Like all these forums, opinions differ. I like the sound to be of equal quality to the picture where possible. As said, I've experienced problems myself with pasted striped prints especially after Dereks expertise disappeared. On these pasted problematic prints, you get what you get, some I have are fine others have got some patchy sound issues especially on the tiny 0.4mm balance track.

I would be interested to try a SH30 just to see if the sound on my optical prints could sound a little better than they do but from all three variants of the ST1200's I've had, I haven't found any of them that match up to the reproduction from a good mag track.

I have tried Optical films many times, unfortunately it didn't do it for me at all. Different films, on different machines and with an amp, i have to say no.

I understand there is a big difference between the quality of optical Super 8 and 16mm. The 16mm film I was watching last night was way better than the majority of my Super 8 magnetic prints.