I haven't listened to many pro-audiobooks at all - maybe 3 or 4. But Gail Carriger linked to the free first chapter of the audiobook of her 'Soulless' a while ago, on her Facebook, and it was AWFUL. Awful, awful, awful, awful. And she clearly liked it a lot, but it was done playscript style with narrator and various different character voices, which I found a bit distracting but could have adjusted to over time, probably - but it also had MASSIVELY distracting incidental music which made me want to stab someone in the face, and clattering teacup sound effects, and all this kind of thing, which I didn't need either. But I could probably have adjusted to that too - or at least the sound effects, maybe not the incidental music.
The dealbreaker for me, though, was that they'd chosen to do it this way, with one narrator and with all these different people performing the characters (and clattering teacups etc etc) - BUT THE VOICES WERE ALL WRONG. Not just subjectively-wrong-to-me-because-of-the-timbre-of-their-voices wrong. Wrong because the characters are all British, and the actors were all Americans pretending to be British. It was PAINFULLY clear that we were listening to modern Americans LARPing, rather than listening to the actual characters - no suspension of disbelief was possible for me on that one. And, hell, the guy voicing the fierce Scottish werewolf love interest wasn't even taking a stab at sounding gruff or Scottish - he was going with a generic toffee-nosed faux!English too, despite the narrative telling us he was supposed to be this gruff Scot.
(The audiobook of 'Ender's Game' was done with multiple voices too, and that generally worked for me. But it was a lot more pared-down and unfussy, so it was effective.)
I can't often download podfic effectively, because of my crappy internet connection, but when I've been put off listening it's been for reasons like the volume being so low I can barely hear the speaker. Perhaps once or twice because someone's voice happened not to be my cup of tea? But generally it's been technical things.
no subject
The dealbreaker for me, though, was that they'd chosen to do it this way, with one narrator and with all these different people performing the characters (and clattering teacups etc etc) - BUT THE VOICES WERE ALL WRONG. Not just subjectively-wrong-to-me-because-of-the-timbre-of-their-voices wrong. Wrong because the characters are all British, and the actors were all Americans pretending to be British. It was PAINFULLY clear that we were listening to modern Americans LARPing, rather than listening to the actual characters - no suspension of disbelief was possible for me on that one. And, hell, the guy voicing the fierce Scottish werewolf love interest wasn't even taking a stab at sounding gruff or Scottish - he was going with a generic toffee-nosed faux!English too, despite the narrative telling us he was supposed to be this gruff Scot.
(The audiobook of 'Ender's Game' was done with multiple voices too, and that generally worked for me. But it was a lot more pared-down and unfussy, so it was effective.)
I can't often download podfic effectively, because of my crappy internet connection, but when I've been put off listening it's been for reasons like the volume being so low I can barely hear the speaker. Perhaps once or twice because someone's voice happened not to be my cup of tea? But generally it's been technical things.