Someone Pointed Out an Obnoxious Sound Effect Alteration in the "Complete Unaltered Trilogy" Version of Star Wars and Years Later I Can't Unhear It
Several years ago I came across a website that broke down the differences between the Star Wars special editions and the "Original Unaltered Trilogy", as fans apparently call the bonus disc versions of the theatrical cuts that came with that one trilogy box set around twenty years ago. Apparently even the nominally unaltered versions have some changes from the original original theatrical prints though (c.f. the fan restorations, Project 4K1977 etc.). I can't find that site again, but there's one sound effect change I can never unhear...
It's in Star Wars, AKA Episode IV: A New Hope, when Luke and Han are in the Death Star cellblock and their cover gets blown. For about twenty seconds, starting at 1:12:13, Luke shoots a variety of fixtures...
...and when they explode they sound like glass breaking (I can't recall whether these sound effects are original or revised), except for this one light/camera-looking thing at 1:12:27 that sounds like dinnerplates shattering:

It's just really wrong-sounding and hard to unhear, and a particularly bizarre alteration to make...especially since the last light that explodes (1:12:34) doesn't seem to make a sound at all...

One more note about the Original Unaltered Trilogy...as my source that I can't find pointed out, the picture quality is kind of bad and also jittery on account of the release being a (spitefully?) poor laserdisc transfer, except for the title crawl that apparently was taken from, as I remember, a film print.
But Star Wars remains great. I came to really enjoy it again last year after Solo having broken the camel's back for a while (Solo was pretty good - I would take it over Rogue One - but enough is enough). The way I did this was by adopting the minimalist position that there's only one Star Wars movie - it came out in 1977 and it's called Star Wars. Just nice and simple, nobody's related to anybody or anything else. There's also one TV show, the Clone Wars microseries, and it remains phenomenal - although Andor sounds really good, especially for using its platform politically/consciously. There's just a lot of Star Wars...I didn't even know about the maclunkey cut on Disney+ until I watched a Han vs Greedo supercut...

