I’ve been living in a German household for over 2 years now, often exposed to numerous TV shows. I’ve noticed that a significant amount of music and audio in General in dubbed German shows have altered the pitch of music, and no one seems to notice or know why that might be.
I’m not sure if I’m allowed to add links here, but just some examples:
Mario Movie trailer: https://youtu.be/KzIYXuPSyEU
Notice how the German dub is the only one wherein the audio pitch is altered
English NCIS: https://youtu.be/UrdkOIJq6EQ vs
German NCIS: https://youtu.be/Y4ejb42rtEk
English Criminal Minds: https://youtu.be/WPRWj0nBMIw
German Criminal Minds: https://youtu.be/f9XLritIJ_4
In the rare circumstances something is shown in English, there’s even a chance that the normal English voices were pitched down. When my girlfriend and I watched Criminal Minds on our German Amazon Prime, we noticed when listening to the English version all of the voices were just… off, as they compared to us watching it in America.
I really cannot fathom a reason that this might be, and it’s been driving me crazy for years, please someone help me answer this ever-burning question.
2 comments
I’ll be a hundred percent honest with you: I (German) listened to all three of your examples and tried HARD to spot a difference, I can’t hear one. 😅
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/1hn8do/why_do_the_theme_songs_of_american_tv_shows/
>It’ got something to do with the PAL and NTSC differences. I believe Uk aired American shows are around 4% faster than the original because of conversion rates.