Geez, the STAR WARS soundtrack! Has this EVER sounded good on LP or CD?

I completely agree with you.

It's unfortunate that what we would need to hear them sounding great today are engineers who are top-class at recording acoustic music, at a studio good at recording acoustic music. What we have are experts at artifice and trendy producers with ears of tin awash in bleach manning computerized sound manipulation devices.

Being an enthusiast of pre-digital-era music as well as music to the present day, it's situation that I'm terribly tired of, as you can imagine. We might rightly ask why an already recorded tape that already sounds great can't get released properly, but with these people involved and their "services" on offer, it's usually a credit to how great the recording was that it doesn't sound even worse.

It's hard to fathom how so much of that business could come to this, but it's been this way for decades now and it's not looking like things will get any better in the foreseeable future either.

 

From memory that Sony sounded pretty crappy too...



So far the best recordings I've heard of this music have been from the old RCA Classic Film Scores series.

RCA 60767 STAR WARS - RETURN OF THE JEDI



RCA 2698 JOHN WILLIAMS: Star Wars/Close Encounters of the Third Kind



Williams + Gerhardt + Wilkinson = unbeatable

 

Geez, that cover art makes them look like bootlegs... (yes I know they aren't).

 

Here are the FilmTracks reviews for...

A New Hope:
http://www.filmtracks.com/titles/star_wars.html

The Empire Strikes Back:
http://www.filmtracks.com/titles/empire.html

Return Of The Jedi:
http://www.filmtracks.com/titles/jedi.html

They each cover the complete history of the soundtracks' releases.

 

Interesting info on those links but shoot the web designer.

A few minutes of reading white on black and its for the eyes.



Yes, the cover art was a bit low rent, the rest of the CFS series wasn't much better.

Makes up for it by having (generally) great sound and very informative notes with each release.

As a collection of real film music the RCA Classic Film Score series has yet to be equalled.

The rest of the series is covered here
http://classicalcdreview.com/cfs.htm

 

Hey, Chris Malone - it's your time to shine!

That said, the 4-CD Anthology from '93 is the best digital version of the original scores. Not as complete, true, but it packs in a lot and sounds great, even if a few tape sources are somewhat dubious. And it has all that health tape hiss you guys seem to love so much.

Additionally, as noted a few posts above me, the trilogy of discs by Charles Gerhardt sound PHENOMENAL. They're concert suites of each movie, which are must-haves in their own right since each concert version was arranged by Williams himself. An entire 3+ minute suite of "Han Solo and the Princess?" PRICELESS.

And, as someone else noted in this thread, the MFSL of Zubin Mehta's "Star Wars" concert suite is fantastic as well. I picked that one up on vinyl not too long ago.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I've got all the original LP releases as well, and "Star Wars" has always sounded like balls. "Return of the Jedi," however, is pretty good (if not short). It was cut by Howie Weinberg.

 

Hey Steve,
Next time you are in the same room as these tapes... or a buddy has them... or you know, whatever, how about you record them... store them... and someday put them anonymously on the internets so that these things still exist? Would love to hear all that we've been missing.

 

There are _so_ many John Williams oeuvres that could be expanded or complete, they would be incredible and very large sellers. Temple of Doom, Hook, Last Crusade, the 3 prequel scores (that Ultimate Phantom Menace edition was a travesty), The Lost World, A.I., etc.. etc...


Even the DCC Raiders of the Lost Ark has about 20 minutes missing, it's not entirely "complete". Same for E.T., a true complete recording would not fit on a single CD.

 

I was under the impression that Raiders was only missing a couple minutes of random tidbits, like "Government Men"? What accounts for the full twenty minutes?

 

A petition to Lucasfilm would be of any help?
A couple of questions to Steve:

1- How good you think the master tapes of these soundtracks are?
2- How you ever been on the same room with any of these master tapes? (just curious about it).

 

Not so. The sony discs are the exact same (non-dsd) masters as the rca discs.

 

Not so, the 1997 and 2004 DSD "remasters" are very very similar, but not the same. I don't think the 2004 releases are really remastered, in my opinion they are sourced from the 1997 mastering, only re-equed.

 

In my post I only mentioned the two RCA CFS CD's, the third CD was released by Varese Sarabande after RCA discontinued the CFS series.

VARESE SARABANDE VSD 5353 WILLIAMS: The Empire Strikes Back

This one was engineered by Brian Culverhouse, sounds very good, albeit more digital than the earlier Wilkinson recordings.

 

I agree...glad I haven't gotten rid of the 4-cd set....plus bits of it are edited differently...
What a bummer when I first heard the LP. Plus it was noisy.

 

<- ..."Close Encounters Of The Third Kind"...

 

Steve, you may want to give the RSO Japanese 2 CD set catalog # P58W 20014/5 a listen if you get the opportunity.

 

Have discovered this thread. Not sure what can be added by me other than that I tried to accurately document the recording of this classic score.

It has been most interesting to learn the thoughts of forum members about the various issues of the score. In terms of aliveness I prefer the 1993 anthology box set. Great dynamic range on that one -- plus the artwork was spectacular. In terms of completeness the 1997 edition is as good as it gets.

Would be fascinated to read additional comments from Steve.

 

Yes, allow me to amplify your praise. I think Empire's underscoring, and the way it's choreographed with the sound effects and film editing in certain scenes, is an object lesson in tight filmmaking.

I don't know about the missing 20 minutes in Raiders, but for ET, there is at least a music-only track on the DVD. I've been meaning to rip this but haven't gotten around to it, mainly because I love the original soundtrack suites so much.

 

Star Wars

But not in the Dolby Surround Versions - both these had earlier and better versions.

 

All three of the original soundtracks for the Star Wars Trilogy would make superb candidates for the Steve Hoffman DCC HDCD remaster treatment.

Dear God of Soundtracks......

 

I have a 2-cd set made in W.Germany by PDO.

maybe the same one Steve is talking about ? was not impressed with the sound.

how can it be an old pressing of this was not done well ?

 

So the two disc set I saw this morning with a holographic cover is NOT a Multichannel SA-CD ?

It only had a DSD logo on the back.



I cut and pasted this part;

"The heart of this collection is the original musical soundtrack, composed and conducted by John Williams and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. The recordings have been newly remastered using Sony Music's DSD (Direct Stream Digital) multichannel surround sound.

In addition, each two-disc set comes complete with new exclusives. The packaging features dramatic 3-D lenticular images, as well as some never-before-seen images from each of the films. Each soundtrack comes with a movie poster foldout, created especially ..."

 

The sound of that boxset is superb!

It is the one I reach to every time I want to listen to the scores.

I won't get rid of the 1997 remasters since they have the extra missing bits but I certainly don't like their sound as much.

 

Fascinating!
Thanks for the link, Jmie, there's a wealth of details about the recording I always wanted to know!