Genuine surround sound in Japanese DBZ movie 13, the 10th anniversary movie, and the BLT dub of DB 1-13

[Robo4900]

Title says it all. Kind of.

So, brief history lesson: As far back as the 1970s, surround sound was a thing in theatres, and usually they'd use various forms of trickery to have six channels of audio encoded into a stereo audio track; play it back on a stereo system, and it would sound like a normal stereo mix, but play it with the right decoder, and you would have full surround sound playback.
Dolby is usually the name that gets thrown around in connection to this; usually you see Dolby Surround, Dolby Stereo, Dolby Pro Logic, or Pro Logic II, or some other variant. The convenient thing is the later systems were backwards-compatible with the earlier systems, so if you played the original Dolby Stereo mix of Superman: The Movie on a Dolby Pro Logic II capable sound receiver in 2009, you'd hear the original surround mix playing back on your modern 5.1 sound system.

DBZ movie 13, the 10th anniversary movie "Path To Power", and the 1995 Funimation/BLT English dub of Dragon Ball episodes 1-13 plus DB movie 1, were all mixed for Dolby Stereo/Dolby Surround/Dolby Pro Logic (you can see this advertised on some DVD boxes, Laserdisc sleeves, etc.). This is not commonly talked-about, and not even remotely commonly known, as far as I can tell, and for good reason -- Dolby Pro Logic and its ilk are pretty old, irrelevant technology these days. Even for their stereo-expansion applications (because Dolby Pro Logic II could do a decent job at making a normal stereo signal sound a bit surround-y in your home theatre setup in its day), they've been vastly overtaken by better algorithms, and these days, there's not much need for decoding Pro Logic material.
But, you can still decode it in software, if you know how.

It's quite simple. For those interested in doing this yourself, here are some instructions on unfolding the surround sound audio (with an addendum on the end about how to set up a media player to decode Dolby Pro Logic on the fly instead):

Spoiler:

First thing you need is to rip the Japanese Dragon Box -- or probably the new Blu-ray audio would work too -- of the last two of the original 17 movies, or the original Kidmark/Trimark DVDs of Dragon Ball (the MangaUK "Season 1" DVDs of Dragon Ball will also work, as one of the discs includes the BLT dub of the first movie). Assuming you're ripping from DVD, you can use DVD Decryptor in IFO mode, then get the audio on its own with something like Audacity, save the output to FLAC or WAV so you don't lose any data.

Before we go on, ensure you have ffdshow installed. You probably already have it if you have a codec pack like K-Lite installed, but if not, now's a good time to grab it. Essentially, it's a piece of software that other programs can use to read and decode various codecs of video and audio. We're interested in one particular facet of its audio decoding.

Next, you need to install a piece of software called GraphStudio. It's a bit of a complex piece of software to use unaided, but I'll be giving you very simple instructions, so it should be fairly easy to handle.

So, in GraphStudio, on the top bar, go File > Open Graph/Media File/DLL, and find your audio. It should now look something like this:

(I used a bit of Star Wars soundtrack instead of Dragon Ball audio, for convenience of making these screenshots)

Delete everything that isn't the file you've loaded in, or ffdshow Audio Decoder -- just click on each one, and press DEL.
If ffdshow Audio Decoder isn't present, mouse over to the top bar and go Graph > Insert Filter, and find ffdshow Audio Decoder in the filters list.

Now, right click on ffdshow Audio Decoder, and click properties. You'll see a whole mess of crap, most of it, we don't care about. In fact, uncheck all the boxes in the left-hand pane except for Dolby Decoder, which you should ensure is checked. Furthermore, click on the Dolby Decoder bit, and ensure the box "Apply Dolby Pro Logic II decoding to all stereo sources" is checked. Don't mess with the "Rear channels delay" setting unless you know what you're doing:

Click "OK"

Now, click and drag from the little "Audio" bit on your audio file, and put it to the "In" part of ffdshow. It may add an additional node in the middle; don't worry about that, it's probably fine.


Now, mouse over to "Graph" in the top bar, and click "Insert filter". Scroll to the top of the menu, and select "AVI Mux", then click "Insert" on the bottom-right, then close the box. Drag from the ffdshow Audio Decoder "Out" to the AVI Mux "Input 01".
Then, right-click on the "AVI Out" part of the AVI Mux box, and click on "File Writer". It'll open a box, allowing you to do a familiar kind of "Save a file somewhere" thing. Click browse, type a filename (make sure to end it in .avi), click OK, click OK...


Now, just click the little green play button. Watch the little seek bar move along... It probably won't take hugely long.

(ffdshow Audio Decoder became ffdshow Audio Decoder 0000 because I was doing some troubleshooting; the problems I encountered were entirely my fault, and shouldn't apply to anyone reading this)

Now, just play this generated AVI on a set of surround sound speakers, and you'll have surround sound. Works quite well on normal stereo material too, but probably if you have a surround setup, you'll have pretty good built-in surround expansion, so the main thing here is stuff that was mixed for DPL2 decoding.

