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#### Big thanks to:
butler: TLC on 2 lines
[HRSM](/user/HRSM): subtitle QC, general help
[Krycek7o2](/user/Krycek7o2): US DVD audio clean-up
[CrashOveride](/view/1716031): audio advice
RainingTerror: for providing the JP DVD audio
[Discord](https://discord.gg/PMrccmpYTu)
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The video is a JP BD remux. (I'll try to see if someone would be interested in doing an encode as a remux of the whole series would take up over 1 TB.)
The JP DVDs, JP BDs, and US BDs use the same noise-managed audio that generally sounds more veiled than the US DVD audio. The US DVD audio appears to have been derived from the same masters, but due to less aggressive filtering (or possibly none at all), it ranges from moderately clearer to more noticeably clearer depending on the episode. Although the improvement in clarity isn't always tremendous, any added life to these often rather muffled-sounding episodes is appreciated.
However, some of the US DVD tracks are distractingly noisy and could be unpleasant to listen to if left untouched. Fortunately, this excessive noise can be alleviated to a reasonable level without sacrificing important detail through some careful clean-up, which Krycek performed on all the noisier episodes. The resulting tracks essentially lose much of the harsher noise while retaining the improved clarity. As a little demonstration, here's a [comparison video](https://vimeo.com/884802381) of a 1min52s segment from the cleaned-up US DVD, the JP BD, and then the raw US DVD.
[Japanese Dual-Mono comparisons.](https://slow.pics/c/APRrFuD6)
It looks like the more noise-managed audio originates from the JP DVDs, and it's not surprising they wanted to reduce the noise back then if the masters they had sounded like the US DVDs. It's just unfortunate that they were a bit too heavy-handed with it at times, and the filtered tracks were then reused by the JP and US BDs.
The US BD tracks have a very odd issue with the right channel being much noisier than the left channel. I'm not sure whether the place I got these from (TL) is to blame or if the audio is like this on the discs themselves. Still, from what I can see and hear, they're the same noise-managed tracks as on the JP DVDs and BDs aside from this issue. I'd love to confirm if this is a source issue if someone has access to the raw files and is willing to share the audio.
For these first five episodes, the audio is a mix of US DVD and JP BD tracks, as episodes 3 and 4 sounded slightly better on the BD. The US DVD tracks have been better for every episode I've checked after these, so this might be the last time BD audio gets used. We'll have to see.
1-2: US DVD (fixed balance, cleaned-up, synced)
3-4: JP BD
5: US DVD (fixed balance, synced)
The subtitles are retimed and QC'd US BD subtitles with some very simple typesetting. There were kind of surprisingly many high-CPS lines in the subs, I must say. I tried to improve these as much as possible when retiming, but I could only do so much without changing the TL (two extreme case lines were shortened with help from HRSM and butler). No lines should be impossible to read, at least.