Noisy soundtrack

Watching this on Australia's "GEM" digital channel the other night was a delight, apart from the soundtrack, which was dense with over-recorded ambient noises, and suffered from a strange fluttering underlying some of the music. Was this due to the physical age of the film, or was it deliberate? I had a similar, but worse, problem with Last Year at Marienbad some years ago - the soundtrack was so ghastly I had to turn off.