Sonograms
Comparing Star Wars Music Releases

Analysis by Chris Malone

Introduction

A sonogram or spectrogram is a graph that plots the frequency distribution of an audio signal over time.

The graphs below show the distribution of frequencies within a selection of music cues from Star Wars and Return of the Jedi. These sonograms are contained within the Star Wars 30th Anniversary Listening Test and Recording the Star Wars Saga documents respectively. They are presented here individually and at a higher screen resolution to enable more critical analysis.

It is important to note that these sonograms were generated by sourcing audio material directly from their original compact discs and adjusting for replay gain. No further adjustments have been made. The sonograms are scientific measurements and confirm why certain Star Wars saga music releases sound the way they do.

Happy listening!

Sonogram of the last half of "Ben's Death / TIE Fighter Attack" from the original PolyGram 2CD release

Sonogram of the last half of "Ben's Death / TIE Fighter Attack" from the 4CD Anthology box set release Note high frequency extension well above 15 KHz and up to 20 KHz

Sonogram of the last half of "Ben's Death / TIE Fighter Attack" from the 2CD Special Edition release Note lack of high frequency extension above 15 KHz on left channel and smearing between 12 and 14 KHz

Sonogram for the right channel of Return of the Jedi's "Into the Trap" adjusted to replay gain Left image is sourced from the 4CD box set. Right image is sourced from the 2CD Special Edition issue Note the absence of upper frequencies above 14 KHz on the 2CD release

Sonogram for the left channel of Return of the Jedi's "First Ewok Battle" adjusted to replay gain Left image is sourced from the 4CD box set. Right image is sourced from the 2CD Special Edition issue Note the absence of upper frequencies above 14 KHz on the 2CD release

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Textual and image content © copyright 2005-2007 Chris Malone. All rights reserved in all media. Not to be reproduced without permission.
This page was last updated 3 October 2007.