I’ve been watching the Twilight Zone marathon on the SyFy channel and I noticed something funky with the sound. The voices sort of “ghost” ahead of time. Meaning that I can hear what someone is going to say, softly and subtly, a few seconds before they actually say it.
No, I haven’t been drinking, and I don’t hear any other type of “voices,” either.
I noticed this on quite a few episodes, and I remember noticing it during last year’s marathon as well. I didn’t veg out in front of the tv all day, so I didn’t see all of the episodes, but of the ones I saw, I noticed it.
I’ve been watching the marathon, and didn’t notice that. But I have seen it on old fashioned open-reel tapes of music. When you wind up the tapes, sometimes one portion of tape will “imprint” a faint sound on another portion of tape that is wound up against it, and you get a subtle “pre-echo” of music when you play it back.
I don’t know if that is what is going on here, but it is plausible.
PS - I *have *been drinking, so take this post with a grain of salt.
I was thinking that the issue may have occurred with the episodes that were originally shot on video and the audio ‘bled’ through the video tape. There were issues with the video technology back in those early days. But if you heard the audio problem on “Hocus Pocus and Frisby” that wouldn’t be the case since that episode was shot on film. Yes, the sound was still originally recorded onto magnetic tape at the time of the production but bleed through wasn’t really a problem with audio-only equipment.
So the problem probably occurred after the episodes were transferred to video tape for airing on modern television stations. Since you mention a particular moment in a particular episode, I’ll check my DVD of it to see if I hear the sound problem there and get back to you.
Some of the promos for the TZ marathon seemed to indicated that at least some of the episodes would be from a later series (TZ was revived at least twice). I didn’t see anything on the schedule that wasn’t from the 60s-era series.
(The promo in question appeared to show an Asian man picking up his laundry, and the counterperson having two faces - was this just a made-up TZ-ish scene?)
I just watched and listened carefully to “Hocus-Pocus and Frisby” on the DVD and I didn’t hear any of the soft “ghost” sound ahead of the regular sound. I assume then that this problem is something that exists on the tapes that the SyFy channel owns, not something that was a flaw with the original masters of the shows.
That’s really interesting, thanks, randwill. It never occurred to me that SyFy Channel would have worse quality copies that they’re broadcasting.
The ones I specifically remember it occurring on during the marathon are the one with Burgess Meredith as the librarian being sentenced to death for being obsolete (one of my favorite episodes) and the one with the old people at the rest home turning back into children. There were others, but I don’t recall specifically which ones.
Although I adored Art Carney, that’s one of the episodes I don’t like, so I avoid watching it. So sorry.
IMDB says there’s an episode ( A World Of Difference from Mar 11, 1960) coming on at 8:00 Eastern tomorrow morning on SyFy. I’m going to try to watch it and see if the “ghost voices” are there.
This by the way is one of the episodes originally shot on video, though all through my childhood (the 70s) when TZ was in its syndication hey-day they only ever showed the kinescope version of it (like all the videotaped ones) Amazing how much better the original video tape is (that’s what this YouTube video is of)…