FWIW, in theory, you don't have to go through the trouble of converting it if you have surround sound on your PC; in theory, you just have to set up your media player to use ffdshow for audio decoding, then turn on the Dolby Decoding. Alternately, if you're using VLC Media Player, you can go into preferences, press the "All" button in the bottom-left, navigate to "Audio", and turn "Force detection of Dolby Surround" to "On".
And, if you happen to have a surround receiver in your living room that supports Dolby Pro Logic II (check the manual or something), you can do it in realtime in your living room, and experience DBZ movie 13 and the 10th anniversary movie as they were intended to be experienced in theatres.

I was quite surprised at the results I got out of this.

In BLT Dragon Ball episode 1, the opening narration, and Grandpa Gohan's monologue from beyond the grave both have the main dialogue coming out the centre speaker, with the surround channels just sounding like distant reverb, giving a very big sound. I figured this out some time ago, and I seem to recall I found some neat stuff to do with SFX coming out of specific channels in interesting ways, but I've since forgotten.
The channel separation isn't incredible; this is ultimately a surround-decoded stereo signal that was set up to be unfolded like this, so it's not as good as a proper, discrete surround mix, but it's still rather nice.

I haven't inspected the 10th anniversary movie very much, however I will say that DBZ movie 13 is somewhat disappointing; the DPL2 expansion doesn't give much over just listening in stereo. Part of this, I think, is just the subpar sound quality of the movie in general (watch the movie in Japanese sometime and listen for how muffled half the dialogue is. Also, try comparing how the music sounds in the movie to how it sounds from the official CD releases; you should be able to find some bits and pieces on YouTube), but I think in general, the mix doesn't take much advantage of DPL2 decoding.

So, it's a bit of a mixed success, and to be honest, I don't understand the technical side of this completely (would love to hear some more in-depth stuff about this from any of you folks), but I thought you folks might find this little technical investigation interesting. Even though I haven't found much that's really astounding, this is not particularly well-documented information, and I know a lot of people don't know how to properly decode DPL2 content (though if you have surround speakers for your PC, you can probably set up your media player to do this without converting anything, and if you have a surround receiver in your living room that supports Dolby Pro Logic II, then you can just pop the relevant DVDs/Blu-rays in, and enjoy).

[kei17]

I've referred to the surround sound in these movies multiple times since years ago, but this fact is still not well known among the fanbase. I tried decoding the audio myself before to separate the rear channel by the same method and got a good result.

So, brief history lesson: As far back as the 1970s, surround sound was a thing in theatres, and usually they'd use various forms of trickery to have six channels of audio encoded into a stereo audio track

Even though theaters used multiple rear speakers to surround the large screening room, Dolby Stereo audio itself only contains four separate channels: Left, right, center, and only one rear. The same goes for the consumer versions named Dolby Surround and Dolby Pro Logic (I), which contain only four channels encoded in two physical audio channels. They needed at least three channels on the front side for the sake of localization of sound because if you have only two front channels, dialog does not appropriately come from mouths displayed on the screen when you sit on a seat near the side wall. This is the reason why the film sound system made a leap from mono to surround by skipping simple two channel stereo.

ffdshow seems to support only Dolby Pro Logic II, which separates stereo into six channels, so you should downmix the decoded audio to four channels to get the originally intended format.

I wonder why they still keep releasing Dolby Stereo movies by simply throwing in two channels untouched, by the way. These analog surround formats are heavily outdated, so they should decode it in advance and put that into a 5.1ch track instead.

I haven't inspected the 10th anniversary movie very much, however I will say that DBZ movie 13 is somewhat disappointing; the DPL2 expansion doesn't give much over just listening in stereo. Part of this, I think, is just the subpar sound quality of the movie in general (watch the movie in Japanese sometime and listen for how muffled half the dialogue is. Also, try comparing how the music sounds in the movie to how it sounds from the official CD releases; you should be able to find some bits and pieces on YouTube), but I think in general, the mix doesn't take much advantage of DPL2 decoding.

I'm not sure about the reasons behind the low sound quality in DBZ movie 13, but maybe it's just that they were not used to surround audio mixing because it was the first DB movie to employ the surround sound system. Incidentally, the ME tape sent to France seems to sound better than the Japanese final mix.

[Robo4900]

I've referred to the surround sound in these movies multiple times since years ago, but this fact is still not well known among the fanbase. I tried decoding the audio myself before to separate the rear channel by the same method and got a good result.

I see!

That is quite a good result. Did you decode it with a method similar to mine, or did you use a hardware decoder of some sort?

So, brief history lesson: As far back as the 1970s, surround sound was a thing in theatres, and usually they'd use various forms of trickery to have six channels of audio encoded into a stereo audio track

Even though theaters used multiple rear speakers to surround the large screening room, Dolby Stereo audio itself only contains four separate channels: Left, right, center, and only one rear. The same goes for the consumer versions named Dolby Surround and Dolby Pro Logic (I), which contain only four channels encoded in two physical audio channels. They needed at least three channels on the front side for the sake of localization of sound because if you have only two front channels, dialog does not appropriately come from mouths displayed on the screen when you sit on a seat near the side wall. This is the reason why the film sound system made a leap from mono to surround by skipping simple two channel stereo.

