The Sonic World

Gavrev

Gavrev

Dandy Guy, in Space
Hi peeps. I thought I'd throw this in as a bit of a discussion thread after purchasing Psycho Pass, not that these thoughts are exclusive to this series. Whilst I appreciate that most anime is consumed on Japanese TV, it never fails to elicit a sigh when I see the words "Japanese 2.0" and "English 5.1". Okay, so you can make up for this by setting your amp to contrive a pseudo-surround mix of a stereo track (and it works quite well I have to admit) but every time I encounter this disparity it feels as though they're selling their own art woefully short. I wonder how other otaku feel about this? :?
 
I don't mind it too much. There's less sense of 3D space visually in an anime and on the rare occasion I do hear surround sound in anime I tend to think it's coming from elsewhere initially. I guess for the Japanese as well, the additional production costs just aren't worth it for the relatively small (just a guess) percentage of the population who own a surround sound system.
 
I believe there was an Answerman column on ANN which discussed this a few weeks ago, and it simply boiled down to the fact that most Japanese TV audio isn't recorded in 5.1 to begin with, and remixing 2.0 to 5.1 is more effort than it's worth.
 
st_owly said:
I believe there was an Answerman column on ANN which discussed this a few weeks ago, and it simply boiled down to the fact that most Japanese TV audio isn't recorded in 5.1 to begin with, and remixing 2.0 to 5.1 is more effort than it's worth.
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It was indeed talked about in a recent Answerman column. Basically most people in Japan don't have the space to have surround sound and the broadcast standard doesn't support it either which is why it is usually recorded in stereo instead. The link for the episode is below,

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/answerm ... -15/.77634

The question actually asked what the difference was between the different sound standards used by different companies such as Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and DTS-HD Master Audio.
 
Thanks to all for the insight - I figured it would boil down to the fact that the material is essentially broadcast material, and it is true that the collectible DVD/Blu-ray market is somewhat more prevalent in the west than the east, so it all makes sense. I suppose it's a unique matter then to see the brief of works such as "Ghost In The Shell:SAC" expanded to cover Japanese 5.1 surround - essentially a cool but unusual production option.
 
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