Question about the Audio

[SSJ2Engels]

It is a well-know fact that the Z voice work was re-recorded for Kai. However, was it done because the audio was poor, old and scratchy (perhaps? o_O ) or was it because they wanted to make the series as 'new' and 'fresh' as possible without actually re-animating the whole thing? In other words, was such re-recording done out of necessity or because they actually wanted to, and had an 'artistic' purpose in doing so (in contrary to other hypothesis, which would pose an technical issue)?

Or even simplier: just why the hell was the audio re-done to begin with?

Hope someone can see what I mean...

[VegettoEX]

Near as we can tell, Toei tossed out the voice-only tracks shortly after producing the Z-era episodes themselves, so there was no voice track to work with.

Furthermore, since they were cutting down the series anyway, all the little frames here and there that they trimmed out (never mind entire scenes) changes up the flow and transitions enough that it had to be re-recorded to edit together appropriately. Otherwise you'd have the end of sentences being cut off, middle of words being sped up, etc. With modern editing technology it's certainly possible, but without a master voice track to work with, it didn't really matter anyway.

Combine that with deceased actors, pre-existing rights issues, etc... it certainly made more sense to just create a new mix for the series.

[Gaffer Tape]

I'd also say it was one of their biggest marketing tools, releasing cast lists little by little, doing stunt casting with new, famous people, showing which original voices would be coming back. Obviously, all the other reasons aside, that's something you simply couldn't do if you were just recycling the original audio.

[VegettoEX]

Marketing, for sure.

Also, here's something I wrote up in an older thread about the same thing. Dunno if it helps any. Mostly just repeating myself.

There are a variety of reasons why voices were re-recorded for Kai (I think that's what you're asking about, rather than why certain characters had their voice actors switched around -- which we know can be due to not being able to afford them, or their prior actor passing away).

For the original Japanese version of the franchise, it was mainly for two reasons:

(1) The old audio masters likely do not have entirely separate tracks for voices, sound effects, and music. There may be a music track (particularly for the movies), but to expect perfectly-isolated tracks for each type of audio for the entire 291 episode series from twenty years ago is unrealistic.

(2) The audio was previously recorded almost entirely in mono (single-channel) sound, and the masters available are not up to the "quality" standards of today's audio/fidelity/presentation.

In a nutshell, if they couldn't isolate the voices for every single episode, and if they needed "better-sounding" audio anyway (to do a modern, stereo track), and if they were going to be chopping up the episodes (therefore meaning they might not be able to perfectly chop up the audio that existed without having awkward cuts)... why not just re-record it from scratch? It's a great bullet-point to toss onto the marketing materials.

For FUNimation's English dub in particular, it was a chance for them to focus their efforts and treat the series properly blah blah blah blah no-one cares about hearing about this anymore. For other dubs, it's basically the same reasons as the original Japanese version.

[SSJ2Engels]

So I guess ('guess'...er, more like, ''accepts the only possible and inescapable conclusion'' ) it was done purely out of necessity. Actually, I already had read something along those lines earlier, when Kai was first coming out, but that was very long ago, I didn't remember any more, and then I read (more recently) someone saying that they recorded new audio for Kai because the old audio from Z was old and shitty and just wasn't appropriate/marketable that way, almost so as to be embarassing so they threw it away. And had to record a new one. So, that was how the confusion came into being, but now I know the truth.

Thanks for the answers, EX and Gaffer.

[Ketchup_Revenge]

They should've just done a revamp of the series like they did with Fullmetal Alchemist. Why not? They have the fanbase for it.

Some scenes in Kai weren't re-animated, you can still see the chalky outline consistent with cel animation in some scenes. I think that the series now is more inconsistantly animated than the original anime...

They should've just reanimated the whole thing.

[SSJ2Engels]

They should've just done a revamp of the series like they did with Fullmetal Alchemist. Why not? They have the fanbase for it.

