The Twelve Kingdoms Forum

I just noticed that Media Balsters is announcing the second volume of 12K directly as with mono... any thoughts on this? @_@;

Ahiru

Actually, I was told that the first DVD plays in mono even tough it is advertised as stereo. Anyone else can confirm this? My hearing is kinda lousy.

drifterx wrote:Actually, I was told that the first DVD plays in mono even tough it is advertised as stereo. Anyone else can confirm this? My hearing is kinda lousy.

As far as i could hear it out..the english dub is mono...but Japanese seems to be stereo.....Luckily i don't care to much for the engl.subs(the voices and pronounce's are to much off for me .......but then on the otherhand the subtitles in yellow suck too)......

oh well i bought the first DVD i don't think i will buy the other (the fansub are much better in typesettings and translation )

This was reported back in July on AoD:

http://forums.animeondvd.com/shownested ... =5&o=&vc=1

I personally haven't had a change to view my disc yet, though. It's in a different state.

More discussion showed up in the counterpart thread in the Suggestions forum.

Also, I just looked at the main R1 forum and noticed this thread about someone setting up a petition about the mono issue.

The unfortunate part of the situation is how MediaBlasters handled it. They initiailly set out to prove that the disc was in stereo, and their response to the poster on AnimeOnDVD was that a glitch in the ProLogic encoding was somehow making it sound mono for people with good sound systems. However, countless tests in the first thread I linked have proved that the audio on the English DVD, for both tracks, is mono, while the Japanese disc and fansubs have stereo. Several people even ripped the audio of all three to compare the difference between the right and left tracks, only to confirm that the English disc is mono.

Furthermore, the creditless opening on the disc has been confirmed by many people to have real stereo audio and what limited amount of directionality it originally had. Comparing it to the one in front of the shows is an easy comparison.

Someone mentioned that the discs are advertised in mono, but it should be noted that MediaBlasters lists all their discs in mono, and some are actually stereo. While it's not false advertising on their part, they did try to convince everyone (or, at least, themselves) that the disc was stereo.

I can only hope that future discs will be in stereo; there's no other series right now I'm so eager to purchase on DVD, and the possibility that they're just not doing as good a job on it as they could rankles. After all, it would probably take more work on their part to make a mono DVD out of a stereo source, unless they were somehow provided with a mono source.

All that said, it doesn't affect me signifnicantly, since I have, at best, stereo sound. I haven't noticed the difference yet, but I haven't watched all the episodes on the disc, either. And, admittedly, it's been quite a while since I watched episode 1.

The latest, final, and official word:

http://media-blasters.com/animeworks.cfm

"Check this page for more details on the re-authoring. Be rest assured that 12 Kingdoms - Shoku will be first and all future discs from Media Blasters will not have this problem." -Sirabella

I agree with Neko-chan, the fan subs seem to be better. I learned my lesson with dubbing along time ago. English voice actors can't show the same level of emotion in their voices that the Japanese do especially dramas. I think American company's like to destroy anime once they get a hold of it. It was why they sold the dubbed vhs cheaper then the subbed. The reason they gave was that the Japanese voice actors cost alot of money. Well how come the subbed and dubbed combined on DVD cost the same as a subbed titled VHS. The economy is worse in both countries now , then a few years ago. I like my Anime but not when they butcher it. If only I could understand Japanese better. That's the way I use to watch it no subtitles. Just me and a Japanese-english Dictionary.

The logical reason for dubbing is to reach audiences other than the usual fans. That means more money for the anime companies.

I think the reason why the subbed VHS was more expensive was because the usual fans are willing to shell out money for them, and the distributors knew it. It also helped that the dubbed versions usually suck.

Dubs are getting better, changes are unavoidable, buy the DVD because you get both anyway.

Besides, doesn't the problem exist on both tracks?

We Could get into that old Debate about subs vs. dubs but we won't. The voice actors have not really gotten any better. They sound the same as they did six years ago or more. The problem with dubbing is they fit the words to go with the movement of the mouth. This could lead to very bad translations of a story. I have noticed this in the pasted. They also have to redo the sound to add the english voice tracks and music sound track is done as well. It might be cheaper to do this in Mono. The point is don't nick pick about the DVD. Just watch it and Enjoy!

Well, you're the one who started that off-topicness, moon. And you even continued the "debate" a bit in your post.

This thread is about the stereo/mono output problem on some of Mediablaster's DVDs. Whether or not it's nit-picking probably depends on the audio setup you have or even plan to have - I'm limited to so-so stereo so it may not make that huge a difference, though it is awfully nice to hear placed sounds. If the original was stereo, then it isn't too much to ask for stereo in the R1, especially when anime DVDs cost more than other DVDs on average anyway. As said in the AoD threads - wouldn't it be more work to actually convert a stereo input to mono? But that's besides the point, too -

More importantly, Mediablasters already admitted a problem in the mastering process for 12k-1, so the "cheaper" theory doesn't fly. The ONLY issue right now is whether MB will reissue 12k-1 (assuming later discs won't have a mastering problem).