Mike Frank writes: >Also, if the discussion was about the Criterion Hitchcock films then the >soundtrack was not rerecorded: These have the original soundtrack which >has been digitally restored/remastered. An example of partial soundtrack >re-recording would be the restoration (or maybe "restoration") of >"Vertigo" which had newly recorded sound effects. This is an issue of confusion over terminology, methinks. The verb 'remaster' refers to a technical impossibility. There is only one 'master', which is the disc, film stock or magnetic tape which receives the original recording from a microphone. The issue is made more complex when because all of these 'masters' have to be 're-recorded' onto subsequent carriers during the editing process, that will result in a 'final mix' which is the copy from which cinema release prints are derived. In the days of analogue sound recording the issue of re-recording was an important one because of a phenomenon known as 'generational [or replicative] fading'. Simply put, this means that you cannot copy an analogue waveform (be that sound or picture) with 100% accuracy and so any such copy will be slightly degraded from the element it derives from. With digital that doesn't have to apply. It is possible to copy a digital recording number for number and make a 100% accurate copy without any fading. The equipment advertisers will tell you that this always guaranteed to happen - in practice, a lot of cheap domestic equipment can sometimes fail to read all the data accurately and thus will introduce errors into the copies they make. Anyone who has copied audio CDs using their home PC will know from experience that every now and again, one comes out with an unplayable track or two. So even using digital technology, the idea of a 'remaster' is not safe. That is why professional technicians use the term 're-record' and leave 'remaster' to the PR agencies who design the covers for the video of 'Apocalypse Now - the second assistant foley artist's continuity adviser's cut.' while i agree with the ethical/aesthetic point leo makes it's simply not true that good modern amps produce hiss when they can't find a signal . . . rather the hiss is almost certainy there in the original recording but was inaudible to listeners because neither the amps nor the speakers of the time were capable of reproducing it . . . OK that was a simplification - it will 'produce' hiss by reading the latent coercivity of the magnetic oxide, shellac pressing or variable area/density waveform/opacity of processed filmstock in the unrecorded frequency bands and then processing that as if it were a signal. It's not just that older playback equipment was unable to reproduce it: broadly speaking, older recording equipment was unable to pick it up (although there are one or two exceptions to this, e.g. the 42mm Tri-Ergon format, which reputedly had a response curve of around 2-14,000KhZ). L ------------------------------------ Dr. Leo Enticknap Director, Northern Region Film and Television Archive School of Law, Arts and Humanities Room M616, Middlesbrough Tower University of Teesside Middlesbrough TS1 3BA United Kingdom Tel. 01642 384022 Brainfryer: 07710 417383 ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu