If Toei never got rid of their master tapes

[Ringworm128]

I remember once reading that the reason the Japanese audio isn't In 5.1 surround sound on the DVDs like the English version is because the audio is just to fuzzy and dated to sound good in 5.1. So hypothetically if Toei never got rid of their master audio tapes (which had much better audio) would it be possible to upgrade it to surround sound while keeping the audio decent?

[kei17]

It would be possible, but the result wouldn't be as good as the English one because the master cinetapes don't have a separate voice track. It would be "pseudo 5.1ch". If they had not got rid of the mother 6mm open-reel tapes which have separate tracks (voice/effect/music), they could have made a 7.1ch audio track that sounds even far beyond better than Kai. However, actually, almost none of such mother tapes of old TV anime have been stored until today, so it's more of a dream than a reality.

[TheGreatness25]

I don't think they'd make the sound track in 5.1 or 7.1... Look at what their audio track for Kai was.

[Tweaker]

I think the best you'd be getting is a higher quality mono track, honestly. They certainly would have had the ability to mix it higher--after all, you can always re-insert the music's original recordings and the like--but they never had a reason to stereo-pan anything since television broadcasts at the time were in mono. It'd be a waste of effort (unless it was a theatrical feature or something).

[kei17]

I don't think they'd make the sound track in 5.1 or 7.1... Look at what their audio track for Kai was.

At least technically they would have been able to do, but Toei is cheap, so they would have not done.

[bkev]

It really is such a shame that old, recorded tapes, sound better than the dragonbox audio - tracking issues aside.

[Daimo-Rukiri]

It really is such a shame that old, recorded tapes, sound better than the dragonbox audio - tracking issues aside.

It's sad indeed, however if you have a couple of high end equalizers, weren't cheap when selecting your speakers for your 5.1 or 7.1 setup. It is possible to enhance the audio properly, at least making it comparable to my beta and vhs recordings. My beta tapes at least to me had better audio.

Unless you really want to enhance the audio and have cash it's not worth it, the bare minimum you'll be spending on your equipment is 10 grand.

[KiddoCabbusses]

It's sad indeed, however if you have a couple of high end equalizers, weren't cheap when selecting your speakers for your 5.1 or 7.1 setup. It is possible to enhance the audio properly, at least making it comparable to my beta and vhs recordings. My beta tapes at least to me had better audio.

Unless you really want to enhance the audio and have cash it's not worth it, the bare minimum you'll be spending on your equipment is 10 grand.

I guess I should ask, how theoretically possible is it to make the DBox audio sound "better"?
I've had a small amount of discussions on old animes and sound quality, and noticed quite a few studios that aren't Toei tend to have their aged shows sound better, and was wondering if they simply had them stored better or actually digitally manipulated the sound quality somehow (Some of the previews of TMS Anime boxsets I see on Youtube tend to imply the latter).

[jpdbzrulz4sure]

I guess I should ask, how theoretically possible is it to make the DBox audio sound "better"?
I've had a small amount of discussions on old animes and sound quality, and noticed quite a few studios that aren't Toei tend to have their aged shows sound better, and was wondering if they simply had them stored better or actually digitally manipulated the sound quality somehow (Some of the previews of TMS Anime boxsets I see on Youtube tend to imply the latter).

Read this topic.

[Daimo-Rukiri]

It's sad indeed, however if you have a couple of high end equalizers, weren't cheap when selecting your speakers for your 5.1 or 7.1 setup. It is possible to enhance the audio properly, at least making it comparable to my beta and vhs recordings. My beta tapes at least to me had better audio.

Unless you really want to enhance the audio and have cash it's not worth it, the bare minimum you'll be spending on your equipment is 10 grand.

I guess I should ask, how theoretically possible is it to make the DBox audio sound "better"?
I've had a small amount of discussions on old animes and sound quality, and noticed quite a few studios that aren't Toei tend to have their aged shows sound better, and was wondering if they simply had them stored better or actually digitally manipulated the sound quality somehow (Some of the previews of TMS Anime boxsets I see on Youtube tend to imply the latter).

Time and money, it's just speculation but it's not unheard of to restore mono/stereo audio from the late 80s and early 90s. They probably sound better either because they were stored better OR they were remastered better, Yu Yu hakusho is a great example of how well a early 90s anime could be remastered in stunning HD and also take the same time and care into the audio. Dragon Ball could have also been treated the same way, toei probably spent MORE time with the video than the audio but this is just my guess. Toei is very cheap, if they wanted they could have restored the audio to far higher quality than what was on the dragonbox and restoring what's on the dragonbox isn't easy because I'm just working with ac3 samples.

Toei simply didn't care and just released it onto DVDs, they did the same way with kai but with a HD transfer and again they were cheap when remastering it.