A Few Words About A few words about...™ Fantasia -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Konstantinos]

I'm sorry, can anyone explain the radical alterations in colors?

(not exact frames but you get the idea)


An example:

There are 2 options:

1) The original background was like in the bluray (sky blue) and it was ruined in VHS/DVD presentation. (I wonder how it managed to do that, and the foreground remained the same color as the bluray)

2) The background was recolored for Bluray presentation.


So, what's true?

 

[MoroderDejaVu]

It definitely sounds different, but is it more accurate to what was presented in 1940? I don't think the soundtrack saw a vinyl release until the mid 1950's so its pretty hard to tell from any releases in that format. Maybe the 1990 CD set would be a better gauge, from what I remember from the liner notes on the restoration done at that time.

Yes, I think the same. The 1990 CD set probably uses the same audio as the LaserDisc and is possibly the most accurate presentation of the original Fantasound.
I don't know if the echo is already altered there or not but in the 50s and 60s the Vinyl releases did have the echo and original stereo effects intact as intended.

 

[bigshot]

The wikipedia article tells the story of the various soundtracks for Fantasia...

Fantasia was re-released multiple times, with the full-length version making a return to theatres in 1946. Stereo sound was not restored until its 1956 release when it was also presented in SuperScope, an anamorphic widescreen format similar to CinemaScope. To create the stereo soundtrack the original tracks were transferred across telephone lines from the optical Fantasound equipment to the new magnetic recording equipment. These were housed in separate buildings and could not be brought together. This wire transfer resulted in some loss of treble response, but the copies retained the original dynamic range.
For Fantasia‍ '​s 1982 issue, the original recordings were abandoned all together and a completely new soundtrack was recorded using digital stereo technology in Dolby Stereo, conducted by Irwin Kostal, who later composed in Mickey's Christmas Carol (1983).
The original soundtrack returned when Fantasound was also recreated in Dolby Stereo for the film's 1990 theatrical release. Disney audio engineer Terry Porterspent six months restoring the Stokowski soundtrack. He used remastering technology to remove some 3,000 pops from the four-track magnetic copy from 1955, with tools also used on phasing, hiss and distortion. "I proposed to management that we could piece the soundtrack together...in a way that re-created the impact of the original roadshow. When we play it back...it exactly simulates the way their equipment played in the theaters...back then." The result, named "Fantasound 90," was only set up in two theaters, one each in New York City and Los Angeles.[26] The six-channel surround print that Porter created was also used as the basis for the master soundtrack of the film's DVD release in 2000.[10]

The 1956 stereo dub was the last one using all of the original Fantasound elements. That is the one released on LP. They brought in one of the original Fantasound sound mixers and did a stereo mix down for the theatrical re-release that year. After that, most of the original Fantasound elements decomposed.


As I understand it, subsequent remixes have been based on the 1956 mix down, sweetened and modified with reverbs and remaining stems of the original mix. Disney promoted the 1990 remix as being more like the original Fantasound, but it was really just a cleaned up re-channel of the 1956 mix, not a return to the Fantasound mix. It had long since deteriorated by then.

 

[Mark-P]

Bad news, Fantasia fans:
the 2010 restoration of the stereophonic Fantasound is a complete mess.
The Vinyl copies of the 50s, 60s and the LaserDiscs prodived much better sound reproduction of the original source.
The Blu-ray audio is digitally filtered / compressed and has strange digital noises, the original stereo field is altered too and they erased the echo of the orchestra.

This is absolutely not how Walt Disney wanted it to sound like. All the audio experts who gave the Blu-ray 4-5 points out of 5 must be deaf.

Listen here to a Vinyl vs Blu-ray comparison to hear how bad it really is:
https://soundcloud.com/xandreofficial/fantasia-1940-fantasound-comparison

Well first of all, a 2-channel 1969 vinyl record is in no way representative of Fantasound, and secondly, that soundcloud file you linked to is not representative of the Blu-ray's 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio.

 

[bigshot]

Listening to that soundcloud clip, it appears that a reverb was added to the 56 mix to make it sound less dry. Also, Sorcerer's Apprentice was recorded with completely different circumstances than the rest of the music. It was recorded in Los Angeles with a pickup orchestra, while the rest was recorded in Philadelphia with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Better to compare one of the other segments that are more representative of the sound of the movie as a whole.

 

[bigshot]

I believe the 1990 remix is different than the one on the blu-ray. The 1990 version (which was the one on the laserdisc) always sounded strangely phasey to me. The blu-ray was better. But I really like the 56 stereo track, which I think was on the laserdisc as an alternate track, if I remember correctly.

