Terminator 2 1993 Special Edition LaserDisc custom home remix analysis
For the 1993 Special Edition release on VHS and LaserDisc, T2 received a custom home remix supervised by the original sound designer Gary Rydstrom.
LaserDisc Covers:
About the remix:
Source: 2000 Ultimate DVD Chapter 37 Restoration
Source: 2000 Ultimate DVD Chapter 37 Restoration
LaserDisc mix was in matrixed Dolby Surround PCM 2.0.
Waveform:
Spectrogram:
Comparison with 2015 Blu-ray DTS Headphone X 2.0 track:
The 2015 Lionsgate Blu-ray features a DTS Headphone:X 2.0 soundtrack encoded in a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 container. It is the highest-quality commercially released lossless presentation of the 1993 Special Edition stereo mix currently available on home video.
LaserDisc (top) and Blu-ray (bottom)
LaserDisc (top) and Blu-ray (bottom)
Conclusion:
The comparison reveals that the LaserDisc audio is a significantly superior, more dynamic master, while the 2015 Blu-ray track has been heavily compressed and filtered. In the waveforms, the Blu-ray track (bottom) displays severe brickwall limiting, where the loudest peaks have been artificially boosted and flattened out into a solid block, destroying the natural dynamic range preserved in the peaks of the LaserDisc track (top). Looking at the spectrograms, the LaserDisc track contains rich high-frequency detail extending all the way up to 22 kHz, whereas the Blu-ray track shows a massive loss of high-frequency energy above 16 kHz, appearing much darker and heavily muffled by comparison. Overall, the Blu-ray release suffers from modern audio degradation via aggressive dynamic compression and low-pass filtering.