I see!
Y'know, I never considered that, but it does absolutely make sense.

FWIW, I did know Dolby Surround was four channels, but I kinda forgot.
Though, six-channel mixes did exist as far back as the '70s; Star Wars released with a six-channel mix in 1977... Seems Toei were a bit behind the times, as usual, when they did the four-channel mixes of Dragon Ball.
Though in fairness, the six-track mix of Star Wars was only on 70mm prints using six discrete magnetic tracks, and two of those tracks were LFEs, I believe?

ffdshow seems to support only Dolby Pro Logic II, which separates stereo into six channels, so you should downmix the decoded audio to four channels to get the originally intended format.

Very true.
In fairness, most home surround systems are 5.1 or 7.1, though, and setting up a file to have a left, right, centre, rear channel layout doesn't look possible in a lot of formats, so it may be more convenient to just leave it as 6 channels.
Though, listening to the rears on my DPL2 unfolding of Z movie 13, it sounds like there's a lot of weird distortion that goes away when mixed to mono. Perhaps the easiest/best solution is to just mix the back channels down to mono, then have a duplicate of it, dual-mono style, to satisfy a standard 5.1 channel layout... Listening to a version I put together like this, it does sound quite good.
Though I suppose that way, it's still somewhat unfaithful to the original intent in that there's a discrete LFE channel, rather than the sound system simply using a crossover to drive its LFEs.

I suppose the ideal solution would be if I could find a software decoder that would faithfully decode the original Dolby Pro Logic/Dolby Surround tracks, or perhaps if a hardware decode of this was made and preserved somewhere.

I wonder why they still keep releasing Dolby Stereo movies by simply throwing in two channels untouched, by the way. These analog surround formats are heavily outdated, so they should decode it in advance and put that into a 5.1ch track instead.

At this point, I have to assume the people authoring the home video don't know about it anymore. Otherwise, you'd think it would be really easy for them to decode it and put it on there, as you say.
Similarly, I would imagine they've forgotten about the stereo mixes that exist of a couple of the movies. (IIRC 11 is one, which was released as a "drama CD"? SFX and voices are still mono, as I recall, but I think the music was presented in stereo)

I'm not sure about the reasons behind the low sound quality in DBZ movie 13, but maybe it's just that they were not used to surround audio mixing because it was the first DB movie to employ the surround sound system. Incidentally, the ME tape sent to France seems to sound better than the Japanese final mix.

Interesting.
Yes, that would make a lot of sense, especially since similar quality issues pop up in GT's stereo mixes.
One thought I had is that perhaps their equipment setup at the time made generational loss when making edits a lot more noticeable. Though that wouldn't account for the way you'll hear two actors in a scene; one of them sounds crystal clear, the other sounds muffled.

Interesting that France's quality is better... I do wonder if Toei prepared high-quality stereo M&E elements, then ended up damaging the quality when up-mixing it for surround?...
Or perhaps the music track given to France is a fairly direct transfer of the original stereo mixes of the music, then the SFX is stereo fold-downs from the final mix (or a WIP mix), or something.

[kei17]

That is quite a good result. Did you decode it with a method similar to mine, or did you use a hardware decoder of some sort?

I used exactly the same method, but with the mixer option set to four channels. Also I used the lossy DBox audio because the JP Blu-ray release was still not available then.

Though, six-channel mixes did exist as far back as the '70s; Star Wars released with a six-channel mix in 1977... Seems Toei were a bit behind the times, as usual, when they did the four-channel mixes of Dragon Ball.

The Japanese film industry in general is always technically a decade or even a couple of decade behind the US's, so no wonder here. The first Japanese movie ever to employ Dolby Stereo was "The Imperial Navy" produced and distributed by Toho in 1981, and "Space Adventure Cobra" also distributed by Toho in 1982 was the first anime movie screened with Dolby Stereo. It took more time for Toei Animation and from what I know, "The Fist of the North Star" in 1986 must be one of the earliest cases. Though they started using Dolby Stereo for feature-length anime movies from around that time, they still kept using monaural optical sound for short animation movies screened as part of "Toei Anime Fair" up until the mid-'90s.

At this point, I have to assume the people authoring the home video don't know about it anymore. Otherwise, you'd think it would be really easy for them to decode it and put it on there, as you say.

At least I remember that the cover of the R2 single DVD releases says "Dolby Surround" in the specifications, so they must be aware of what they're dealing with.

Similarly, I would imagine they've forgotten about the stereo mixes that exist of a couple of the movies. (IIRC 11 is one, which was released as a "drama CD"? SFX and voices are still mono, as I recall, but I think the music was presented in stereo)

I'm almost sure that they've forgotten these stereo mixes, but they're not ready to be used for video releases in the first place because such "drama" audio releases were edited and mixed by record companies without referring to footage. They thus do not sync with footage without extensive re-edits. Also, some music tracks are occasionally misplaced or confused with a different take.

