Retro TV shows sound like broadcast audio was captured off a speaker

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I've noticed on the local MeTV channel (shows old tv programming) on many episodes of Daniel Boone the audio has a tubby quality that I swear sounds like the audio was recorded with a mic held up to a speaker. Particularly obvious on the opening and closing credits. Is anyone familiar with the delivery pipeline of these retro tv channels? Is it possible this is being done somewhere in the chain? For what possible reason would they employ such a hack method?

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On Tuesday, April 15, 2014 9:15:52 AM UTC-5, wrote:
> I've noticed on the local MeTV channel (shows old tv programming) on many episodes of Daniel Boone the audio has a tubby quality that I swear sounds like the audio was recorded with a mic held up to a speaker. Particularly obvious on the opening and closing credits. Is anyone familiar with the delivery pipeline of these retro tv channels? Is it possible this is being done somewhere in the chain? For what possible reason would they employ such a hack method?



Could be an artifact related to digitizing the content. I've seen that happen before...old content being ingested into a storage device for broadcast, and the audio gets trashed in the process.

Sometimes, you really can't click one process/codec & use it for everything..

Just a guess....

Mike

[Frank Stearns]

writes:

>I've noticed on the local MeTV channel (shows old tv programming) on many e=
>pisodes of Daniel Boone the audio has a tubby quality that I swear sounds l=
>ike the audio was recorded with a mic held up to a speaker. Particularly ob=
>vious on the opening and closing credits. Is anyone familiar with the deliv=
>ery pipeline of these retro tv channels? Is it possible this is being done =
>somewhere in the chain? For what possible reason would they employ such a h=
>ack method?

"[Cheap] mic held to a [cheap] speaker" is indeed the best description of this. It's
a unique-sounding artifact that doesn't really match any other codex "artifacts"
that I've heard -- this truly is that unique mic-to-speaker sound (and likely done
in a small, crummy room to boot).

Maybe it's a poor man's (very poor man's) audio transformer -- a few inches of free
air? (Shudder.) Maybe it's one of those cheap USB mics held next to a speaker
because the encoding system has no audio inputs, only USB?

Would be interesting to know what has gone so terribly wrong with this audio.

Frank
Mobile Audio
--

[Dave Plowman (News)]

In article >,
> wrote:
> I've noticed on the local MeTV channel (shows old tv programming) on
> many episodes of Daniel Boone the audio has a tubby quality that I swear
> sounds like the audio was recorded with a mic held up to a speaker.
> Particularly obvious on the opening and closing credits. Is anyone
> familiar with the delivery pipeline of these retro tv channels? Is it
> possible this is being done somewhere in the chain? For what possible
> reason would they employ such a hack method?

Wonder if it went through one of the cassette formats at some time? M II,
for example, used Dolby C for the linear tracks and unless set up
correctly could sound very strange.

In the UK, some of these older taped shows have been archived to different
formats more than once and have no relation quality wise to the original
recording.

--
*Bigamy is having one wife too many - monogamy is the same

Dave Plowman London SW
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