Need More Info Regarding Master Audio Tapes For Dragon Ball

[Kojiro Sasaki]

Wow are they stupid?

Yes.

[VegettoEX]

It's super easy in today's digital age to play the "Man, they're so stupid!" card, but it's not that simple.

We're talking about just one long-running show, never mind the bagillion other long-running shows each with a bagillion episodes. All on tapes. And reels. Which have to go somewhere. In an age where there's no practical way to re-use that material or any concept (mainly due to the media at the time) of being able to sell it later on.

Product's done and over. Move on. Trash the old stuff. That was the mindset.

[Fulicer]

We're talking about just one long-running show, never mind the bagillion other long-running shows each with a bagillion episodes. All on tapes. And reels. Which have to go somewhere. In an age where there's no practical way to re-use that material or any concept (mainly due to the media at the time) of being able to sell it later on..

In hindsight though, it's a bit of shame, given how popular this series has become globally. During the time of its production, it was probably treated as just another show in Japan.

I should point to some other people, like BojGrass, that the reason these tapes were probably thrown out is because they never got a Japanese VHS release back in the day for the series. Only the movies did. The DVDs for the episodes came out much later, so they used crappy-sounding optical audio track for them. In fact, while the Dragon Box episode/TV special audio (since TV specials were just episodes in disguise) was not great, the movie release audio was good. That's why the Dragon Box the movies singles (which you can still find and buy) have great audio quality.

There are people on this board with VHS and betamax recordings going back to the original Dragon Ball show. When the show originally aired, the high-quality audio masters were used. If they still exist (maybe they don't), they would sound great, mono or not.

Just to point out, people normally would have just explained it and corrected you minus the fact that you claimed to put in a decent amount of time researching it, yet you had no idea what mono/stereo was, nor that in fact, DB/DBZ never had stereo audio in the first place.

And for the record, when dealing with audio, the difference between mono/stereo is in fact as obvious as 'the sky is blue.'

Sometimes people can be lead astray because of their biases toward audio. I have seen many people associate monophonic audio with garbled noises (while stereo sounds "clean"), so that might be the case here.

[RocktheDragon]

For anyone interested in seeing more comparisons between the audio we have now and the original broadcasts please check out this thread:

http://www.kanzenshuu.com/forum/viewtop ... =7&t=18506

I can't find the thread at the moment, but Kei was in the process of sending a copy of his tapes to Christopher Sabat I think it was? In the hopes of Funimation being able to use his recordings in a future release.

I'm sure that things are on a stand still on that front though...

[BojGrass]

How much of the broadcast audio has been captured this clean on VHS and made digital?

It depends on our devotion and... number In other words - forget about it.

Oh I know. It's prime example A of a pipe dream!

Everything depends on what you mean by “sound quality”. The fidelity itself (all parameters of sound except one) is the same but with mono, you completely lose variety of sound directionality which is very important part of sound reproduction. This is the only thing for which stereo was invented.

I don't think that you can compare monaural recording to stereo one. Mono will never sound as good as stereo because it does not have “stereo image” which adds* much to the sounding, gives great listening experience and makes better use of our auditory perception.
Why do we have two ears instead of one?

Oh, don't get me wrong. I agree entirely. I would much rather hear a show or music in stereo with a well crafted stereo image than mono. When I mix a band on a record I like to keep an image nearby of how they set up on stage and I try to pan the instruments as much as possible to match the audience's perspective, though I can't always because of one reason or another. The quality of the audio comes down to a bit more than what I said all the way from the console to the mic to the mic cables to the gear you run it through will be affected. One of my audio teachers in school said someone once said that the final sound you get will only be as good as your cheapest piece of gear. The point that I was making was simply that a good engineer if the pieces are there can make a good sounding mono recording of something.

I should point to some other people, like BojGrass, that the reason these tapes were probably thrown out is because they never got a Japanese VHS release back in the day for the series. Only the movies did. The DVDs for the episodes came out much later, so they used crappy-sounding optical audio track for them. In fact, while the Dragon Box episode/TV special audio (since TV specials were just episodes in disguise) was not great, the movie release audio was good. That's why the Dragon Box the movies singles (which you can still find and buy) have great audio quality.

I was aware that there hadn't been a home release in Japan. I don't know about in Japan, but here in the states it didn't seem like home releases of tv shows in general really got popular until somewhere around 2002-2004ish. Especially cartoons and kid shows. Either that or that's just when teenage me finally took notice that "oh hey...I can just buy it and not have to deal with commercials or reruns and missing episodes.

[Fulicer]

I was aware that there hadn't been a home release in Japan. I don't know about in Japan, but here in the states it didn't seem like home releases of tv shows in general really got popular until somewhere around 2002-2004ish. Especially cartoons and kid shows. Either that or that's just when teenage me finally took notice that "oh hey...I can just buy it and not have to deal with commercials or reruns and missing episodes.

