Bad sound quality for Japanese DB/DBZ

[Victorious]

I notice on my orange bricks, the sound quality of the Japanese version is so terrible, it's sounds fine in the dub-English but I don't like to watch the dub.

Everything i've watched online with DB and DBZ in Japanese also has bad quality sound.

What the heck is going on here? Is there no version of the original Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z available with high sound quality?

[DBZGTKOSDH]

The audio quality is bad in the Dragon Boxes as well. Some re-runs of the series on TV, however, have high quality sound.

[Victorious]

Yeah, i don't know how it is on the Dragon Boxes, but on the Oranage bricks you can change to Japanese vs English dub anytime while you're watching it, and you'll instantly notice the much poorer sound quality of the Japanese version. Even the dub with the Japanese soundtrack is good, but original Japanese version is no good. It's audio stinks.

[VegettoEX]

It was a throwaway weekly show in Japan. They didn't bother to keep the raw audio masters for the show, because why on Earth would you ever watch the show again? It's on TV. The TV show isn't the product! The TV show is just a commercial for the rest of the merchandise!

That was the basic thinking. I defy you to find some of our own shows from the 1980s (even even the 1990s) with proper audio masters. What is there... Jem & the Holograms...? That's basically it?

The reason the English dub sounds better is because it was produced well over a decade later and was always intended to be tossed on a home video release, so they obviously kept their raw masters for later proper encoding.

[jpdbzrulz4sure]

Is there no version of the original Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z available with high sound quality?

Nothing except the Japanese releases of the movies.

[Victorious]

It was a throwaway weekly show in Japan. They didn't bother to keep the raw audio masters for the show, because why on Earth would you ever watch the show again? It's on TV. The TV show isn't the product! The TV show is just a commercial for the rest of the merchandise!

That was the basic thinking. I defy you to find some of our own shows from the 1980s (even even the 1990s) with proper audio masters. What is there... Jem & the Holograms...? That's basically it?

The reason the English dub sounds better is because it was produced well over a decade later and was always intended to be tossed on a home video release, so they obviously kept their raw masters for later proper encoding.

Well thanks for the bad news, that was really stupid of them IMO. How could they not think about how they were initially gonna sell the show on video?

At least we have Kai i suppose, but still I like large portions of filler in Z, and the Buu saga. Ohh yeah, and Dragon Ball.

[kei17]

IMO, the Japanese audio sounds faintly better on the orange bricks because it's somewhat equalized. The Dragon Boxes have fewer crackles, though.

[VegettoEX]

Well thanks for the bad news, that was really stupid of them IMO. How could they not think about how they were initially gonna sell the show on video?

Who in their right mind would contemplate selling a 500 episode TV series on the medium of the time (VHS)...?

[coola]

http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/detailview.html?KEY=PCXP-60021 Ranma 1/2 aired in similar period of time to DBZ, also had plenty of episodes, yet it look like they still have proper sound masters.

[eledoremassis02]

I would argue that this is the worst the series ever sounded. And it's on one of my orange bricks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-ZQl-lTPts

[ThunderPX]

It was a throwaway weekly show in Japan. They didn't bother to keep the raw audio masters for the show, because why on Earth would you ever watch the show again? It's on TV. The TV show isn't the product! The TV show is just a commercial for the rest of the merchandise!

That was the basic thinking. I defy you to find some of our own shows from the 1980s (even even the 1990s) with proper audio masters. What is there... Jem & the Holograms...? That's basically it?

The reason the English dub sounds better is because it was produced well over a decade later and was always intended to be tossed on a home video release, so they obviously kept their raw masters for later proper encoding.

I definitely can't think of any show from the 80s or early 90s that sounds quite as bad as Dragon Ball, though. Some Japanese shows that aired around the time of DB or even earlier have amazing audio on newer Japanese releases, even. Lupin III and the original Macross come to mind.
Although then again, DB is a ridiculously long show. For all we know, they decided to start throwing DB stuff away when it ran for really long and then figured "well, there's no point in keeping part of the masters around!" Or maybe it's just Toei that throws everything away.

[Gonstead]

The only real way to watch the series with higher quality Japanese audio would be if you had access to TV recordings of when the show aired for the very first time, which was when the audio masters were used before being thrown away.

There's also this little topic which compares between the Dragon Box and recordings of the original broadcast.

[JulieYBM]

I think Toei kept their audio masters for their 1968 Gegege no Kitarou series. Hokuto no Ken is also in a similar boat with the DVDs having really good sound.

