I think it's both the quality of the system and the intentional scratchiness of many of the samples to capture the tone of the show as you said. Both things are true about my game, but all speech is understandable. Good luck figuring it out. I had a twister with a sound problem that drove me nuts. Although i cannot remember exactly what it was, it was one of he connections on the cabinet speaker that seemed so obvious that i never considered it.