The reason the sound is so muffled on these 1897 episodes has nothing to do with Sci FI Channel. Worldvision Enterprises has purposely muffled the sound on this group of episodes for a reason. These 1897 episodes from May 1969 contain a flaw in the audio that was accidently recorded on them originally back in 1969. The DS studio technicians did not notice, or correct this flaw for almost an entire month of shows! The flaw is a high pitched "whine" that runs throughout the entire episode. When these 1897 episodes first went into syndication in 1985, Worldvision noticed the "whine" on the audio track, and fine tuned these episodes when making copies for syndication. Unfortunately, they messed up the audio way too much, so that these episodes are very hard to hear, and even understand. This was done to meet television broadcast standards.
For the MPI tape releases of these episodes, MPI used the original master tapes, so you can actually hear the original audio and the high pitched "whine" on these particular ghroup of episodes. No doubt the upcoming DVD releases will contain the original audio as well.
Fortunately, the DS studio technicians corrected the audio problem around June or July 1969, and there were no longer any problems. The audio on sci fi channel tapes will get better in the next few weeks.
