Dragon Ball Z "Seasons" On Blu-ray: News & Discussion

[dbboxkaifan]

Sure thing but my question still remains if anyone knows the answer. I'm really curious if they aired the broadcast audio as clean as Dragon Ball Z ones.

I've gotten used to the muffled Dragon Ball audio quality so it doesn't really sound all that bad but it'd definitely be much nicer to hear it crispy clean.

[BojGrass]

SylentEcho wrote:

Puto wrote:
2. This is literally impossible to do.
It takes a lot of effort, but it's not impossible. I've seen people isolate audio tracks from mono too.

In a case such as Dragon Ball though, it is indeed impossible. Nobody, not even Toei (who destroyed the original master recordings), with any amount of technological knowledge will be able to accomplish in completely removing the voices from the music.

Plus, there just is no financial incentive for them to even consider, let alone give any thought to committing to such a thing. Any attempted payoff is not worth it for such a tiny, if any niche audience for it.

So...now hold on a second. If the original tracks are gone how did Funimation achieve an English dub over the Japanese music? Or have they been lost since the Funimtation dubs?

As far as interchanging Japanese dialogue with Dub soundtracks and all other possibilities, (also worth noting: I don't have any idea how Funimation records their dialogue as far as into a DAW and how they set up the tracks, but in Dragon Ball Z's case at least, if you have a track with the Japanese soundtrack, a track with the Japanese dialogue, a track with the dub soundtrack, and a track with the dub dialogue, you could theoretically have a version with the English and Japanese dialogue running at the same time. Not that you'd want to. It'd just be a matter of muting some channels on a console and unmuting others to get a Japanese dub with the dub's soundtrack. (I'm sure there would be several other syncing issues that I'm not thinking of, and then there's also the time it would take to render each file.) Unless the original Japanese tracks are gone and all that's left is the one master mono track with everything rendered out is available. At that point you're pretty much stuck as stated.

For me personally: the dub dialogue and soundtrack in Dragon Ball Z were written for one another. When I had the Orange Bricks I watched it all the way through with the dub's dialogue and the Japanese soundtrack and wasn't impressed, but when I flipped it back to the broadcast music it worked much better I thought. I'd say the same would go for the Japanese dialogue and the dub soundtrack. Plus as already stated, that would be such a niche audience that it wouldn't be worth the extra cash to produce.

Incidentally (and blatantly off topic): first post after visiting the site and the forums for years and years and years. I'd have made my first post in an "Introduce yourself" thread but I didn't find one. Though I'd admit to overlooking it!

[Ajay]

Funimation would have been sent the effects tracks back in the day. They almost certainly didn't receive any Japanese dialogue. Why would they? They're producing an English language version for TV. I'd be surprised if they even had Kikuchi's music back then too since their plan was to do their own score anyway.

Since then, Toei got rid of all their masters. There is no isolated Japanese audio track lying around anywhere that we know of so what you're asking for is impossible. And...well, the Faulconer music has no place in the show let alone being anywhere near the original performances.

The only thing left is a mono optical track. You can't really do anything with that. Even in Kai, they didn't produce a 5.1 mix of the show so you couldn't even do it with Kai without getting a hold of their masters.

[BojGrass]

Funimation would have been sent the effects tracks back in the day. They almost certainly didn't receive any Japanese dialogue. Why would they? They're producing an English language version for TV. I'd be surprised if they even had Kikuchi's music back then too since their plan was to do their own score anyway.

Since then, Toei got rid of all their masters. There is no isolated Japanese audio track lying around anywhere that we know of so what you're asking for is impossible. And...well, the Faulconer music has no place in the show let alone being anywhere near the original performances.

I'm just stating what could be theoretically possible. For what I'm speaking of you'd have to have all the puzzle pieces to be able to do it.

I'm guessing that at some point they did receive some kind of audio track for the Japanese music before Toei got rid of the original masters though given what we have on the brick sets, right?

I've never understood why companies would get rid of their masters. If I had a property like Dragon Ball the original masters and tracks would be locked away in a climate controlled vault. Then again, I'm a bit crazy when it comes to that kind of stuff.

