"Freudy Cat": What the-?!

[Matthew Hunter]

I caught some of the Looney Tunes show this morning and saw "Freudy Cat"...but what in the world happened to its sound? I remember it premiering this way, then being fixed...but today it was worse than ever! The music's louder than the voices, yet it is so unclear...the best thing I can compare it to is a recording of a 1960's TV sitcom in a wind-tunnel or on warplane...it sounds like it's in a vortex or something. It wasn't my TV, all other cartoons before and after it were just fine.
-Matthew

[Thad Komorowski]

Oh yeah, the sound today on "Freudy Cat" was horrible. I remember "Tweet Zoo" aired a week or two ago just like that. Also, it sounds like the characters are talking in a tin can, just like on the CARTOON CRAZYS videos and DVDs.


-Thad

[BobChief]

I call this effect the "paper towel tube effect" because it sounds like what you would hear if you held the empty tube of a roll of paper towels to your ear. I've heard it in some form or another since the mid-70s, and in the absence of any scientific explanation thereof from anyone in the readily-available media, I've theorized it to be an unavoidable side effect of the now-quite-common use of higher frequency ranges in sound mixing of TV programs. It doesn't matter anymore (to who, I don't know) that a given program or movie had a sound design made for a modest TV set or theater, it's got to be made to sound waaay better for these new-fangled stereo (and eventually, digital) home-theater-type sets...

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong... :rolleyes:

[redhotrider]

Not to criticize Bill lava's "talent" because there really isn't that much to begin with-but Wow did the music suck on this cartoon

Music, plot(one of the worst cheater cartoons EVER-the flashbacks were totally random sylvester/hippity, no coherent plot to them), dialogue, quite alot sucked with this cartoon.

Music especially, it was a trumpet or trombone set of 3 notes that was played like 45 times.

Very very disappointing even for a 64 toon

[J Lee]

I didn't see the cartoon today, but IIRC, the first time the problem showed up, it sounded like two different musical tracks were playing at the same time, Lava's and some other unknown score.

As for Bill's music, he was far more "motivated" by the level of the cartoon than Stalling or Franklyn ever were -- they could put a good muscial score on a routine or below-par short, while with Lava, he did his best work on the best of the late `62-64 releases, while if the cartoon was lifeless with few or no good gags, he wrote a score that matched the action on screen.

His D-FE work followed in the same trend, but of course 10 of the 12 RR cartoons he did had the canned music, so that should only count as one strike against him (and the original score for "Highway Runnery" wasn't that bad for a 1965 cartoon).

[Greg Method]

A few vintage sequences in "Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island" are like that (such as the high-diver scene from "Curtain Razor"), but I could swear that has only been within the last few years. Could this all be a side-effect to newly dubbing in Spanish language tracks?

[Pietro]

It sounded like a cross between the original musical score for the cartoon, a soundtrack from a Japanese anime' show, sound effects from the Gene Deitch T&J cartoons, and faintly heard voices of Sylvester and Sylvester Jr. When I first saw this on CN with the eerie and annoying soundtrack I started getting a headache!

-Pietro:D