 

[davidmatychuk]

The laserdisc audio, decoded in Dolby Surround, still seems different to me than any subsequent audio track. The orchestra sound seemed to sweep through the room at times (during the latter part of the "Toccata and Fugue", for example) in a highly unnatural but fun way. My understanding at the time about that laserdisc surround audio track was that it was encoded in regular Dolby Surround (with a mono rear channel) to simulate the original 4-channel Fantasound effect. I do wish they'd tried to put that track in an HD audio format, just to be able to compare it to their (very good sounding) 5.1 remixes.

 

[t1g3r5fan]

Not to divert the discussion here, but has anybody heard any rumors/news regarding a potential 75th anniversary release of Fantasia on Blu-ray and DVD this year?

 

[MoroderDejaVu]

Listening to that soundcloud clip, it appears that a reverb was added to the 56 mix to make it sound less dry. Also, Sorcerer's Apprentice was recorded with completely different circumstances than the rest of the music. It was recorded in Los Angeles with a pickup orchestra, while the rest was recorded in Philadelphia with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Better to compare one of the other segments that are more representative of the sound of the movie as a whole.

The reverb / echo of the orchestra was always there. The 1957 and the 1969 Vinyl have a reverb too. For later releases they tried to erase it.

 

[Paul Penna]

The laserdisc audio, decoded in Dolby Surround, still seems different to me than any subsequent audio track. The orchestra sound seemed to sweep through the room at times (during the latter part of the "Toccata and Fugue", for example) in a highly unnatural but fun way...

That kind of thing was an intentional part of the Fantasia sound design. Fantasound wasn't intended to emulate a natural concert hall perspective and ambiance. The music was supposed to interact with the animation, including following the on-screen motion at times. I can hear that on the Blu-Ray in the Bach segment, and as just another example, in Sorcerer, particularly when Mickey is conducting the waves; during the whirlpool the music whirls around also.

 

[bigshot]

The reverb / echo of the orchestra was always there. The 1957 and the 1969 Vinyl have a reverb too. For later releases they tried to erase it.

No, I'm afraid you are incorrect about that. The tracks were recorded close miked in the basement of the Philadelphia concert hall. Each section of the orchestra was baffled off and recorded separately, strings, woodwinds, etc... Any echo was added *after the fact* using reverb. It wasn't natural reverb in the recording itself.


Disney's records in the 60s often added reverb for fake stereo effect.

 

[Vahan_Nisanain]

Check out these fanmade restoration attempts of Deems Taylor's voice.








To say that they do even better than Disney would be an understatement.

 

[dana martin]

not sure, if Deems Taylor will be heard, but for those in the Tidewater /Hampton Roads area the Virginia Symphony is going to be doing two days of live presentations of both Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 on May 2nd and 3rd



posting from their site


Fantasia...remind us of the emotional storytelling power of classical music and the wide spectrum of beauty and characters that animation can provide...in this ideal setting, with the music heard as it was meant to be — live." (Spinningplatters.com).Experience one of the crown jewels of feature animation as you view scenes from Walt Disney's groundbreaking 1940 film Fantasia and Disney's homage to the original, Fantasia 2000 — as the Virginia Symphony Orchestra performs the unforgettable classical score live! Relive the enchantment as Mickey Mouse dabbles in magic to Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice and see mythical unicorns and winged horses take flight to Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, played in high definition on the big screen. Gather friends, family and film fans from toddlers to seniors for this "spellbinding combination of animation and world-class musicianship...a treat for the ears as well as the eyes!" (Birmingham Mail).



think I know where my Sunday will be spent

 

[Lord Dalek]

Recordings of the Philadelphia Orchestra were pretty "dry" sounding well into the 1960s (as my fairly sizable pile of Columbia vinyl can attest to). If there's reverb, then something must have gone wrong to their accoustics during the Ormandy-era.

 

[bigshot]

Fantasia (with the exception of Sorcerer's Apprentice which was recorded in LA) were recorded in the BASEMENT of Philadelphia's symphony hall, not the hall itself. The reason for that was that they wanted to divide the orchestra up with acoustic baffles, so they could mike each part of the orchestra separately without spillover from other sections. They recorded in the basement because the hall itself was too live. The echo would make it difficult to isolate the parts.


