Knightmare.com

oooooh Nasty  ;)

*Applause*

Regarding Audio faults, on Episode 14 on sunday morning, I noticed that the audio in the Right Stereo Channel was basically almost absent. It was barely audible on that channel, but most of the audio was in the Left (Nope, it wasn't a fault with the tv, as when teh adverts came on, the right channel was in full use again).

talk about a dampener of a post

I hope the problem wasn't with the master tapes.  :-/

The sound problem began during the ending credits of "Fort Boyard", so it probably wasn't Challenge's tapes.

It seems that the earlier Knightmare episodes weren't actually made in stereo (since NICAM only started to broadcast in about 1993 anyway!) so it's probably to do with the master tapes. If you play back a tape with a mono linear soundtrack on a VT machine with a stereo head, you often hear the audio 'drifting' from one channel to another. This is because the single track is moving from the 'left' head to the 'right' head as the tape changes its vertical position. This doesn't affect the picture because it's recorded as a series of diagonal stripes, not as a linear track.

It's possible there were glitches in the original master 1-inch videotapes that Knightmare was recorded on. I have an original 1989 recording of one episode where the dungeoneer lifts his helmet to hear the Oracle's speech. There's a picture glitch at the end of this sequence and the sound mutes briefly. "Enough, replace the helmet, you'll [silence] ...trest here." Oddly the sound mute also happened when Challenge showed that episode again!

The sound problem began during the ending credits of "Fort Boyard", so it probably wasn't Challenge's tapes.

Did you read my post?

Yes I did, but I posted because all the eps of Knightmare I've seen so far have this odd 'drifting' sound problem. The ads are okay, as was the programme before/after.

It surely can't be that the early series were made in mono! Km was almost mean to be as high-fidelity as possible. Km in mono is like a picture of a rainbow in black and white!

I know Series 5 was recorded in Nicam (possibly 4) listening to the masters. To be honest, it's only in series 8 that the nicam stereo gets a good full usage (most especially on the title sequence).

It'd be interesting to see (or should that be "hear"?) how the sound works out on the new series (and on TimeGate, too). Changing points of view, from the dungeoneer's own viewpoint, to the ante-chamber and so on should result in changes in stereo position of sounds, along with equilisation, compression, modulation and so on.

Yes I did, but I posted because all the eps of Knightmare I've seen so far have this odd 'drifting' sound problem. The ads are okay, as was the programme before/after.

I'm not 100% sure what you're all going on about, but your signature makes a lot of sense! I wish 'e would shurrup, dearie!