[10gigtriforce]

FWIW pro logic 2 usually just mirrors the rear mono from Dolby surround/stereo to both rear channels. Since it sends out of phase right channel to rear right and out of phase left channel to rear left surround and in proper Dolby surround spec then right and left are supposed to have the same out of phase sounds. Similar to how theaters back in the day spread the rear mono across multiple speakers. Prologic llx(7 channel) likewise mirrors it across the 4 rear surround. If the movie doesnt have weird mixing issues and sticks to the spec that is. I can very much see toei not following the spec properly.


Also 90s home dolby surround set ups usually had 5 speakers and a sub woofer. Also mirroring the rear channel, back then to go along with big theater standards not as a backwards compatible feature of pl2, and a subwoofer to send the base to since smaller speakers without good base and 1 sub were more affordable than 5 big speakers and no sub. Prologic 2 and therefore the decoders lfe channel does the same thing. Dad had a set up like that in the 90s we watched stuff on. Twas nice since most movies had their theatrical Dolby surround track on the vhs hifi track. Now days I use prologic 2 or 2x on my home receivers to get the same effects but also more directional/ Tureish split surrounds from say gamecube games



Far as starwars goes its 4.2 70mm track was mostly the same as the 4.0 track 35mm dolby stereo track. But with some added extra effects(including but not limited to the. 2 base channels) since it was made a bit after the 35mm stereo matrix. They had to use .2 instead of the modern .1 because before then the 6 channel track was 5 across the front with 1 rear channel spread across multiple rear speakers. So no true dedicated base so they had to double up on it to get proper room filling booms. Hence its nickname of baby boom surround.

[Robo4900]

I used exactly the same method, but with the mixer option set to four channels. Also I used the lossy DBox audio because the JP Blu-ray release was still not available then.

Ah!
Yes, I've now tried that, and generated files with just the four channels. For storage saving, I've put them in FLAC, though, and because FLAC only supports 2/2-arranged four-channel audio, I duplicated the back channel, so it plays it back as a 3/2-arranged track; no LFE channel, so it's a somewhat more faithful reproduction of how the Dolby Surround mix was intended.

I didn't use the JP Blu-ray audio either; I heard that despite it being a nice 24-bit transfer of the original mag masters, quiet sections have been silenced from a noise gate or something? So, the transfer ends up being useless, is what I heard.

The Japanese film industry in general is always technically a decade or even a couple of decade behind the US's, so no wonder here. The first Japanese movie ever to employ Dolby Stereo was "The Imperial Navy" produced and distributed by Toho in 1981, and "Space Adventure Cobra" also distributed by Toho in 1982 was the first anime movie screened with Dolby Stereo. It took more time for Toei Animation and from what I know, "The Fist of the North Star" in 1986 must be one of the earliest cases. Though they started using Dolby Stereo for feature-length anime movies from around that time, they still kept using monaural optical sound for short animation movies screened as part of "Toei Anime Fair" up until the mid-'90s.

I see. Interesting.

At this point, I have to assume the people authoring the home video don't know about it anymore. Otherwise, you'd think it would be really easy for them to decode it and put it on there, as you say.

At least I remember that the cover of the R2 single DVD releases says "Dolby Surround" in the specifications, so they must be aware of what they're dealing with.

Hm.
I guess they're just lazy, then.

I'm almost sure that they've forgotten these stereo mixes, but they're not ready to be used for video releases in the first place because such "drama" audio releases were edited and mixed by record companies without referring to footage. They thus do not sync with footage without extensive re-edits. Also, some music tracks are occasionally misplaced or confused with a different take.

Hm, I see.
In fairness, they probably could still use them, with some editing, and include them as a second track on the Blu-rays; an "Alternative mix", essentially.
Though I guess if they couldn't be bothered to decode the Dolby Surround for the relevant movies, I doubt they'd go through the trouble to do this.

... This does make me wonder, though, whether the record companies still have their dialogue tracks from the movies.
In theory, they could dig out the original dialogue and SFX tracks, then get the original stereo music recordings, edit them to match how they are in the movie, and in theory, they could create some very nice stereo remixes of all the movies.

FWIW pro logic 2 usually just mirrors the rear mono from Dolby surround/stereo to both rear channels. [...] I can very much see toei not following the spec properly.

In this case, when doing a DPL2 decode of the movie audio, I found that the rear channels had weird phasing/distortion artefacts, which went away when I mixed the two back channels down to one. Similarly, I don't hear any weird phasing artefacts when I decode it with DPL2 with the mixer set to output just four channels.

Also 90s home dolby surround set ups usually had 5 speakers and a sub woofer. Also mirroring the rear channel, back then to go along with big theater standards not as a backwards compatible feature of pl2, and a subwoofer to send the base to since smaller speakers without good base and 1 sub were more affordable than 5 big speakers and no sub. Prologic 2 and therefore the decoders lfe channel does the same thing. Dad had a set up like that in the 90s we watched stuff on. Twas nice since most movies had their theatrical Dolby surround track on the vhs hifi track. Now days I use prologic 2 or 2x on my home receivers to get the same effects but also more directional/ Tureish split surrounds from say gamecube games

Interesting. Thank you for sharing.
Someday, I'd love to have a hardware DPL2/2x decoder for Gamecube and PS2 gaming and such, but for now, anything like that, I have to prepare in advance.