Some scenes in Kai weren't re-animated, you can still see the chalky outline consistent with cel animation in some scenes. I think that the series now is more inconsistantly animated than the original anime...

They should've just reanimated the whole thing.

While this discussion is a bit off-topic, let me just take the chance to say that I can't help but feel that sometimes the complaint against Kai NOT being re-animated is at least overstasted. I seriously challenge anyone to say that the 'Phanton Edit' fan-made rendition of the Phantom Menace WASN'T a better version of the movie. Maybe the comparison is a litte far-fetched, but that example shows that a seriously good re-edit of a film can actually improve on the material. And if there is something that the original Z series needs desesperately, it is editing. I am not saying that Kai had such good edit (from what I've seen, it probably hasn't, unless it improves on later episodes), but the concept itself certainly isn't absurd. To make such a re-edit a commercial product is another whole different issue, althought who wouldn't like to pay for a genuinely good thing?

Not to mention that, if the series was completely 'revamped', I'm sure as many people who would complain about it being so.

[Ashura]

(1) The old audio masters likely do not have entirely separate tracks for voices, sound effects, and music. There may be a music track (particularly for the movies), but to expect perfectly-isolated tracks for each type of audio for the entire 291 episode series from twenty years ago is unrealistic.

The audio tracks on the Dragon Box and Orange Bricks prove for sure that there is DEFINITELY a separate track set for music and effects for the entire series, as well as a "flattened' mono mix of the full Japanese track. Music and effects are likely separate, too, due to the Falconer music version.

Most shows come with at least this much in the way of materials, even older ones. I believe Animeigo's Macross set had a second audio track which was the music on one speaker and the sfx on the other since they had no dub for it.

There's likely no Japanese-voices-only track though, you're right. Diamonds to donuts, if Funimation had a separated Japanese track they probably would've tried to remaster it for the orange bricks since it would've been them dumping it into their already existing surround mix for English with Japanese music. Not saying the Japanese don't have it, but, likely not.

[SSJ2Engels]

Wait, so does this means that the audio and music on the 5.1 channel English track on the Orange Bricks and on US DBoxes are in better quality than in the Japanese releases (with their flattened mono mix)? I mean, if those masters were kept...

Also, this is a slightly different issue, but isn't the 'flattened' mono mix of the Japanese track out of sync on DBoxes (both the American and the original)? What I want to know is, is the JP voices/music track on that release out of sync as well, or it's a problem exclusive to DBoxes?

[Zestanor]

Wait, so does this means that the audio and music on the 5.1 channel English track on the Orange Bricks and on US DBoxes are in better quality than in the Japanese releases (with their flattened mono mix)? I mean, if those masters were kept...

Yes, any dubbing companies using the original music would have been given the higher quality music/sfx tracks (where available, for example, "Spirit vs. Spirit" was replaced with silence in the Dragon Box dub.)

Also, this is a slightly different issue, but isn't the 'flattened' mono mix of the Japanese track out of sync on DBoxes (both the American and the original)? What I want to know is, is the JP voices/music track on that release out of sync as well, or it's a problem exclusive to DBoxes?

I'm not quite sure on this one, but here's an analogy: You know how on VHS, the color can be shifted right or left a bit? And it's only in some colors. The reds might shift two "color pixels" (there are only about 40 color changes allowed on one scanline of VHS, so 2 spots is quite a bit) to the right, but the greens stay put. This can be a sign of age, and overuse. Maybe on old analog sound on film, (how the DBox/reruns audio was stored) certain sounds aren't handled as well and are shifted forward or backward in time. The separated voices/music/sfx tapes (the voices tape was thrown out) were downmixed onto high quality mono tapes, and at the same time, a mono optical soundtrack was made. Fuji TV's original run of DB used those original flattened mono tapes, and we can assume they were thrown out afterward. So during reruns, that optical soundtrack was used, reused, copied, reused, copied, and became worn out. By now you can hear its muffledness. Another side affect could be that loud sound effects have bled a millisecond forward, while voices and music have stayed put.