"Gord Beaman" wrote in message
...
av8r wrote:

There are other things that don't sound right but I'll leave it at
that
for now.

Cheers...Chris


Well, I could be wrong of course but I doubt that it's real. As
Chris says it's too quiet. the bloody Lanc makes one hell of a
lot of noise and I remember the intercom being of poor quality
because of that and the poor headsets we used (HS-33 with
handheld T-17 carbon mikes). You can indeed hear several people
talking at once on any a/c intercom system that I've ever used
though but it's just too quiet on this one.

I get the impression it was genuine.

This lack of noise *could* be because of limitations in the recording
process.
It could also be due to to things done post recording to improve the
quality.
If this was a 'disc cutter' of some kind it may have had some
problems reproducing high frequency hiss and even static.
The ear is far better at hearing such things, though I suspect the
actual intercom is the reason for the lack of engine noise at least.
The lack of engine noise doesn't greatly surprise me, a carbon mike
is insensitive at best and if they were mask fitted (which seems to be
the case) they might well not 'hear' the engine noise well enough for
the recording device to record it. (Again bear in mind that your ears
are more sensitive than the equipment likely used, if you were there,
you'd hear it, but the level might not be high enough for the recording
equipment to record it at anything like the same level.)

There is also another possibility that I'll mention in a moment.

Another thing is that
on any system that I've used (except for 'hot mics' on takeoff
and landing) you always hear the click as anyone pushes their mic
switch and the hiss of background noise while the mic is open.
There was none of this...all in all it was too quiet in my
estimation...I think it was faked. I gotta add though that the MG
sounded kinda real to me...

The MG sounds like it was picked up through the rear gunners mike, with
the
resulting loss of high and low frequencies that would cause.
The general audio quality has that 'telephone' quality that such a
system would
present, and the lack of hiss and other noise may be due to either the
lack
of audio bandwidth in the system itself, or in the recording process.

The other possibility is an 'either or both' thing.

It's also *very* possible it was 'washed' in the process of putting it
into electronic format
to make it clearer. This is quite trivial to do and can make a bad
recording sound
significantly better, simply by eliminating the audio frequency 'notch'
that (mostly) contains the noise.

It's also *possible* that the original disk (or whatever) was played
back and the output
put through some passive filters to clean it up a bit and perhaps adjust
the levels and *then* cut
to a new disk before it was airplayed (or whatever they did with it).

Some of the terminology seems appropriate as well.
There is a report in there 'Photograph taken' which would probably be
a little obscure for all but the most cunning of fakers. That bomber
command did in fact take photos (and the reasoning for it) is pretty
well
covered in 'Evidence in Camera" by Constance Babbington-Smith, but it
strikes me that a faker could overlook that in a construct.

The CO