We're pretty lucky to still have some shows like DB on film. It's likely that some studios kept some shows on video only. Maybe that's why the original animated Batman series (from the 90s) may not have a Blu-ray release.

[superrayman3]

It's super easy in today's digital age to play the "Man, they're so stupid!" card, but it's not that simple.

Personally I think that's a bit debatable in this case, while I will agree that getting rid of the original audio masters was probably a good move from a business viewpoint in terms of cutting down on storage costs and such, it was at the same time stupid for them to not have transferred the original cinetape audio masters to a more compact format that would have retained much more of the original broadcast audio clarity and detail when compared to what the optical audio tapes offered.

For example if Toei had transferred the cinetape audio masters for both DB and DBZ onto VHS tape before trashing them and each tape held 4 episodes of audio recorded in SP mode it would take exactly 111 VHS tapes to store the audio for all 444 episodes of DB and DBZ, on betamax it would take 222 tapes since betamax can only hold about half of the amount of content that a VHS can which could have significantly cut down on storage space while retaining a source of good quality audio.

To put how much storage it takes to hold that many tapes into perspective I have a 44 inch long and 33 inch high book case in my room that has 3 shelves, what I did was take all of the VHS tapes I have and I put as many tapes as I could onto one shelf just to see how many tapes one shelf would be able to hold, when I was done the shelf was able to hold exactly 82 tapes (I was able to put one row of 41 tapes into the shelf and then put a 2nd row of 41 tapes in front of the first row) so if Toei would have gone this route they would have been able to have great quality audio for DB/DBZ with plenty of room to spare (which could have been used to store high quality VHS/Betamax audio backups for many other 80's Toei anime's).

For those wondering how I came up with the numbers for how many tapes it would take to store the audio, take the number of episodes each show has and divide that by (4 for VHS, and 2 for Betamax) and then add the two numbers up.

DB 153/4=38.25 VHS Tapes
DBZ 291/4=72.75 VHS Tapes

DB 153/2=76.5 Betamax Tapes
DBZ 291/2=145.5 Betamax Tapes

[MarcFBR]

STUFF

I have to be honest, your entire response comes from a completely consumer-centric 'looking back' viewpoint.

Looking back because- Back in those years, why would they need to keep copies at high levels of quality? The only reason you kept anything prior to 20ish years ago was so that you could make copies for licensors later on. They had no need or want to keep anything else.

This all especially ignores that you use VHS and Betamax as your example of storage medium.

Frankly, for all the crap I give Toei, they have all of DBZ on at least 16mm, with listenable audio.

That is much better than some things got- Missing episodes of Doctor Who, everything of To Heart 1 minus composite tapes, everything of the original theatrical Project A-Ko, most of the first decade of the Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, the audio from the Batman the Animated Series pilot is completely vanished (and this is just a short list, of things that mean something to me.)

I mean hell, plenty of shows were PRODUCED on lower quality tape mediums to save money. The market of doing more with a show than random repeats is still rather new.

[superrayman3]

Back in those years, why would they need to keep copies at high levels of quality?

Maybe you would want to keep copies of things at high levels of quality for potential future home releases, maybe to help licencors better translate your stuff for a foreign dub, there are many possible reasons you would want to keep copies of things at high levels of quality.

This all especially ignores that you use VHS and Betamax as your example of storage medium.

Okay you may have to explain this one to me because I'm failing to see what the problem is with using VHS/Betamax as a storage medium in a case like this especially when it's been shown that VHS/Betamax can give better audio clarity and quality compared to an optical track.

Frankly, for all the crap I give Toei, they have all of DBZ on at least 16mm, with listenable audio.

True it's listenable but why should fans have to settle for 2nd best when it comes to something especially when that 2nd best stuff comes directly from the very company that made the original source materials to begin with?

That is much better than some things got- Missing episodes of Doctor Who, everything of To Heart 1 minus composite tapes, everything of the original theatrical Project A-Ko, most of the first decade of the Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, the audio from the Batman the Animated Series pilot is completely vanished (and this is just a short list, of things that mean something to me.)

I'll concede on this point because you're right those things did get worse treatment compared to the DB franchise.

I mean hell, plenty of shows were PRODUCED on lower quality tape mediums to save money. The market of doing more with a show than random repeats is still rather new.

I have a feeling that'll change in the future but for now you're right, doing more with a show than just random repeats is still a rather new practice.

[dan2026]

I'm still not quite sure why the master audio was not kept, this was the late 80s/early 90s, home video was a known thing. It seems incredibly short sighted.

Its not like the situation with junking Doctor Who and various other old shows produced in the 60s when there was no concept of home media.

[qjz123]

Back in those years, why would they need to keep copies at high levels of quality?

