FUNi's SE and JPN BGM Broadcast quality?

[sumpter360]

I was just wondering, in FUNimation's English dub with Japanese BGM audio track, are the sound effects and background music audio quality to the level and clarity of the broadcast audio? Or are they sourced from the Dragon Box audio?

[Danfun64]

Neither. Funi uses separate Music/Sound Effects masters. I imagine that they're better than the Dragon Boxes, but worse than the broadcast audio. In any case, the M/E masters are much closer to the broadcast audio than the optical Dragon Box audio.

[jjgp1112]

One thing to note is for the first 20 or so Saiyan saga episodes and several Cell Games episodes, Funimation actually didn't have separate music and effects tracks and thus had to filter the audio to separate them and get a 5.1 mix. The result is really distorted music with most of the lows filtered out and messier sound effects.

[KBABZ]

I was just wondering, in FUNimation's English dub with Japanese BGM audio track, are the sound effects and background music audio quality to the level and clarity of the broadcast audio? Or are they sourced from the Dragon Box audio?

The DB dub music and sound effects are somewhere in-between the two quality-wise. It's not as muffled-telephone bad as the Dragon Boxes, but it isn't the crystal-clear quality of the broadcast audio tapes either.

It is worth noting that Funi's audio could not have been from the Dragon Boxes because the audio was sourced from before they were released (1996 and the early 2000s). Instead, Funi would have asked Toei for the audio with no vocals for dubbing purposes.

Surround Sound talk:

Spoiler:

The reason why a surround sound mix is possible with the old audio is because Toei's provided audio has the music and sound effects on separate layers. However this is ultimately only a crude fascimile of surround sound as it only fills the spare speakers, so to speak. You won't get properly mastered surround that is tailored to specific actions and events (such as a character speaking from behind the camera, as the dialogue is always on the Center channel).

It's a bit like how in Pokémon Yellow, the stereo-ization of the Red/Green/Blue music was achieved by assigning one of the four instrument channels to either left, right or both. It's a neat trick, but it will always lack the nuance of specifically-composed stereo mixing, which was done for Gold/Silver/Crystal. Funimation's surround-ization of DB, Z and GT isn't really that meaningful at the end of the day, outside of allowing for incredibly easy dialogue edits for Abridged and my T1C project.

As a side-note, the mixes for Kai and Super are the first shows in the franchise where the shows had proper surround mixing (the movies of course have always had it). Not sure if the Jump Special had surround sound, although it's likely given that it was intended as a theatrical presentation.

[Robo4900]

One thing to note is for the first 20 or so Saiyan saga episodes and several Cell Games episodes, Funimation actually didn't have separate music and effects tracks and thus had to filter the audio to separate them and get a 5.1 mix. The result is really distorted music with most of the lows filtered out and messier sound effects.

Ehh, Funi's pre-Kai 5.1 mixes were never that good anyway (at least, not for Dragon Ball). Most of the time, it's not really any different from a stereo mix (mono for OG DB and most of Z) reverb'd and doubled up to fill all the surround speakers.

[TheBlackPaladin]

Clarity of the audio aside, there was the additional problem of inconsistent levels. It varied greatly from episode to episode just how loud the music was. In some episodes it was gloriously loud, while in others it was so quiet you could hardly hear it...and "hardly" was downgraded to "can't" whenever there was an SFX-heavy fight going on. Actually, if you want an example of this inconsistency, one of the better "A-B Comparison" samples would be the TV specials. In the Bardock special, the music is unbearably quiet, whereas in the Trunks special, it's quite loud (which, between the two, I prefer).

For that matter, I don't know if it's just my ears, but it always sounded to me like, at least with the Kai dub, the loudness of the music was far more appropriate in the stereo mixes provided for the Nicktoons/CW4Kids airing than it was for the 5.1 mixes on home video.

[jjgp1112]

Clarity of the audio aside, there was the additional problem of inconsistent levels. It varied greatly from episode to episode just how loud the music was. In some episodes it was gloriously loud, while in others it was so quiet you could hardly hear it...and "hardly" was downgraded to "can't" whenever there was an SFX-heavy fight going on. Actually, if you want an example of this inconsistency, one of the better "A-B Comparison" samples would be the TV specials. In the Bardock special, the music is unbearably quiet, whereas in the Trunks special, it's quite loud (which, between the two, I prefer).

For that matter, I don't know if it's just my ears, but it always sounded to me like, at least with the Kai dub, the loudness of the music was far more appropriate in the stereo mixes provided for the Nicktoons/CW4Kids airing than it was for the 5.1 mixes on home video.

Another thing I noticed on the season sets is they turn the music way, way down whenever somebody's talking. For the most part, it was too quiet during the Saiyan and Frieza sagas.

[kei17]

It is weird that the M/E sounds better in some dubs that use the masters from Funi such as Hindi and Malay. Maybe Funi has got another source with non-separate M/E audio?

[Zestanor]

Why did Toei retain separate music and effects for all of Dragon Ball and Z, but not the voice actor performances? You could say didn't need the voices because they never really intended to do reruns or a home release, but did they really anticipate foreign dubs even at the start of DB?

[MasenkoHA]

Why did Toei retain separate music and effects for all of Dragon Ball and Z, but not the voice actor performances? You could say didn't need the voices because they never really intended to do reruns or a home release, but did they really anticipate foreign dubs even at the start of DB?

Considering anime getting imported in other counties dates back to at least the 60s and Toei likes making money as much as the next company yes I’m sure Toei anticipated Dragon Ball getting foreign dubs. Shoot the first attempt in North America was right when Dragon Ball Z was starting in Japan.