Tetsuwan Birdy | Birdy the Mighty [Rabbit-Force] (DVD H264 AC3)  

Why does this release only have simple 2ch jp audio, when a4e have 6ch jp audio? I strongly doubt that a4e have mixed their own 6ch track.

What's with this 6ch audio nonsense I keep hearing about? a4e's release has both tracks @ stereo. However mine "simple 2ch jp audio" completly and utterly owns your so called 6ch audio (btw, it shows up as 6ch in mpc as an error - in fact it's 2ch), because a4e used mere 64 kbps for the bitrate - I mean wtf, are people deaf or sth? I can't stand to listen to such encodes (the same thing happened with Initial D or Hajime no Ippo - you could clearly hear the compression artifacts). AFAIK, this OVA was never released with 6ch audio. On a similiar note - you can find many R1 releases where the jp audio is 2ch and the eng dub is 6ch - don't be fooled. The 6ch audio is just an upmix from the jp track (probably losing some quality in the proces) with the center channel set to the dub, ugh.

tl;dr : know your facts before you start assuming things. Sorry if I overreacted a bit there, but it really pisses me off when ppl neglect true audio quality (64 kbps audio ftl!)

PS: I know that according to recent hearing test (@hydrogen audio forums), current audio codecs compress really well @ low bitrates (like 64 kbps) - but come on, encoders usually pump a lot of bitrate in the video and they skimp a few kBs for the audio? :/

PS: look at the torrent page for a4e's release - it clearly says it's 2.0 (as does anidb).

Want me to take a photo of my reciever showing all 6 channels, or a screenshot of ffdshow also confirming that it is 6ch? Audio bitrate averages around 75-80, and sure that is quite low but you should NEVER compare AC3 to other encoding formats, since AC3 is known to have alot higher bitrate than necessary. Low bitrate can therefore easily be explained by the track having lower sampling rate (44100hz) and being heavily encoded, which can sometimes (most often not) be excused on such old anime as this.
Sure, the sound is extremly dull in the a4e release. But it does not sound worse than many other old anime from that decade. I doubt your 2ch AC3 is much superior, since it is not like the source has changed.
And don't bring in unrelated english track upmixes. They are made by professional studios whose knowledge is probably extremly superior to yours. And neither do they need to lose quality if done right. Why do you think DD PLIIx and such exist? And center+dub = ugh? Please elaborate. I also hate english dubs, but if you are saying that the voices aren't supposed to be mixed to the center channel then I recommend that you never try to discuss sound again.

You seem to misunderstand, I did not say your release is inferior. I simply stated the fact of the 6ch track being available. Because where the hell would they otherwise get it from? I have never heard of any ripping group mixing their own 6ch track, and neither have I heard of an US company upmixing the japanese audio track in their US release. And if they did, then it would be made from a professional studio.
It is complete and utterly stupid that you actually try to make it sound like the 6ch track doesn't exist. MPC can usually not be trusted regarding these matters, but a thousand dollar reciever and an acknowledge decoding filter like ffdshow is not wrong. I can also hear that it is correctly mixed.

Also, I will not bother to download your release and compare. From your comment I can clearly see that you seem to lack both common sound knowledge and the linguistic skills to be taken seriously.

I can't check this right now, but if I remember correctly, when I checked a4e's release some time ago, audio was only stereo (despite the fact that it was reported as 6ch). Could you confirm if all the channels are actually used?
AC3 uses more bitrate than necessary? Then what about DTS? Anyway, whether or not that's true (as you've pointed out, my common sound knowledge is lacking) - 70 - 80 kbps for 6 channels is no where near enough, AAC or not, channel coupling or not. Unless only the two front channels are used and for the rest none or very little bitrate is used.


I see that you are unfamiliar with some crazy stuff that some American companies do with the source they get (Dragon Ball, to name one quite famous instance).


My point is that the English voiceover is usually done so that it overshadows all the rest of the track - that is, the center speaker is too loud.


From my experience, it's quite common for the R1 release to have 5.1 track for the English dub (an upmix or whatever you want to call it) and stereo for the Japanese track.


