DBZ's Japanese Audio on Blu-Ray

[Bento-uri]

The most recent DBZ sets I own are the Dragon Box DVDs, released over a decade ago. I've yet to watch DBZ on blu-ray (or any hd form) because of the Japanese version's Mono problem. As far as I know, the blu-rays don't solve that issue since the Stereos are gone for good. But are there any improvements to the Mono track itself? Haven't they at least tried to make it sound more Stereo?

[Saiya6Cit]

there are people restoring the DBZ audio as we speak...


The Dragon Ball Z Japanese Broadcast Audio Restoration Project is a collaborative effort by fans and enthusiasts to restore and improve the audio quality of Dragon Ball Z.

For Japanese audio, gone are the muffled sounds of the optical audio present on home releases. In its place you'll get high quality Broadcast Audio tracks captured, shared, cleaned, and synced by fans over the years. If you're unfamiliar with the home release audio problems and what the difference broadcast audio makes.

I know you are new here, please read this post:
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[Vegard Aune]

Okay I gotta come in and make the obvious point about terminology here:
This has nothing to do with "mono" or "stereo". Only GT and the last two movies were even mastered in stereo. All of original DB and Z have only ever been mono. All that means is it just has one single audio channel, so no directionality. It has no impact whatsoever on the clarity of the sound.

...But as far as I know, no home release for Z actually sounds better than the Dragon Boxes. The only way to get clearer audio than that is fan releases which... we are not allowed to point you directly to.

[Bento-uri]

This has nothing to do with "mono" or "stereo". Only GT and the last two movies were even mastered in stereo. All of original DB and Z have only ever been mono. All that means is it just has one single audio channel, so no directionality. It has no impact whatsoever on the clarity of the sound.

Even if it's never been recorded in Stereo, the original DBZ audio quality is terrible. Look at older shows like Touch (1985), Captain Tsubasa (1983), Ranma 1/2, and Kimagure Orange Road (1987). Except for Tsubasa, the others had neither the budget nor the powerhouse directorial team that worked on Z, and yet those older animes sound infinitely "cleaner" than DBZ. Is it a Toei Animation issue? The whole "we got rid of the master tapes because they took up too much space" thing? Because Saint Seiya (also by Toei) has the exact same audio problem as DBZ.

The sad thing is that the poor audio quality makes Kikuchi's bgm feel dated when the whole point of going for a 60s Kung-Fu movie sound was to give DBZ a timeless quality. His score isn't dated at all, the mixing doesn't do it justice.

there are people restoring the DBZ audio as we speak...

Purists may call this blasphemy, but I wish someone would take the liberty of replacing some of Shigeru Miyashita's bgm choices. Never mind that he treated Kikuchi's enormous catalog like it were a 10-track library (Episode 20-35 ran on 5-6 pieces of bgm only, all from Movie 1, repeating themselves in every episode following almost the same order), but the way he mistimes his loops (causing an obvious "hiccup") or cut off the music altogether. He didn't do Kikuchi's soundtrack justice.

And those 2-minute long scenes with nothing but wind... While I'm not against that happening, I think Miyashita overdid it.

[Vegard Aune]

This has nothing to do with "mono" or "stereo". Only GT and the last two movies were even mastered in stereo. All of original DB and Z have only ever been mono. All that means is it just has one single audio channel, so no directionality. It has no impact whatsoever on the clarity of the sound.

Even if it's never been recorded in Stereo, the original DBZ audio quality is terrible. Look at older shows like Touch (1985), Captain Tsubasa (1983), Ranma 1/2, and Kimagure Orange Road (1987). Except for Tsubasa, the others had neither the budget nor the powerhouse directorial team that worked on Z, and yet those older animes sound infinitely "cleaner" than DBZ. Is it a Toei Animation issue? The whole "we got rid of the master tapes because they took up too much space" thing? Because Saint Seiya (also by Toei) has the exact same audio problem as DBZ.

It's a "We got rid of the master tapes" issue, yes. Like, conclusively. Recordings of the original broadcast audio are out there. They sound fine. It's specifically the official releases, that use the lower quality (and by now quite heavily degraded) optical audio stored on the 16mm film reels, that sound like garbage.

[garlick88]

The audio quality is poor in all Toei Animation series from the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. It's a real shame. We were very lucky with all the Dragon Ball series from the 80s and 90s, because there are anime like Saint Seiya or Hokuto no Ken, for example, that don't have the broadcast audio, or at least it's not shared in any way.
Since Dragon Ball is such a massively popular and famous series, I suppose it was easier in some ways.

I don't remember exactly, but I think animes like Gundam from '79 or the '80s have good audio quality, also because they're from Sunrise, and that company did preserve the good audio for decades.

[Yellow Flower King]

Even DUBS have suffered and rely on fans to get the best versions.

[Saiya6Cit]

The audio quality is poor in all Toei Animation series from the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s.

This, basically.

No one thought back then that DB would become the immortal franchise close to a religion fandom that Dragon Ball ended up being.