I'll also agree on Faulconer's score. Once I heard the the original score what little liking I had for Faulconer's score went out the window. In spite of that I still think that the old dub falls flat on its face along side the original score. It's just a personal opinion. That's kind of the reason why I've held off on taking the plunge with the Blu ray sets. I've got the Dragon Boxes and they have what I fell in love with which is the Japanese show. I really have no want to watch the dub of the show anymore (Japanese score or not) other than sometimes I enjoy hearing how the dub handled Vegeta's agitation in some scenes. The only purpose my purchasing the Blu rays would serve would be to have the original...uh..."not-kai (?)" show in HD. I could even live with the cropping if it's been done like it's been said to have been done (though I'd prefer to not have to).

[Ajay]

I'm guessing that at some point they did receive some kind of audio track for the Japanese music before Toei got rid of the original masters though given what we have on the brick sets, right?

I've never understood why companies would get rid of their masters. If I had a property like Dragon Ball the original masters and tracks would be locked away in a climate controlled vault. Then again, I'm a bit crazy when it comes to that kind of stuff.

The music has never been an issue as it's been released on disc many times over. I imagine they were either given those tracks back in the day and just didn't use them til a home release was necessary or they recreated the original mix by using the ready available masters for the music.

I believe it's just the Japanese mix down that is gone. Storage is incredibly expensive for physical film and this show is damn long. Home video for anime wasn't really a thing back then so it must have seemed unnecessary to hang on to all the individual reels. Better to just keep a single, complete copy.

Absurd to us now but 'money-smart' back then.

[BojGrass]

The music has never been an issue as it's been released on disc many times over. I imagine they were either given those tracks back in the day and just didn't use them til a home release was necessary or they recreated the original mix by using the ready available masters for the music.

I believe it's just the Japanese mix down that is gone. Storage is incredibly expensive for physical film and this show is damn long. Home video for anime wasn't really a thing back then so it must have seemed unnecessary to hang on to all the individual reels. Better to just keep a single, complete copy.

Absurd to us now but 'money-smart' back then.

I'd hate to be on the audio team of that project if it was done the latter way.

You're right on the storage for film thing. Like I said, I'm just a bit crazy when it comes to my own personal things of that nature. Granted, I only deal with audio and there's no tape involved.

[Ajay]

I'd hate to be on the audio team of that project if it was done the latter way.

Haha yeah, it's pretty much the most unlikely situation but you never know what these people get up to!

[Puto]

The standalone voice recordings for the Japanese version weren't kept, but the Music & Effects tracks were obviously kept for International distribution.

[UltimateHammerBro]

The standalone voice recordings for the Japanese version weren't kept, but the Music & Effects tracks were obviously kept for International distribution.

I suppose that there was a effects-only track too, wasn't it? Funi must have received the SFX apart from the music when they started dubbing the series.

[eledoremassis02]

So for the new audio, they overlapped the dub sound FX/music file with the Japanese audio? Cause I noticed when flipping between English and Japanese the sound effects have the same level of quality that they did not have in previous versions.

[Puto]

So for the new audio, they overlapped the dub sound FX/music file with the Japanese audio? Cause I noticed when flipping between English and Japanese the sound effects have the same level of quality that they did not have in previous versions.

I doubt it. They probably just did some filtering.

[ChibiGoku]

Alright, apparently this is a new concept to a lot of people, so I'm going to explain this the best I can.

Many companies around the world, not just Japan, produce an alternate track which contains the sound effects and music tracks for the show. This extends to animation, live action, and even audio drama/music. This are generally known as Music & Effects tracks (M&E for short). These are generally for purposes of producing an alternate language dub of said shows/movies/etc. Distribution of these tracks varied over the years, some being stored to film (which may or may not be where FUNimation got Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z's tracks from) to tape, where the tracks are stored on separate audio tapes. Sometimes the music and effects tracks are separate, so making an alternate music track is possible. This can also sometimes extend to animal sounds and other voice audio clips as well. Sometimes, they're mixed together as one whole track. Other times, they're... non-existent, either due to the degradation of film elements or simply of losing the tracks. In cases like this, a whole new sound mix is needed in order to dub. This has happened with dubs over here before, so if FUNimation had to have done the same, they probably would have. In fact, FUNimation's recent production, the Mass Effect anime movie, they had to produce their own M&E track, due to the Japanese not doing one.

