Japanese Stereo Experiment

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Attitudefan
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Japanese Stereo Experiment

Post by Attitudefan » Fri Dec 29, 2017 12:52 am

Hello Everyone,

I have come across a video where someone used the isolated tracks from the english 5.1 surround, and alongside the Japanese track, attempted to create a more fleshed out stereo experience for the original series.

Take a look here: https://youtu.be/w4so6sKzifw See 1:47 of the video for the Stereo edit.

It is somewhat related to my other topic regarding the ripping, isolating and muting certain tracks from the soundtrack.

I wonder if this would be a project that is possible to do by people who have the actual tracks, like Funimation? They already panned and altered the SFX track from the Japanese masters, so I think, with time, money, and talented people, this could be done alongside doing a level set-like remaster.

What are all your thoughts?
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Kuwabara
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Re: Japanese Stereo Experiment

Post by Kuwabara » Fri Dec 29, 2017 1:50 am

This is a really neat idea, but I doubt Funimation themselves would go through the effort. Even just the 5.1 elements overlaid onto their current mono Japanese masters could be a marked improvement.
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Robo4900
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Re: Japanese Stereo Experiment

Post by Robo4900 » Fri Dec 29, 2017 10:46 am

Well, for starters, layering the M&E tracks on top of the Japanese original broadcast audio and processing it all so it all fits together is probably the way to get the best out of the afforementioned Japanese original broadcast audio due to the nature of oldschool, domestic, analogue recordings, and the quirks of those recordings in particular. And using that chance to mess with the audio and get a rough stereo, or even 5.1, mix is actually also a really good idea; the BBC had quite a lot of success doing so with the recent reconstructed Doctor Who: The Power Of The Daleks, for which the only significant surviving materials aside from production photos and scripts was the original(Mono) audio mix on a reel-to-reel tape captured from the 1966 equivalent of a TV's headphone jack.
And, of course, GT was already in stereo starting from episode 5. Hell, Funimation may even already have GT's master audio in stereo; the oldschool D2 tape masters of GT would have contained that audio, and Funimation do definitely have those masters in some form, so if the D2 masters Funimation were sent contain Japanese audio, it'd be the already-stereo master audio.

Problem is though, the majority of fans Funi are marketing to are the ones who want the dub track, many of whom watch with the US score, and don't really care about anything else. And the Japanese track's fans will be overjoyed just to have the Japanese original broadcast audio, so... Given their past history, I'm not sure Funi will go that extra mile. And given Toei's disinterest in the aesthetic qualities of Dragon Ball in general, there's no way they'd do it. Hell, Toei refused the broadcast audio, and they didn't bother to use the already stereo master audio of GT that they very clearly still have for the Dragon Boxes, outside of the TV special, which is only that way because they used the D2 master for the video on that one(Which may even be by mistake; they probably just couldn't locate the film materials for the GT special).

My prediction on the future of Dragon Ball releases from Funimation is that Funi will make a major push into streaming by putting up the Dragon Box video masters for the entire run(But Z would only use it if you select the Japanese w/ subs option), and putting the available broadcast audio in for the Japanese track(Possibly the(Stereo) master audio for GT too). I don't think the Japanese broadcast audio would get any special mastering; probably some light EQing and noise reduction, certainly none of the stereo or 5.1 expansion we're discussing.

But, who knows, Funi may surprise us.
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Re: Japanese Stereo Experiment

Post by HakkaiBills93 » Fri Dec 29, 2017 11:06 am

i already listened to this video on youtube and it's not bad result at all even if this can sound strange sometimes , this kind of things can surely be done as funi should allways have the strictly silent japanese bgm tracks and sfx separately and i read here one time Toei already have used this kind of "remix"

the best should have be to keep only vocals from the japanese ba eq it a little and use the others remaining tracks

talking about it did anyone notice that funi 5.1 audios for DB ep1 have a differrent version of the final bgm playing in the ep than in the japanese classic audio? i already tried an hybrid tracks like that and it make me notice this differrence

wonder why there is such a differrence about this bgm

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Re: Japanese Stereo Experiment

Post by Vorige Waffe » Sat Dec 30, 2017 7:54 pm

Well at the risk of drawing attention to myself, those are my uploads, if the similar names don't give it away. I'm glad you enjoy it, though in hindsight I have mixed feelings in how they sound such as [spoiler]you can still hear some of Funimation's dub voices in the Goku vs. Vegeta example.[/spoiler]

As for Funimation or Toei doing this officially, I would doubt it; as Robo mentioned, Toei in particular doesn't care at all when it comes to having any sort of reference quality with the show's sound (despite GT's aforementioned stereo track still very much around, as recent as the show's re-broadcast on Fuji TV), and I doubt Funimation could pull it off without Toei's permission, nor would they want to spend additional money and hours having to touch up Dragon Ball Z again. Even though they have professional software and equipment (for reference, these stereo experiments I did were done in Adobe Encore and Sony Vegas, neither of which are used in professional capacities), you would have to do a crap ton of manual re-syncing and EQ-ing to make it sound presentable.

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Re: Japanese Stereo Experiment

Post by Robo4900 » Sun Dec 31, 2017 12:10 pm

Vorige Waffe wrote:I doubt Funimation could pull it off without Toei's permission
Toei really don't care. If they did, Funi wouldn't have been allowed to do any of their attempts at doing HD versions of Z or the movies/specials.
Vorige Waffe wrote:nor would they want to spend additional money and hours having to touch up Dragon Ball Z again. Even though they have professional software and equipment (for reference, these stereo experiments I did were done in Adobe Encore and Sony Vegas, neither of which are used in professional capacities), you would have to do a crap ton of manual re-syncing and EQ-ing to make it sound presentable.
While I think you're overestimating how much time, and effort would be required, it is quite a lot. Though really, the main thing is, it would be quite the investment to pay for this processing to be done. I imagine it could very well be done, but I don't think Funi would bother doing anything more than some basic EQing and noise reduction on the broadcast audio as-is. Insertion of higher frequences from the M&E tracks, and other processing along those lines would be awesome, and would pretty much close the gap between the lower-quality Tokai/Ishikawa recordings, and the higher-quality Fuji TV recordings if done right and combined with professional-level EQing and such, but the amount of money it would cost to do this would simply be too much.

Add onto that the amount of effort required to do stereo or surround processing, and you have something Funi just won't want to bother with. It's a shame, but that's how it is.
The point of Dragon Ball is to enjoy it. Never lose sight of that.

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