I still hope for a definitive awesome version. Would that happen soon? No idea. Would the new world order allow it? Hopefully. If they make it right I would buy Blue Ray.

[Bento-uri]

I don't remember exactly, but I think animes like Gundam from '79 or the '80s have good audio quality, also because they're from Sunrise, and that company did preserve the good audio for decades.

Macross from 1983 had great sound quality.

Aoki Densetsu Shoot (1993) and Slam Dunk (1993) were both produced by Toei, and their sound quality are as good as anything from that era. Sailor Moon (1992, also by Toei) isn't far behind, especially after the first series.
Play a Slam Dunk episode from 93 and a DBZ episode from that same year, and u instantly realize that DBZ's audio smooshes the music, sound effects and voice acting into a single track whereas Slam Dunk separates them, resulting in a cleaner and more immersive sound experience.

That DBZ, which continued into early 96, would suffer such a fate...

[Bajosexto]

I don't remember exactly, but I think animes like Gundam from '79 or the '80s have good audio quality, also because they're from Sunrise, and that company did preserve the good audio for decades.

Macross from 1983 had great sound quality.

Aoki Densetsu Shoot (1993) and Slam Dunk (1993) were both produced by Toei, and their sound quality are as good as anything from that era. Sailor Moon (1992, also by Toei) isn't far behind, especially after the first series.
Play a Slam Dunk episode from 93 and a DBZ episode from that same year, and u instantly realize that DBZ's audio smooshes the music, sound effects and voice acting into a single track whereas Slam Dunk separates them, resulting in a cleaner and more immersive sound experience.

That DBZ, which continued into early 96, would suffer such a fate...

Mono =/= bad or low quality

Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z's audio is terrible because Toei didn't preserve the original audio masters. The broadcast audio recordings we have now sound pretty decent. I'm not an audiophile so I can't tell you exactly how good those recordings sound, but to me they do sound good. Compared to the optical audio from the home releases it sounds much better.

[garlick88]

For us, it's a special anime; for Toei, it was just another series like all their other anime that didn't preserve the good audio.

We've been very, VERY lucky to have all the audio in good quality over the years, even if it wasn't officially released, and honestly, I don't know if it ever will be. The same goes for color correction; that's a lot of work for them, and they're not going to bother doing it. Why bother? They're going to sell the same amount anyway.

I'd love to have that kind of audio quality in anime like Saint Seiya, for example, where the soundtrack is incredible. Listening to it as it is on the DVDs or Blu-rays sounds like audio from the 1950s, like Hokuto no Ken or other legendary anime.

I didn't know that Sailor Moon or Slam Dunk did preserve the good audio. I'm really glad that at least some of them were saved.

[ChouGenkiDama.]

there are people restoring the DBZ audio as we speak...

What do you mean? The broadcast audio clean-up has been done for years. In fact its 7th iteration is attached to SOM's recent color corrected version of the series.

...But as far as I know, no home release for Z actually sounds better than the Dragon Boxes. The only way to get clearer audio than that is fan releases which... we are not allowed to point you directly to.

Funimation did some extra cleanup on the Dragon Box optical tracks for their blu-ray releases. It does sound marginally better on those sets, at least to my ear, but of course still doesn't touch the fullness or clarity of the restored broadcast audio.

[omegalucas]

There's only one official release that incorporated the fan-recorded broadcast audio: the AB Groupe DB Blurays, which were seemingly canceled after the first set supposedly because Toei refused to give them the Dragon Box DVD master materials which would allow for a relatively better upscale than the one they did from the actual DVDs for the first set (the masters wouldn't have bitrate limitations unlike the DVDs that were used as source). All other releases (save for the movies iirc) use the low quality audio and there seems to be no interest on releasing better stuff (neither on the video quality department btw).

[jjgp1112]

The original broadcast audio is also in mono. The poor quality of the JP audio on official release is simply the source, not mono/stereo

[Metalwario64]

I don't understand why so many people think mono=poor audio quality. I mean yeah it lacks the spatial richness of stereo and 5.1 but like... you can have super high, clean audio quality on a single channel.

[jjgp1112]

I don't understand why so many people think mono=poor audio quality. I mean yeah it lacks the spatial richness of stereo and 5.1 but like... you can have super high, clean audio quality on a single channel.

Shit, many audio engineers actually mix in mono because it's easier to guage and assess the clarity of sounds when they're all sharing the same space

[ThunderPX]

I guess people associate mono with "old" and "low quality" because stereo-mixed music became more common and less gimmicky in the same period that a lot of music started having higher production values, and in a busy mix stereo can definitely provide additional clarity. I don't think most people probably thought about TV shows having multi-channel audio until home theater systems became a big thing, since if you're sitting in your living room watching your 20 inch CRT it's not like you're gonna notice a lot of stereo separation. So then it just becomes "Oh, this old TV show's audio is muffled and/or scratchy? Must be because it's mono"