Podfics vs professional audiobooks

[luzula]

I've been thinking about the differences between podfic and professional audiobooks, and especially about whether podfic is developing its own styles of reading.

I listen to both podfics and professional audiobooks, and it happens much more often that I stop listening to a professional audiobook because I don't like the style. By this I mean that the reader sounds affected in a way that annoys me. It's like they're interpreting/acting out the text in a way that doesn't match the way I think of the characters or the way I want things narrated to me. They sound professional, but not in a way that I like.

OTOH, when I stop listening to a podfic, it's most often because it fails for me on a more basic level--there's too much background noise, I can't get the volume high enough, or the reader is going too fast for me. Obviously professional audiobooks don't have these technical problems to the same extent, and so the only thing that can put me off is the style. And of course, it does happen that the reading style puts me off a podfic, but never in the same way that the style in a professional audiobook does.

Anyone else have thoughts on this? I know my own thoughts are rather vague at the moment, which is why I wanted to discuss it with others.

Comments

[pandarus]

I worked with DarkEmeralds to the extent that she told me she'd had particular music planned for bookending each section of the story ('Restraint' is divided into 4 sections of between 5-7 hours each. Or, well, it will be when I've finished recording the final section, but you take my point?)

But that's really the only time that I've worked with an author to any extent beyond emailing them in a "Your story is awesome! May I record it?" kind of way.