[Mewzard]

It was a throwaway weekly show in Japan. They didn't bother to keep the raw audio masters for the show, because why on Earth would you ever watch the show again? It's on TV. The TV show isn't the product! The TV show is just a commercial for the rest of the merchandise!

That was the basic thinking. I defy you to find some of our own shows from the 1980s (even even the 1990s) with proper audio masters. What is there... Jem & the Holograms...? That's basically it?

The reason the English dub sounds better is because it was produced well over a decade later and was always intended to be tossed on a home video release, so they obviously kept their raw masters for later proper encoding.

Well thanks for the bad news, that was really stupid of them IMO. How could they not think about how they were initially gonna sell the show on video?

At least we have Kai i suppose, but still I like large portions of filler in Z, and the Buu saga. Ohh yeah, and Dragon Ball.

You think that's bad, BBC was about to record over the Monty Python's Flying Circus reels, which would have destroyed the only existing copies, had one of the members of the show not bought them to save them. BBC did that to many shows to save money. That's why so many of their shows are lost. Luckily, he kept the reels so the BBC could later come back and ask to borrow them for new things (so we eventually got DVDs).

Also, Fist of the North Star has great sound...but the early animation was pretty cheap.

Saint Seiya must have kept their sound because it sounded great even on Youtube a few years back (then again, given the budget the first 73 episodes had, I doubt Toei would throw any of that out).

I wonder what the condition of Dr. Slump is, or if they kept all the Kamen Rider/Super Sentai masters, because some of the older shows on DVD sounded fairly good.

[BluezaBladeNZ]

I wonder what the condition of Dr. Slump is, or if they kept all the Kamen Rider/Super Sentai masters, because some of the older shows on DVD sounded fairly good.

I've got a few R2 Dr. Slump DVDs from the N-Cha boxset and from what I've seen, the video and audio quality are pretty much identical to the Dragon Boxes, only difference really was that it retained the broadcast order with NEP first, then the credits, unlike the Dragon Box which reversed it.

[Metalwario64]

I think Toei kept their audio masters for their 1968 Gegege no Kitarou series. Hokuto no Ken is also in a similar boat with the DVDs having really good sound.

Fist of the North Star has great sound.

What are you guys talking about? It sounds like the same optical audio as the Dragon Boxes to me, though maybe it's not quite as muffled.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LAMuyc9TEY

The movie sounds fantastic like the movie Dragon Boxes though.

[JulieYBM]

This sounds better than the Dragon Ball stuff.

[kei17]

During the first broadcast, Toei Video released three volumes of VHS that contain the first TV series of Hokuto no Ken edited down to several hours, and they have the crystal-clear audio even remixed into stereo. Then they released all the episodes for the fist time on DVD in the early 2000s, of which audio sucks just as bad as the Dragon Boxes.

[Fulicer]

Well thanks for the bad news, that was really stupid of them IMO. How could they not think about how they were initially gonna sell the show on video?

Who in their right mind would contemplate selling a 500 episode TV series on the medium of the time (VHS)...?

They probably produce a ton of shows per year. To save space, it would be more practical to use the soundtrack on the film for the Japanese version, and the ME (Music and Effects tapes). This means that the voice tapes are not required. Still, certain shows were released on VHS (like Sailormoon according to Kei or someone else here?) so there masters were kept.

Now DB might be a bit tough to distribute. But if there was a market for that show (i.e. if was popular with kids in Japan during the 80s-90s like it is here), then such a release would have made sense. Since they opted not to, the TV episodes have crap audio quality while the movies sounds great.

One other thing I wanted to point out; a lot of people say that the Dragon Box movies use "stereo" audio. They are probably encoded as such, but they sound like a single channel of audio to me. Movie 13 is an obvious exception as you can hear a stereo effect in the beginning. I don't think TOEI bothered to remix the audio for the Dragon Ball movies and DBZ movies 1-12. The Dragon Box versions of those movies still sound good though.

[kei17]

Still, certain shows were released on VHS (like Sailormoon according to Kei or someone else here?) so there masters were kept.

Yes, that's true; though the first series of Sailor Moon was broadcast with the optical audio because of TV Asahi's practice at the time. For some reason, TV Asahi never used cinetapes for prime-time shows until the early '90s. Incidentally, receiving a VHS release during or immediately after the initial broadcast doesn't guarantee the current existences of the original audio masters. Some Super Sentai shows got VHS releases with the original audio, but they all sound bad on DVD.