Question about Euro audio tracks (1 Viewer)

[Ben_J_L]

I have a question for some Euro people.
Many of my disks have multiple audio tracks (like Die Hard) but when you listen to the other audio tracks other than the one for your country, they sound "muted" or lacking in bass.
ie the Spanish track on my UK Die Hard doesn't sound as loud as the English track, particuarly lacking in bass.
The Spanish track is 5.1 the same as the English track and is the same bit-rate 384kb/sec.
So if I bought a Spanish DVD, would the English track sound "muted", or is it a side-effect of the dubbing process (for non-English countries)
Cheers guys,
Ben.

 

[Ryan_M_M]

I am not sure. I like you, have guessed it's the dubbing process. Even in non European DVds I have, the same situation exists. For example, a film like Boogie Nights (R1), the french soundtrack becomes muted. The process seems top exist in any region. Could be wrong, you really need an expert opinion. Cruel Intentions (R2) is cool in french. I can no longer listen to the English soundtrack.

 

[ChristopherM]

For what its worth, I recall reading in a magazine article how a studio prepares different DVD sound mixes for different countries.
For example, it was maintained that UK people like to have mixes close to the original cinema experience, whilst French people prefer "sweeter" mixes.

 

[Randy R.]

The titles you mentioned I don't have, but I have listened to a lot of Disney / Buena Vista titles and the other languages sound pretty close in level and presence (tone). Some studios don't take much care in their foreign language soundtracks but some of the animated Disney titles are just as good as the english.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

It's probably because the dub was done a long time ago and on the cheap

 

[Christoph Oelckers]

It's probably because the dub was done a long time ago and on the cheap

Precisely. In the case of Die Hard the Spanish track is probably just an upmix from a ProLogic source. Multichannel surround sound was introduced much later in Europe than it was in America. Especially for older films the English language track normally sounds much better than the other dubs. In the case of Terminator 1 for example the German and the Spanish dubs sound horrible with badly integrated dialogue and occasionally bad sound quality.