Considering the production timelines at Universal vis a vis Warner Bros., it appears that Warners was in a race to compete with Universal’s Dracula. They jumped right into shooting The Mad Genius with the same two stars, John Barrymore and Marian Marsh, while Svengali was still being edited.

Dual-format releases could carry a variable-density optical stripe next to the film image and could as well be shipped with the option of synchronized Vitaphone 16” discs. It may be surprising to read that the sound on disc version had a slightly wider image aspect ratio, which one can suppose took advantage of the extra “real estate” allowed by the lack of an optical track. A double-system Vitaphone exhibition could use that slightly (<15%) wider aspect ratio to good visual advantage. Sound on film optical tracks provided a positive revolution for film making (recording, sound editing, and mixing) and distribution (single-system reels for the movie theater, without the baggage of separate 16” discs), but in doing so they caused a slight downgrade in picture image quality.