Evlar said:
Sleeping Beauty 50th Anniversary Platinum Edition: Stunning. This is a great movie perfected. Perhaps only the first few audiences watching the film in major venues in 1958 ever saw it in such pristine condition, and it is certain the audio performance they heard did not match this. Sleeping Beauty is plausibly Disney's pinnacle achievement in the art of animation and this is the only home video release that does the film justice.
heh.. glad you liked it.. but regarding the bolded part of the quote, watch the supplemental material

sleeping beauty was distributed to capable theaters with a 6 track magnetic audio track. 4 fronts and 2 sides. the soundtrack had to be mixed in Germany because it was the only place the had the equipment to pull it off. and considering this soundtrack was mastered from the same soundtrack I'm talking about, it sounded pretty damn good to some audiences back in 1959.
Never underestimate how far ahead of the curve Walt was in regards to the movie industry. I would honestly say no one changed the technical aspect of movie making more than he did, and George Lucas isn't even a close second.
edit - and lest I not back up what I'm talking about, some of Disney's movie firsts:
First synchronized sound in an animated short (Steamboat Willie 1928)
First color animated short (Silly Symphonies 1933)
First animated feature (Snow White 1937)
First use of stereophonic sound in a feature (Fantasia 1940)
First use of multi-plane camera (Bambi 1942)
First movie done in widescreen (Sleeping Beauty 1959. It was released 6 years after the first cinemascope movie, however began production in widescreen before The Robe was released and all records show it was started in techniarama)
and apparently according to the sleeping beauty features, also had the first ever widescreen showing on television (lol.. black bars) and first ever stereophonic sound on television (through additional use of am and fm radios).