As for the original voice tracks being stored, sometimes they are thrown out after they have been mixed, creating the problem that they would simply need to rerecord the whole show over in order to fix or update the audio if they wish to. In some cases, this has to be done, due to the original masters being destroyed or no longer available, for various reasons. Mysterious Cities of Gold had to have a separate Japanese track produced for it in 1995, due the loss of the original audio masters. There is a bit confusion what happened here, but they had to seek out the masters France had on hand and rerecord the Japanese version of the show, where notably only Masako Nozawa would reprise her role as Esteban while the rest of the cast would be replaced. For unknown reasons, some of the Gundam movies would also be re-recorded as well, having several cast members be replaced due to various reasons.

Regardless, I think for today, the Japanese are a bit more careful about keeping the voice tracks available, due to licensing issues that can occur when they release the show overseas, where they will have to remix the scene so the dubbers wouldn't have the mute the Japanese audio track (for example, this happened with Hare+Guu in one episode, where the Japanese had to provide an alternate mix for one scene, due to the ending song being in it, which was under dispute by the record label and the animation studio).

For the record, the reason why the Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z releases are sometimes missing vocal songs (not counting the opening to DBZ, which I'm not sure why to this day is replaced on non-dragonbox releases) extends to the masters Toei provided, which the M&E tracks were missing select songs, for unknown reasons. Different countries got different revisions, and some were missing songs that other masters had intact.

EDIT: Made a minor correction, as I used the wrong term.

[Zestanor]

I think Funimation got separate music and effects tracks. In the 5.1 releases, different channels have different mixes of BGM and SFX.

[eledoremassis02]

I think Funimation got separate music and effects tracks. In the 5.1 releases, different channels have different mixes of BGM and SFX.

I really should try these tracks. The Japanese score with FUNi dub seems so quiet though lol

[kei17]

I think Funimation got separate music and effects tracks. In the 5.1 releases, different channels have different mixes of BGM and SFX.

They don't have the music-only tapes for the first 17 or so episodes of Z, though. These episodes don't have a properly mixed 5.1ch track.


Speaking of the Japanese version with the Faulconer socre, you can see how it sounds like on the videos I made years ago just out of curiosity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pnNtpvkwNs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU2_2lBrpfw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA_tjNFUQqA

But yeah, it never actually happens. There is absolutely no point businesswise.

[eledoremassis02]

Speaking of the Japanese version with the Faulconer socre, you can see how it sounds like on the videos I made years ago just out of curiosity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pnNtpvkwNs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU2_2lBrpfw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA_tjNFUQqA

But yeah, it never actually happens. There is absolutely no point businesswise.

That's not as awkward as I thought it would be lol

There is a clip with the Shuki Levy score but I can't find it ><

[Baggie_Saiyan]

Larger artwork for S4 & 5

[Ajay]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pnNtpvkwNs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU2_2lBrpfw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA_tjNFUQqA

That was an interesting watch. I think it only solidified the fact that, even without the horrendous dub, that music just doesn't fit the show nor stand on its own at all. The only track that I kinda liked was during Bardock's mad rush at Freeza.

[Puto]

Speaking of the Japanese version with the Faulconer socre, you can see how it sounds like on the videos I made years ago just out of curiosity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pnNtpvkwNs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU2_2lBrpfw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA_tjNFUQqA

But yeah, it never actually happens. There is absolutely no point businesswise.

Before anybody tries to use kei's videos as a way to argue that FUNimation *could* do Japanese audio with the Faulconer music, would like to note that those were done with the Big Box audio (clip 1), Original Broadcast audio (clip 2, and it sounds noticeably phased), and the high-quality laserdisc audio (clip 3) -- FUNimation doesn't have any of that.

[dbboxkaifan]

Larger artwork for S4 & 5

Spoiler:

Freeza is sliced up -- No reasoning whatsoever (Trunks should have been back there)
Artificial Human No. 16 aiming at Trunks -- He doesn't like to hurt good innocent people so this is rather odd again
Dr. Gero seems to be screaming -- "Don't leave me, Vegeta!"