Maybe you would want to keep copies of things at high levels of quality for potential future home releases, maybe to help licencors better translate your stuff for a foreign dub, there are many possible reasons you would want to keep copies of things at high levels of quality.

At the time the show wasn't going to get a home release the only thing they were concerned about was having decent enough audio for reruns of the show. At the time the main home video storage medium was VHS the thought of releasing a 291 episode series on VHS was completely unpractical. In hindsight keeping the master audio tapes would make sense but at the time when the decision to through out the master audio tapes was made it made perfect sense for Toei to do what they did.

I'm still not quite sure why the master audio was not kept, this was the late 80s/early 90s, home video was a known thing. It seems incredibly short sighted.

Its not like the situation with junking Doctor Who and various other old shows produced in the 60s when there was no concept of home media.

Toei never intended to give the show a home video release. I mean can you imagine trying to store 153 episodes of Dragon Ball and 291 episodes of Dragon Ball Z on VHS? I don't know much about Japan during this time period but I doubt that any long running anime were receiving home video releases at that time. The thought that Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z would get a home release most likely never crossed their minds.

[Gaffer Tape]

RE: dan2026

Home video was a known thing, sure, but releasing entire series of television was certainly not. Yeah, I know here in America at least, I could get tapes with a couple of episodes (or just one episode) of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show or The Real Ghostbusters, but collecting the whole thing? Preposterous. The home video market was almost entirely for the purpose of releasing movies, and that's it. Not coincidentally, the movies of the DB franchise were the only pieces of media to receive home video releases during its original run. And that's not even getting into the fact that we're talking about a Japanese show that ran weekly for years and had *hundreds* of episodes. Then wager in to the equation that buying home video media is *still* a completely different business model in Japan than in America, wherein the purchase point is much, much higher and, therefore, the amount of sales is lower and more niche. Don't forget that, even as season purchasing of television on DVD was beginning to take off in America, the Dragon Boxes (which were, important to note, the first home video release of the series in Japan... six YEARS after the entire television franchise ended) were a pre-order only deal that cost the equivalent of $1,000 each!

[dan2026]

You guys do raise some good points.
Hindsight is 20/20 I suppose.

At least they re-recorded the audio for Kai.

And it would seem the original audio for 'z' is not lost technically.
If good quality off air fan recordings do exist.

[BojGrass]

I'm not entirely privy to the details of proper film storage, but don't a lot of the places that keep that stored invest in large and very specific climate controlled rooms in attempts to keep the tape/film from degrading so much over time? And aren't such rooms fairly expensive?

[DBGod]

Because back then home video wasn't really a tsound for anime. Tape was all stored physically and for a show that's 291 episodes long; that's a shit load of tape!

They figured it simply wasn't cost effective to try and keep it all around.

Such a shame.

Wow are they stupid? They should've known that DBZ is one of the most popular anime not only in Japan but worldwide. I actually just scene a clip with the broadcast audio and man it sounds really good. Oh well at least the Kai DVDs/Blu Rays have the good audio quality for the Japanese version.

That's not something they would have known at the time. You can't predict a shows popularity. Also your use in tenses are completely messed up in that first sentence.

The audio does sound better, but you cannot get original broadcast quality with such a degraded and terrible source.

[Arian]

Sure, you couldn't predict the popularity of a franchise with the first episode of Dragon Ball in February 1986. But even in the mid-1990's when the show gotten to that point, they were still trashing audio. Now that you gotta admit, is an error in judgement.

The least Toei can do now is accept fan donations.

[qjz123]

Sure, you couldn't predict the popularity of a franchise with the first episode of Dragon Ball in February 1986. But even in the mid-1990's when the show gotten to that point, they were still trashing audio. Now that you gotta admit, is an error in judgement.

The least Toei can do now is accept fan donations.

As we've pointed out it wasn't an error in judgement the thought of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z getting a home release was unfathomable. It just didn't happen, the thought probably never even crossed their minds and as Gaffer tape pointed out the home video market in the U.S. and Japan are completely different, anime is very expensive to own in Japan even now just imagine what it would have cost to buy 89 tapes worth of Dragon Ball back in the early 90's.

[penguintruth]

A lot of tracks, video and/or audio for early anime, stuff before DB, and probably at the same time, were just thrown away, recorded over, or were lost in fires.

[Arian]

@qjz123

I did consider that, and the way you posed that fact kind of opened my eyes to it.

Nevertheless, it's still a bummer, and I emphasize my previous statement that Toei should at least accept the high quality audio that some fans possess if that fan is is willing to give it to them.

[Arian]

I Have those fansub Tapes i got 291 too.
Need only Vcr to see how the quality is.
Where did you get those fantape's pic? i got exactly those.

They're from an ebay listing. I was going to buy them, but some bloke beat me to it. T_T