All I'm saying is that I don't know of any Japanese 5.1 tracks for this anime - and if it's not present on the original Japanese DVDs, then there's a slim chance that the 5.1 track only got included in the US release.


Well, I'm sorry, English is not my first language. And I don't quite understand what you mean by "common sound knowledge"? That when a receiver shows 6ch, the sound track has to have six channels? Interesting, becuase my reciever shows "7.1 ch input" all the time and that only means that it can support up to 8 inputs in that mode :V

I'll watch this first then hit the TV series next   much thx for the upload

As igro said, it is being reported incorrectly reported by ffdshow, for fun I tried checking what VLC reported and it gave me 8channels for the Japanese track... Mplayer reported it correctly as 2ch. AniDB also has the correct 2ch information. Furthermore there are several websites who confirm that the DVD has 2ch audio such as:

http://www.mania.com/birdy-mighty-vol-2-final-force_article_76029.html (review)
http://www.dvdempire.com/Exec/v4_item.asp?item_id=589491
http://video.barnesandnoble.com/search/product.asp?EAN=719987238527 (see full product details tab)

This should provide enough information that the AAC track reports it wrong because of it being messed up. Also, while 60~70kbps AAC at stereo sounds decent enough, but if the audio really was 6ch @ ~70kbps, then it wouldn't sound just dull, but it would sound like garbage. And of course, there is no source confirming that it really is 6ch audio.

With using more then necessary, I meant of course necessary regarding anime with its dialog heavy scenes. A good DTS track deserves every kb, and most AC3 tracks deserves more then its low cap. ; )

I can't really say anything about the english track since I never ever listen to them, and for archiving I often mux new mkv containers without the extra english track that I will never use.
A clear and loud center channel which carries the dialog is often prefered by many though, but that is something you should adjust in your reciever. So if they indeed do increase it, then it is quite stupid of them. The only reason I could imagine that they have for doing it is that many people does not own a home cinema, and the center channel (voices) often get quite low because of the range being compressed when mixing 6ch into 2ch. But I of course agree with you, quite idiotic of the mixing studio if they indeed do it that way.

And you misunderstood the reciever part, which is not so strange considering different recievers have different functions. In any case, I did not refer to chosen input or whatever. My reciever shows what channels the source sends sound to, so for stereo sound only the front speakers would be shown, when 6ch the rears, center and LFE is shown too etc.

But in the end I looked over it since you and dragon191 were so certain and indeed, it is some f*cked up encode that a4e did. It tricked both MPC and ffdshow, and ffdshow sends AAC audio encoded to AC3 bitstream through SPDIF to my reciever so the reciever did indeed recieve a 5.1 track but that was because ffdshow was tricked to send it.
It was the same thing with Wolf's Rain I had from a4e, so now I am downloading Exiled Destiny's release instead of it and just taking the subs from a4e since they are srt instead of E-D's horrible vobsubs.

So, I'll be downloading your release now instead.

Ah, I see - I kinda agree, but the OP/ED (and I love both endings for the OVA) deserve more bitrate and there's of course anime that has strong emphasis on music - like Cowboy Bebop or Wolf's Rain.


I'm glad we sorted that out - I remember seeing quite a bit of a4e's releasese having this weird "6 ch" AAC tracks and they puzzled me too (60 kbps @ 6 channels - wtf) - probably, the AAC encoder they used had some bug that wrote the header of the file wrong or something similiar.


Hope you'll like it and look forward to more releases next week ;o


I was thinking of doing the TV series (from the DVDs) - in fact I have 3 episodes done. But the subs for the TV series aren't as good as I would like - yes, that includes EMiNA too :/

I already have EMiNA releases saved on my HDD. I'm just waiting for them to finish the final episode then I'll start watching it

Ah, nice video quality - a clear improvement compared to the old a4e, which was not bad either.

Thanks!

Thank you very much for sharing! I watch the first part some years ago and I loved it.

I was quite impressed by this set of episodes.  Top-notch animation with a unique style.  Birdy's facial expressions and mouth movements are a lot more detailed and expressive than usual.  Great story and fun characters, too.