I have frankly never understood sound quality. If all the notes that were written end up sonically to some format then great. A CD sounds like a cassette, sounds like an 8 track ,sounds like an LP to me. The differances are really only artificial. The music to Jaws represents a man at his absolute best creative period. Who cares if there's a little hissing (or whatever poor quality sounds like), all the music is there to listen to, enjoy, study, etc. This website seems to have been created so that film music can be honored, discussed, and studied. The latter seems to be seriously lacking. Why not study how the rhythms corresponds to the film's own rhythm or pace? Why not study the orchestration, or even most obviously the harmony and melody? Who cares about a "pop" or a scratch in the re-re-re-release of a 1970 re-issue? To be bogged down by such minutae shows a serious lack of understanding and interest in the very matter for which it seems this website was created

I need to disagree with this....yes, I agree that people can be TOO picky about sound quality, but I also want to make this point:

The composer did not intend his/her music to be recorded on sub-standard equipment and heard on inferior systems. The point of composing the music is surely that it may be heard as the composer intended? With the sound quality that he wanted? Without using a full orchestra actually in the Cinema? I'm sure most composers did not WANT the hiss or pops when they were composing or conducting the orchestra/band, so why should the score not be honoured with the best available sound quality that can be offered at the time? I am fully in favour of "Digitally Re-Mastering" and CD Noise reduction etc etc because the music turns out the WAY IT WAS INTENDED TO BE HEARD....

There are exceptions to this - for example the original Sondtrack releases to Star Wars (Episode IV, if you will) had a distinct sound to them, as the music did in the film, which has disappeared somewhat on more recent releases after it has been tinkered with....

.....but in general - I LIKE listening to the music the way it was intended...