doubt they would’ve used the original material for 5 but not H1 if given the chance.

[Christian Muth]

Originally Posted by vailsy

You could go back a step further than that to the original 'final mix' multitrack tapes (or first duplicates of those) which made that mono track. Those tapes must be in a storage facility somewhere .. since Carpenter is such a big music/audio fan maybe he has the original tapes

They must have had them when this dodgy 5.1 mix was made in order to access the stems

It then requires starting again, and re-restoring that original source .. that would be the absolute best scenario

As per the notes on the Criterion Laserdisc, they used the 35mm DME (Dialogue/Music/Effects all separate from one another) mag track, which IS the earliest generation when it comes to a motion picture sound mix in the analog era. Obviously, a new, modern analog-to-digital conversion could potentially eek some more quality out of that 35mm DME master- provided that they haven't deteriorated over the past couple decades since Criterion sourced them- but there is no "earlier source" for a movie's final sound mix than the DMEs in the analog era.

Chris

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by BluProofie

It’s literally from a customer service rep, you can’t take that as confirmation of anything. I highly doubt they would’ve used the original material for 5 but not H1 if given the chance.

Then why hasn't somebody come in and verified it to put us all at ease?

[BluProofie]

Originally Posted by mar3o

Then why hasn't somebody come in and verified it to put us all at ease?

How would I know?

[JCRW82]

Originally Posted by mar3o

Then why hasn't somebody come in and verified it to put us all at ease?

They're not going to: "Unfortunately, the producers of the release couldn't go into depth about their choice on this."

Either they don't want to talk about why they used the filtered source, or they have a gag order that prevents them from getting into specifics. We will ultimately be left with the filtered mono track for this release and they are not going to correct it. Best case scenario is we wait another couple of years for the next reissue to see if they address the audio sources by going back to the master tapes. We were lucky enough to get the details we got for H4 & H5 and that's it.

[BNex99]

Originally Posted by cuzzin

I think it's pretty funny how we're being bombarded with talk about the "filtered mono" all of a sudden. Go back more than two weeks in this thread, and there was barely a peep made about it. The majority of the people now complaining had no idea there was even an issue with the previous mono track. It is far too late in the process to think your complaining to Shout! Factory is going to accomplish anything now. If this were the priority that people now make it out to be, it would have come up sooner and Shout! might have actually done something about it, as they did for Halloween 4.

I can only speak for myself, but the "filtered mono" track on H1 is easier for me to live with. Even if it's compressed, it at least genuinely represents the original audio design, with none of the added sound effects from the late-90s remix (as were heard in the "mono" track on a couple of previous releases).

On the other hand, the remix H4 has been stuck with for the past 20 years is a disaster, and not at all reflective of the work put in by the original sound team. For me, that was the more important issue to make sure Shout was aware of.

[Jay Mammoth]

Originally Posted by BNex99

I can only speak for myself, but the "filtered mono" track on H1 is easier for me to live with. Even if it's compressed, it at least genuinely represents the original audio design, with none of the added sound effects from the late-90s remix (as were heard in the "mono" track on a couple of previous releases).

On the other hand, the remix H4 has been stuck with for the past 20 years is a disaster, and not at all reflective of the work put in by the original sound team. For me, that was the more important issue to make sure Shout was aware of.

Same, never even heard the laser disc so don’t know what I’m missing. But the mono on the boxed set sounds great to me.

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by JCRW82

They're not going to: "Unfortunately, the producers of the release couldn't go into depth about their choice on this."

Either they don't want to talk about why they used the filtered source, or they have a gag order that prevents them from getting into specifics. We will ultimately be left with the filtered mono track for this release and they are not going to correct it. Best case scenario is we wait another couple of years for the next reissue to see if they address the audio sources by going back to the master tapes. We were lucky enough to get the details we got for H4 & H5 and that's it.

Arrow, Vinegar Syndrome, Synapse - they all tell us the sources used, the methods they used - that's my point. With Shout it's all secretive and we often never have any idea what they used for sources, even after it's released. There's no transparency.

[mar3o]

Originally Posted by BNex99

I can only speak for myself, but the "filtered mono" track on H1 is easier for me to live with. Even if it's compressed, it at least genuinely represents the original audio design, with none of the added sound effects from the late-90s remix (as were heard in the "mono" track on a couple of previous releases).

On the other hand, the remix H4 has been stuck with for the past 20 years is a disaster, and not at all reflective of the work put in by the original sound team. For me, that was the more important issue to make sure Shout was aware of.

But what's the point of the original audio design when it's filtered and sounds muffled? I mean I do get the point, but there's no denying a heavily filtered audio track like that does not exactly stay faithful to how they originally designed it. Like Black Christmas, sure it contains the original mono, but the track is damaged and sounds pretty rough - to the point where I wouldn't exactly call it the original sound design, considering the siblance issues.

It's all a matter of preference, but at some point there's something to be said for a crystal clear remix vs a muffled original audio track. But I certainly dislike when those remixes aren't respectful of the original source material.

[MassiveMovieBuff]

I don't know. This whole mono track issue makes no sense to me.

1. Why wouldn't SF go the extra mile and get the best resources available to do the best mono track they could?

2. Why would they be denied those resources?

3. When SF first released Black Christmas the mono track was standard Dolby Digital. When they did the replacements not only did they clean up the majority of the horrible sibilance issue but they also made it lossless to boot. If they already made the Halloween discs with the 2014 mono track what's preventing them from going back and correcting them if they weren't initially aware of the filtering issue?

I can't wrap my head around this.

[hungrywives]

Originally Posted by MassiveMovieBuff

If they already made the Halloween discs with the 2014 mono track what's preventing them from going back and correcting them if they weren't initially aware of the filtering issue?

If we're all loud enough they might. At least I hope so. Shout has a good history of going back and fixing audio issues. That's why I don't understand the people here who are saying, "eh, the 2014 track is good enough." Why not at least put it out there that you want this set to have the best presentation it can? You have nothing to lose. If you don't care about quality why buy the UHD? Why even look at this thread in the first place? Are you just here for the movie quotes?