The recording itself was bone dry. But on release, they added artificial reverb, most likely from putting a mike and a playback speaker in a resonance chamber (read stairwell) and mixing the echo back into the track. Every time the track was re-recorded, they added the reverberation in differently. The 56 stereo dub was fairly dry with lots of swooping stereo effects as things moved back and forth on the screen. They probably added some reverb to the LP release to soften to stereo effects a bit. When they did the remix in 1990 they used digital reverbs. And with the blu-ray release they went back into the 1990 mix and further modified it to make the rear channel content less phasey sounding and more dimensional.


Every single release of Fantasia has different reverb. You can't eliminate reverb from a recording if it has been mixed in, you can only add it. The original 1956 stereo Fantasound mix was the driest of all. That is the foundation that all of the remixes are built upon.

 

[RolandL]

The laserdisc audio, decoded in Dolby Surround, still seems different to me than any subsequent audio track. The orchestra sound seemed to sweep through the room at times (during the latter part of the "Toccata and Fugue", for example) in a highly unnatural but fun way. My understanding at the time about that laserdisc surround audio track was that it was encoded in regular Dolby Surround (with a mono rear channel) to simulate the original 4-channel Fantasound effect. I do wish they'd tried to put that track in an HD audio format, just to be able to compare it to their (very good sounding) 5.1 remixes.

I don't remember if it was the original LP or the laser disc (sorry both are gone) but I remember the music coming from the front channels moved to the back channels and vice/versa. It was like somone has control of it and said "OK, I'm going to move the sound to the rear of the auditorium, wait a few seconds, now I'm going to move it back to the front...". It didn't sound natural to me. It had to be the laser disc as I don't think the LP had the tracks to move the sound to the rear.

 

[davidmatychuk]

I don't remember if it was the original LP or the laser disc (sorry both are gone) but I remember the music coming from the front channels moved to the back channels and vice/versa. It was like somone has control of it and said "OK, I'm going to move the sound to the rear of the auditorium, wait a few seconds, now I'm going to move it back to the front...". It didn't sound natural to me. It had to be the laser disc as I don't think the LP had the tracks to move the sound to the rear.

The first time I played the "Fantasia" laserdisc, the sound was being processed by the home theatre system I got in 1990, which consisted of two small Koss powered front speakers and two even-smaller Koss rear speakers with a small Archer Dolby Surround processor/amplifier from Radio Shack. I fondly remember the rather misleading Radio Shack print ads for that amplifier, which included a little graphic of racing cars chasing each other around and around in a circle. Initially, I only had a VHS HiFi VCR and a stereo TV (which was much rarer at the time than you might remember - no one else I knew had one), so the first thing I played on my new set-up was Peter O'Toole singing "The Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo" from the VHS "Lawrence Of Arabia", the surround effect for which had been so memorable when I caught the theatrical release of the restoration the year before. The effect in my living room was great, and served splendidly (and frequently) as a One-Minute Demo for my new toy, no further explanation required. Anyhow, the surround effect on "Fantasia" was entertaining, if unnatural, with the orchestra moving front-to-back and side-to-side in a fairly gimmicky way. How much of that was bad processing or room acoustics remains a mystery to me. A couple of years later, when I upgraded my whole system to a Pro Logic amplifier with five large speakers and a room-shaking subwoofer, the "Fantasia" laserdisc surround sound remained active in much the same way. The more refined discrete 5.1 audio on the DVD and the Blu-Ray have never sounded like the laserdisc's two-channel surround audio to me.

 

[Charles Smith]

Okay, that does it. I must treat myself to a "Fantasia" comparison session. I've got the LPs (the ones in the triple gatefold album), the LD box set, the DVD anthology box set, and the BD.


I suspect I've never actually played the records, but I always had to have the set. And I'm pretty sure I haven't had the laserdisc in the player since before I had a surround system. So both of these will be interesting in that respect.


The good thing about these four items: I can play them all at once! I can sync them up well enough for direct comparison, the only annoying thing being the HDMI handshake delay on each change. (And I really do find it aggravating. That precious half second or so holds a lot of aural memory!)

 

[Charles Smith]

I do recall knowing that the crazy directional stuff, as artificial as it sounds to us now, was part of the original plan.

I wish I could remember what the film sounded like when I last saw it in a theater as a kid. That was the 1963 re-release, and it was the version that "expanded to widescreen" for the musical segments and reverted to 1.37 for the Deems Taylor segments. (And I thought that was so cool then.) (Hey. 1963. Please forgive.)

 

[AnthonyClarke]

I'll forgive you. But I can't answer for Bob .......