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These Special Effects Are Almost Too Good!
We’re obviously living in a golden age of genre radio. The new Scientifiction Band is syndicated over at least 30 percent of the country, which means that at any moment of the daylight hours, we can listen to live broadcasts of Battleship Galaxy-1 or Doctor Who. But the remarkable Special Sound Effects (which we understand are being generated by massive machines full of vacuum tubes and badgers) are almost too good for the radio sets owned by the average scientifiction fan.
This doesn’t affect us personally, because we own massive quadrophonic wide-speaker hi-fi radios, which allow us to get the full experience from anything from the smallest alien tweet to a massive spaceship whoosh. But what about people who are still listening on regular radios? The impulse to broadcast everything in wideband is making things sound wrong to the regular listener. And we think that’s a shame. There’s a reason these budgets are so high, you know. There’s no sense in building a three million dollar solid oak-and-brass door to slam for the “door closing” effect if hardly anyone is going to be able to hear the difference!