Far as starwars goes its 4.2 70mm track was mostly the same as the 4.0 track 35mm dolby stereo track. But with some added extra effects(including but not limited to the. 2 base channels) since it was made a bit after the 35mm stereo matrix. They had to use .2 instead of the modern .1 because before then the 6 channel track was 5 across the front with 1 rear channel spread across multiple rear speakers. So no true dedicated base so they had to double up on it to get proper room filling booms. Hence its nickname of baby boom surround.

Right. I did wonder if it was something like that.

Looking into it, this thread on OT.com says the main difference between the 35mm Dolby Surround mix and the 70mm six-track mix is that the 70mm mix has a lot more dynamic range.

[10gigtriforce]

Yeah 70mm had 6 full bandwidth channels total. So say the starwars mix would have 3 full bandwidth front speakers and 1 full bandwidth surround. And .2 full base channels.


35mm had 2 full bandwidth (as did all dolby surround/stereo) spread across 4 speakers. With the rear the most starved of them all. It really limited the dynamic range but it cost so much less for the theater owners that they said it was worth it

[Zestanor]

In theory, they could dig out the original dialogue and SFX tracks, then get the original stereo music recordings, edit them to match how they are in the movie, and in theory, they could create some very nice stereo remixes of all the movies.

Such things (stereo masters of most of the Kikuchi score) probably don’t exist and never existed. This is my hunch based on the fact that replacement score stereo Kai had such a restricted selection. The limited selections that do exist on CD were probably mixed in stereo from the start with a CD release in mind, alongside the standard mono for the show/films.

Which is why there will never be a proper CD release of Kikuchi’s score: mono can’t be sold. Check my signature for the unreleased mono downloads though.

[Robo4900]

Such things (stereo masters of most of the Kikuchi score) probably don’t exist and never existed. This is my hunch based on the fact that replacement score stereo Kai had such a restricted selection. The limited selections that do exist on CD were probably mixed in stereo from the start with a CD release in mind, alongside the standard mono for the show/films.

Which is why there will never be a proper CD release of Kikuchi’s score: mono can’t be sold. Check my signature for the unreleased mono downloads though.

Sorry, but you're very, very wrong.

The first session of recording for Dragon Ball, done for the beginning of the show, was partially in stereo. Several cues from it are on the CD releases, in stereo, but as most of those cues were only mixed in mono, and as most sessions from here to the beginning of Z were mono, most of those cues on the CDs are in mono. (And yes, you can find these things on the CDs; most people probably don't even know/care that they're mono)
The first session of recording TV cues for DBZ, right when it began, was also partially in stereo (in fact, it was almost entirely stereo. But not completely). Again, several cues from it are on CDs in stereo, but some are in mono. Z wouldn't have another TV session until the Great Saiyaman arc, which was in stereo, because after the first Z TV session, Toei only had Kikuchi record regular score packages for Dragon Ball for the movies, which they did twice a year, which supplied them with plenty of new cues to work with. From Z movie 3 onwards, all of the Kikuchi music sessions were mixed in stereo (for those keeping score at home, that means two of the first nine sessions were at least partially stereo, and the following eleven sessions were all fully stereo), and by all indications, stereo stems of all of this material still exists, it's just that most of them haven't been released on CD, so the only copies available for the public to listen to are the mono music tracks of the movies' final mixes from the Laserdiscs (though the music-only tracks on Z movie 13 and the 10th anniversary movie Laserdiscs were in stereo, to match the fact those movies' final mixes were also stereo/Dolby Stereo/Dolby Surround*), or rips from Funi's surround mixes, which are sourced from the mono music tracks (from the M&E -- music+SFX -- tracks) given to dubbing companies.

So, if we're just looking at the movies, then from Z #3 onwards, they would definitely have the stereo mixes of the music, but most of them weren't released on CD, so probably most of them don't have readily-available digital copies; they'd have to transfer them from the tapes of the original stereo masters if they wanted to do anything with them. (Which, combined with the necessity of editing them to match the original movie footage, is probably a few roadblocks too far for Toei to bother with anything like that, to be honest)

The reason Kikuchi Kai used such a limited selection is most likely because they only used readily-available stereo cues; anything that would have to be transferred from a tape master was almost certainly out of the question, because they were in a mad rush with no money, so it had to all be cues that they already had ready-to-go digital masters of.
On top of this, there may be licensing problems (because music licensing in Japan is really weird); they didn't use any cues from a few particular movies (IIRC Z #12 was one; the proto Kikuchi version of one Kai episode that aired in Japan early on had a Z movie 12 cue in it, but they ended up replacing it for the final version), and we don't know for sure why -- it's possible it was a licensing issue, it's possible there was an executive decision that they weren't to use any music from the last two movies for some reason just as bizarre as their refusal to use any mono cues... We really don't know for sure.

