DBZ Audio Sources

[dexterp]

Okay, Dragonball Z has had many different releases both official and unofficial. One thing that is never the same on these releases though, is the quality of the Japanese audio. Which release has the best audio source? The orange box is horribly muffled yet the malaysian bootleg I have is vhs clear. I'm half tempted to splice the audio from one to the other. The bootleg just seems less superficial and more authentic for a series of Dragonball's time.


I'm definitely not supporting bootlegs. I have quite a few official releases and re-releases of Z alone. I'm just very curious as to where this good Japanese audio source comes from. I thought Toei lost all the original tapes?

[TheBlackPaladin]

Toei did indeed loose all the original tapes. Well, okay, they didn't "loose" them, they deliberately threw them out. However, lucky for us, many fans happened to tape the episodes in Japan when they aired for the first time. That is the closest approximation we will ever have to the original audio quality. Any bootleg you hear with great quality audio is likely a bootleg that uses VHS or Betamax tapings of the original episodes as their source.

[Vision]

Have we ever found a source, or a way to get the US music with the Japanese voices?

[kei17]

Have we ever found a source, or a way to get the US music with the Japanese voices?

There clearly is no reason for doing that. Speaking of the sources, I don't think Toei (or TAVAC, maybe) still have the voice-only 6mm magnetic tapes used for Z.

[TheBlackPaladin]

Have we ever found a source, or a way to get the US music with the Japanese voices?

There's no way of doing that at this point. Like Kei said, Toei thew out the voice-only tapes.

Having said that, while I don't think Faulconer's score would mesh well with the Japanese voices (I don't even think it meshes well with the English voices), you can kinda/sorta/not really replicate this experience if you play a DBZ videogame on the Xbox 360. The 360 has an option where, if you load music onto your 360 hard drive, you can press the "Xbox button" during the game, go to "Music," and then select the track that you want to play (and adjust the volume so it doesn't sound louder than anything else in the mix). The option itself is really cool, actually, because the dialogue and sound effects remain intact and untouched for most games, so you're *just* replacing the music. I've been able to experience games with some really cool alternative music tracks that way.

[Vision]

Have we ever found a source, or a way to get the US music with the Japanese voices?

There clearly is no reason for doing that. Speaking of the sources, I don't think Toei (or TAVAC, maybe) still have the voice-only 6mm magnetic tapes used for Z.

Clearly no reason or no way?

As much as I love the Japanese audio the music gets on my nerves after a few seasons, and considering most of the US voices don't mesh with anything, I can't imagine it being a terrible experience.

[jpdbzrulz4sure]

Clearly no reason or no way?

Both.