William Hopper

The older track sounds significantly more natural. The WAC BD uses a new mastering which sounds much worse. A lot of the dialogue sounds off, sort of echoey, garbled or even artifacted. Its overzealous click removal also erased some sounds. Its only positive is a new EQ that brings out the bass more making some of the score more effective.

It seems that the new mastering likely uses AI "enhancement" or some other form of aggressive filtering, resulting in extended peaks despite losing real high end detail (most pronounced on sample 3).

Samples (WAC is mislabeled as UHD)

Commentary is mono on the Blu-rays and panned stereo on NTSC DVD (different channels for each speaker).

Lobster Films Blu-ray is a newer master but with terrible encoding and brightness levels. May still be better

4K restoration from Original Camera Negative