*Actually, I don't know if the Laserdisc music-only tracks for Z movie 13 and Path To Power are Dolby Surround or stereo. I would guess they're just stereo, but I really have no idea.

--

So...
1. Most of the Kikuchi cues were mixed in stereo. (And, on a sidenote, the ones that aren't could theoretically be remixed into stereo, if they went back to the original raw recording stems, if those still exist. Though I think this would be quite unlikely; more likely, if we got, say, a full set of all Kikuchi's music cues released someday, they'd just use the original mixes, which mostly means mono for pre-DBZ movie 3, stereo for Z movie 3 onwards, though almost all the cues from the first Z TV session would be stereo, and a good portion of the first DB session would be stereo too)
2. All of the recorded cues would definitely be available, in stereo, if they didn't have to do things as quickly and cheaply as they had to for Kai (that is, if they didn't have to re-score 98 episodes of TV in the shortest possible amount of time, on a budget of $0). So, if Toei were interested in doing a stereo remix of any of the movies, they could easily have the stereo tape masters of the Kikuchi score transferred for use.
3. Almost all cues from before Z movie 3 that are on CD are mono anyway, but they include them on the CD releases anyway, all the time. Ultimately, people don't really care much about mono vs stereo, as long as the result sounds good. Though realistically, for this reason, it's unlikely Toei would ever bother to remix the older movies into stereo or surround or anything like that; they're probably perfectly happy with the existing mono mixes.

[Zestanor]

Could you give an example of a mono track on the DB bgm collection CD/LP? I haven’t listened in a while but I usually can notice if it switched from stereo to mono and back again.
How do you know that the tracks we don’t have in stereo were ever mixed in stereo? Why would they waste their time like that?

[Robo4900]

Could you give an example of a mono track on the DB bgm collection CD/LP? I haven’t listened in a while but I usually can notice if it switched from stereo to mono and back again.

The Dragon Ball & Dragon Ball Z: Daizenshuu CD, you mean? (Released 1994; kind of the definitive Dragon Ball music release, from what I can tell)

Take a look at disc 2. All the tracks from 14 onwards should be mono, aside from the TV-size Romantic Ageru Yo at the end.
On disc 4, I believe tracks 9-11 and 14 (except the last cue) are mono.
On disc 5, I believe tracks 2-4, 7-8, and 10-11, the music suites for the DB movies and DBZ movies 1, 2, 4, and 5, are mono. Note on this below.

Or, if you mean the DBZ BGM Collection CD set...

On disc 1, tracks 13-15, 18-19, and 23-24 are mono.
On disc 2, tracks 2-4 and 11 are mono.
On disc 3, track 12 is mono.

--

Weirdly, it seems the BGM suites of the DBZ movies 4 and 5 that are on the CD releases are mono. Checking on Kenisu's site, though, it looks like at least some cues from Z movie 4 were put on other tracks that were fully stereo. Weird. Maybe Z movie 3 wasn't a hard cutoff for stereo like I thought, and the Z movies 4 and 5 sessions were still only partially stereo? Would certainly be weird. Could be a mistake on Columbia's part, IDK.

How do you know that the tracks we don’t have in stereo were ever mixed in stereo? Why would they waste their time like that?

Why would they "waste their time" mixing ANY of the music in stereo before Z movie 13? Especially as early as the first DB TV session, where they didn't know if the show would be a hit, and the first BGM releases were YEARS away.

My knowledge on this comes from talking to people who've looked into this far more than I have, but I think by occam's razor, it's clear that they wouldn't have ONLY done stereo versions of the tracks Columbia would eventually put out on CD as much as 17 years after they were recorded, it just makes no sense. Similarly, it makes perfect sense that Columbia would have only put out some of the music they were given, and chosen it based on what they thought the best tracks to release would be, not on whether or not they're stereo (though it's entirely possible they weren't allowed to have >50% of the tracks be mono).
I trust the people who tell me the majority of the sessions were done in stereo, and I imagine there is some documentation on this, but I've not seen it myself. But, I think it's foolish to just assume everything we haven't heard in stereo only exists in mono.
Since we know at least every music cue from DBZ movies 3 and 6+ on the CDs are presented in stereo, and there are stereo drama CD/cassette releases of Z movies 6 and 11, and there's a full soundtrack CD of... I think Z movies 8 and 12?... Both in stereo, I believe... And we know Z movie 13 was in full stereo, and we know at least a good portion of the first DB session and the first Z session are stereo, it's clear that A LOT of Dragon Ball's music was recorded in stereo, and in particular, all indications point to everything from Z movie 6 on being pure stereo, Z movie 3 being pure stereo, and then the first TV session for each show was either mostly or partially stereo.

[Zestanor]

. Why would they "waste their time" mixing ANY of the music in stereo before Z movie 13? Especially as early as the first DB TV session, where they didn't know if the show would be a hit, and the first BGM releases were YEARS away.

The first BGM release came out within two months of the first episode airing. These are the DB tracks that fade into each other as a suite on all subsequent BGM releases. I’m pretty sure these are all stereo.

