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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: Rerelease mono soundtracks in format 02?
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
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Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 06-22-2015 01:06 AM
I played this one 01 because it wasn't in our CP200 house - it was through a CP650, which can't do 02 (AFAIK).
quote: Marcel Birgelen I'm not sure how you could visually see the difference between a "perfectly ordinary, dual bilateral variable area" soundtrack and one encoded in Dolby A.
You couldn't. I was looking for any evidence of SVA, which would suggest strongly that the track had been Dolby-ized. But as you point out, there is no way to tell visually if a mono, bilateral VA signal is Dolby NR-encoded or not, just as there is no way to tell visually if a SVA track is A-type, SR or an aftermarket imitation of one or the other (e.g. Ultra Stereo or DTS Stereo, though I did once show an Indian print that had stereo unilateral tracks on it, which we can be pretty sure were not the work of Dolby Labs!).
I am aware that using 02 on older tracks is not recommended practice, but in some cases and to my subjective hearing, it can help. I always have a comparative listen between 01 and 02 first before deciding to use 02 with an audience in the house.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
![](http://www.film-tech.com/ubbmembers/534a.jpg)
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 06-22-2015 11:51 AM
quote: Jim Cassedy Yes, sometimes when a film is 'restored' the sound tracks are re-recorded in whatever noise reduction format is the 'standard' at the time of restoration.
That was what I was wondering about. The picture footage I looked at on the bench had evidence of at least two duplication stages on the edges of the print itself, includng a hard matte and frame pin markings from a Debrie Matipo - a slow, step contact printer that by the 1980s was only being used by archives and labs trying to duplicate elements that had serious defects (usually perf damage and/or shrunk). So this looked to me like more than just a new print from an IN that dated from the original release, but possibly less than what we would now consider a full-scale restoration. In short, it is typical of the sort of "duplication for preservation" that the big European archives did from the '70s to the early '00s.
That got me wondering if a similar approach had been taken with the audio, hence the Dolby stickers on the leaders. The opening credits state Westrex audio, which in 1956 would have meant that the final mix track neg would have been VD. Therefore, I'm wondering if they did something like play run an original, slightly shrunken final mix neg through an A-type noise reduction module at a fractionally slow speed to create the audio that was on the print I showed.
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Jim Cassedy
Phenomenal Film Handler
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Posts: 1661
From: San Francisco, CA
Registered: Dec 2006
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posted 06-22-2015 02:25 PM
quote: Gordon McLeod In fact the original Dolby mono systems had a cleanup mode built in
One of the screening rooms I regularly work at (not the one at Dolby, where I work most of the time) still has one of the original Dolby 364 (mono only) processors in the rack. I think these came out around 1973/1974.
I've never taken the cover off to see what's inside, but it has 3 modes: 1) "Dolby Film" - For Dolby type "A", no filter in circuit. 2) "New Print/Non Dolby" - Standard "Academy Curve" - no noise reduction. 3) "Clean Up" - For old/noisy prints. Academy curve plus 6db of "clean up noise reduction", whatever that was.
There is a 4th mode, called "service" which was basically a bypass mode.
These show up, reasonably priced, on e-bay occasionally. Next time I see one it might be fun, or possibly even useful, for me to buy one and try it out.
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