Enhanced Audio: Improvement or Detraction?

[Vic]

Saw this blog post from Blackstone Audio and thought I'd post it here. http://blog.blackstoneaudio.com/archi...

Personally I find it a distraction. Maybe if I were listening to a play (i.e., Shakespeare) I'd be OK with it but generally I find it HIGHLY annoying.

[Vic]

OK, I'm going to amend this because since I started re-listening to In Death, I have to say I enjoy the little bit of enhancement done in this series. When the voice sounds like it's coming from the computer and slight changes like that.

[Brenda]

I don't mind the enhancements such as you mention like being able to tell someone is on the phone etc.

I liked the way using "voice" was enhanced to sound echo-ey in KMM's Highlander series too.

What I am not liking is the music that has been coming at the beginning and end of each CD in recent Audiobooks I've gotten in that format.

For one thing it is very distracting to have music suddenly start up in the middle of a conversation etc.

And for another I feel like the producers think we are dim witted and need fair warning that the CD is about to end, or letting us know that we are starting the next one.

I'm very happy with a few beats of silence and then "this is the end of disc 3" as opposed to being jarred by music being inserted over the words for several beats before you get the silence and end of disc direction.

[Vic]

Oh - I agree about them music! I just finished Ceremony in Death and I'd ripped that from CDs and it was annoying.

I got all the Anita Blake backlist by Laurell K. Hamilton when Penguin released them and while I'm happy to have them and have gotten used to Kimberly Alexis I got really annoyed when they started playing music during dramatic moments and had sound effects like a gun shot. In fact there were a few times when I had a hard time making out the dialog over all the "enhancements"!