Here’s my “Occam’s razor”: This first session was mastered mostly in mono for the show. A few compositions were set aside and mixed in stereo as well, for the release that would come out mere weeks after the first episode on a mass market LP record.

This was the MO all the way until 1996 with movie 13, the only difference being they started using CDs for Z.
Sometimes they got lazy and didn’t set make separate stereo masters for the CDs.

[Robo4900]

. Why would they "waste their time" mixing ANY of the music in stereo before Z movie 13? Especially as early as the first DB TV session, where they didn't know if the show would be a hit, and the first BGM releases were YEARS away.

The first BGM release came out within two months of the first episode airing. These are the DB tracks that fade into each other as a suite on all subsequent BGM releases. I’m pretty sure these are all stereo.

Here’s my “Occam’s razor”: This first session was mastered mostly in mono for the show. A few compositions were set aside and mixed in stereo as well, for the release that would come out mere weeks after the first episode on a mass market LP record.

This was the MO all the way until 1996 with movie 13, the only difference being they started using CDs for Z.
Sometimes they got lazy and didn’t set make separate stereo masters for the CDs.

Occam's razor dictates the simplest answer is often the truth, since it requires the fewest uncertain assumptions. In this case, I'd argue it's far simpler to assume they mixed Z basically everything from Z movie 3 onwards in stereo in case they want to use that music in stereo for any purpose in future.

However, even if your theory that they only mixed stuff in stereo that they thought would go on a CD was true, your timeframe is wrong; DBZ Ongakushu vol. 2 contains a nearly* complete soundtrack to DBZ movie 10 in stereo, and vol. 3 was a complete soundtrack to DBZ movie 11 in stereo. So, they were doing the movies' music fully in stereo from AT LEAST as early as Z movie 10... Unless Z movie 12 was singled out for no reason?... And we know from the cassette release of Z movie 6 that they had the full score for that in full stereo, too.

*One track on the Z movie 10 soundtrack was accidentally switched for another, entirely different track from DBZ movie 8, which isn't available on any other release (however it is in stereo here ).

So, again invoking Occam's razor... Is it simpler to assume they mixed pretty much all the music from Z movie 3 onwards in stereo (which isn't particularly harder than mono mixing when you have the facilities to do either), or that they specifically singled out tracks BEFORE MIXING THEM, which were then chosen to go on the CDs, and set aside to specifically mix in stereo, and also mixed a bunch of other random tracks in stereo which wouldn't see a release until as much as ten years later? (I'm fairly certain a bunch of DBZ music wasn't released in stereo until the DBZ BGM Collection CD in about 2006, and we have stuff like that Z movie 8 track which wasn't released on anything until the Z movie 10 soundtrack mistakenly used it)

One alternate possibility that would mean we're both wrong has occurred to me, however.
The first DB BGM release was in 1986, and contained 12 tracks (each containing several cues). Columbia re-released those 12 tracks on the very next BGM release to contain any DB music, the Daizenshuu CD set, in 1994, which contained another 12 tracks, which were all mono. Similarly, the Daizenshuu CD set, and other such releases, only contained mono copies of a lot of other pieces of music from basically anything that released several years ago but didn't have a BGM release before, such as the suites for DBZ movies 1, 2, 4, and 5. So, perhaps a third possibility is that Kikuchi's score was actually mixed in stereo typically, but the mono mixdowns produced for the show were the only thing that was generally kept for a long period of time, until CDs started getting pressed in the '90s.
But, this is just a theory. I'll have to ask people who've done proper research.

EDIT:
Another possibility, now that I've chatted with a friend who knows about this stuff -- Toei/Columbia made an inconsistent mess of which things were and were not mixed in stereo.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

The original single DVD of DBZ movie 13 here has the surround sound audio on the Japanese track, so the copy FUNi received back in the mid 2000's apparently came from said source because you can tell it's got much cleaner sound than most of the other series and movie releases. I'm guessing that's due to it being one of the few things done related to the anime where the original high quality audio was preserved, even though the later widescreen Double Feature and movie pack releases didn't have it.

[Robo4900]

The original single DVD of DBZ movie 13 here has the surround sound audio on the Japanese track, so the copy FUNi received back in the mid 2000's apparently came from said source because you can tell it's got much cleaner sound than most of the other series and movie releases. I'm guessing that's due to it being one of the few things done related to the anime where the original high quality audio was preserved, even though the later widescreen Double Feature and movie pack releases didn't have it.

You're mostly right, but not quite. Funi did use the nice Dolby Surround track, but for some reason, it's a mono mixdown. So the sound quality is great, but it's not even stereo, and a surround image cannot be decoded from it. I think the same is true of the Path To Power movie, though I think they might've actually used the proper stereo/Dolby Surround version.

I have no idea why their Double Feature/HD masters are missing the higher-quality audio that they clearly have... Though then again, the same is true of GT (they have the original videotape master, which has glorious audio of all of GT, in stereo where applicable, but for some reason they only use the shitty mono track on the DVDs. I think they probably just didn't realise, in GT's case).

--

A breif aside in regards to stereo vs mono Kikuchi: Looks like the scores for Z movies 4 and 5 were all-mono. But 3 was either all or mostly stereo, and 6 was all stereo. So... My added note about Toei/Columbia being inconsistent about this stands. It's a nonsensical mess.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

The original single DVD of DBZ movie 13 here has the surround sound audio on the Japanese track, so the copy FUNi received back in the mid 2000's apparently came from said source because you can tell it's got much cleaner sound than most of the other series and movie releases. I'm guessing that's due to it being one of the few things done related to the anime where the original high quality audio was preserved, even though the later widescreen Double Feature and movie pack releases didn't have it.

You're mostly right, but not quite. Funi did use the nice Dolby Surround track, but for some reason, it's a mono mixdown. So the sound quality is great, but it's not even stereo, and a surround image cannot be decoded from it. I think the same is true of the Path To Power movie, though I think they might've actually used the proper stereo/Dolby Surround version.

I have no idea why their Double Feature/HD masters are missing the higher-quality audio that they clearly have... Though then again, the same is true of GT (they have the original videotape master, which has glorious audio of all of GT, in stereo where applicable, but for some reason they only use the shitty mono track on the DVDs. I think they probably just didn't realise, in GT's case).

--

A breif aside in regards to stereo vs mono Kikuchi: Looks like the scores for Z movies 4 and 5 were all-mono. But 3 was either all or mostly stereo, and 6 was all stereo. So... My added note about Toei/Columbia being inconsistent about this stands. It's a nonsensical mess.

Yeah, it certainly sounds much better than most of the other movies audio wise, but it seems not quite so due to the reasons stated above. Apparently the Japanese laserdisc release and the later Dragon Box: The Movies versions have an encoded audio track that's closer to the Surround/stereo than FUNi's but still not 100% there. I'm not really sure if the Toei BD release from a couple years back has it either.

Still though, it sounds much better than the optical mono mixed audio from most everything else related to the series.

[Robo4900]

Yeah, it certainly sounds much better than most of the other movies audio wise, but it seems not quite so due to the reasons stated above. Apparently the Japanese
laserdisc release and the later Dragon Box: The Movies versions have an encoded audio track that's closer to the Surround/stereo than FUNi's but still not 100% there. I'm not really sure if the Toei BD release from a couple years back has it either.

Still though, it sounds much better than the optical mono mixed audio from most everything else related to the series.

The Japanese LD and the Dragon Box, as well as the newer BD release, all use the original theatrical Dolby Stereo/Dolby Surround track, which appears to be a stereo track at first glance, but if you have a Dolby Surround decoder, or anything compatible with that (such as Dolby Pro Logic, Pro Logic II or IIx, etc.), then you can unfold a surround mix from it, and experience it as it was in cinemas, as I explain in the OP of this thread.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Yeah, it certainly sounds much better than most of the other movies audio wise, but it seems not quite so due to the reasons stated above. Apparently the Japanese
laserdisc release and the later Dragon Box: The Movies versions have an encoded audio track that's closer to the Surround/stereo than FUNi's but still not 100% there. I'm not really sure if the Toei BD release from a couple years back has it either.

Still though, it sounds much better than the optical mono mixed audio from most everything else related to the series.

The Japanese LD and the Dragon Box, as well as the newer BD release, all use the original theatrical Dolby Stereo/Dolby Surround track, which appears to be a stereo track at first glance, but if you have a Dolby Surround decoder, or anything compatible with that (such as Dolby Pro Logic, Pro Logic II or IIx, etc.), then you can unfold a surround mix from it, and experience it as it was in cinemas, as I explain in the OP of this thread.

I see, so it seems to be that all of those releases have the proper Surround/stereo mix and while FUNi also did indeed get it received a lower quality encode although still fairly decent overall. I'm guessing the copy they acquired had been mixed down to mono at some point albeit still sounding a great deal better than the other movies and especially the re released Double Feature and movie pack versions later.

[Robo4900]

I see, so it seems to be that all of those releases have the proper Surround/stereo mix and while FUNi also did indeed get it received a lower quality encode although still fairly decent overall. I'm guessing the copy they acquired had been mixed down to mono at some point albeit still sounding a great deal better than the other movies and especially the re released Double Feature and movie pack versions later.

Mono doesn't have anything to do with quality of sound, really; Funi's sounds just as good as the Dragon Box stereo version, but for some reason it's only in mono. This may have been a mistake on Funi's end, rather than a problem with the material they received. We don't really know for sure.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I see, so it seems to be that all of those releases have the proper Surround/stereo mix and while FUNi also did indeed get it received a lower quality encode although still fairly decent overall. I'm guessing the copy they acquired had been mixed down to mono at some point albeit still sounding a great deal better than the other movies and especially the re released Double Feature and movie pack versions later.

Mono doesn't have anything to do with quality of sound, really; Funi's sounds just as good as the Dragon Box stereo version, but for some reason it's only in mono. This may have been a mistake on Funi's end, rather than a problem with the material they received. We don't really know for sure.

It's possible that when mastering the audio for the release something happened during the encoding process to which caused it to be a mixdown to mono even when it doesn't actually sound as such. Who knows?