Mombru

Vocal fry run amuck!

Revisado: 07-12-24

The narrator speaks too slowly but worse is her over use of the vocal fry affectation. Here are a couple of reasons why it is not a good thing. First, in this case, the narrator is using it as the main way to distinguish the male voices from the females. Using it for August’s voice as way to portray unsureness of speaking a newly learned language is ok and even appropriate. But in this third book, there are at least 3 different male characters using the same affect making them indistinguishable without the 3rd person identifiers. Show a lack of imagination and laxness in character development by the talent. Second, it just plain unpleasant to listen too. I don’t want to listen to Jackson make a 2 second creaking sizzling sound everytime he begins to speak. Basically once you hear it, you can’t unhear it. Due to the slow reading pace I had to speed it up from 1.0(actual speaking speed) to 1.10, the vocal frying is slightly shorter. I don’t think I could handle more of it by resetting to default pace.

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37 minutes of copy & paste.

Revisado: 04-26-24

I am enjoying this series. I have laughed out loud several times. Wouldn’t mind a bit more romance but I’ll be patient and wait. What I did not enjoy was listening to the last chapter to the previous book all over again in this book’s so called “chapter 1”. THIRTY SEVEN MINUTES of copy and paste. With this being the shortest book in the series so far, I felt a little cheated when I realized it’s even shorter. If you want to help readers w a “last episode recap” just call it what it is. “Chapter 1” of a book implies new material. I thought that was writing class 101 knowledge?

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Mouth Clicks

Revisado: 01-12-24

I could not tune out all of Ms. Dawe’s mouth clicks. There can be more than 1 cause for the sound. 1) Narrator had an extremely dry mouth during recording. 2) Narrator over-hydrated just before recording. ( yes I realize the contradiction between #1 & 2. Look it up. It can caused by either).
3). Narrator was standing too close to her microphone. 4). Whoever was hired to do the post-production compression did not edit out the wet mouth click sounds afterwards.
Or a combination of all of them. Some people can easily tune this sound out. I am not one of them. It is a huge factor in whether I will listen to a particular narrator. Right now I’m hoping that I’ll be able to listen in my car if I fiddle with my speakers’s equalizer settings. I tried just turning my phone volume almost all the way down but I could still hear it. I’ve beenlisten to audible audiobooks for years now and love KF Breene’s books. Her audiobooks usually have a more professional finish to them. I hope I’ll be able to finish listening. Otherwise I’ll be using my kindle’s text-to-speech option to listen. Btw: if you go to a website called gravy for the brain and look up article: the secrets of preventing mouth clicks voiceover recordings, you will find good information on how to prevent this in the future.

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I am TRYING to like Max. Plus huge plot holes

Revisado: 07-17-23

Whether or not, Max is unexperienced sexually does not explain her cluelessness. Whether or not pertinent info is not forthcoming regarding this new world she was dropped into also does not justify how daft she acts. And her “emotions” are all over the place yet also extremely shallow at the same time. Flitting from one to the other. “I’m determined” to “screw it” in a blink. Did I mention I do not like this character??. It’s harsh, I know. The writing itself is confusing too. The aspect traits absorption timeline is NOT consistent with that of the one established in book one. Weeks into the storyline, we are still trying to guess if rhagos is Lies or Apathy or both? But mostly I dislike Mac’s continuous internal chatter that somehow amazingly contains zero self reflection or epiphanies of any kind. If Max was any more obtuse she’d be a log. I have hit the audible 30 second fast-forward multiple times just to avoid listening to more of her pointless internal chatter. I’m still reading(listening) because I still have hope that the story becomes cohesive and makes sense. Plus I don’t have anything better to listen to at the moment.

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British accent cold shower

Revisado: 10-05-22

Our narrator’s portrayal of Bones(leading man/vamp), is probably the least sexy British accent I’ve ever heard. And NO, it’s nothing like Spike from “Buffy…”. More like “Mrs. Lovett” from “Sweeney Todd”. I know any accent can be sexy. But this narrator’s rendition reminds me of a whiny scullery maid from the 1900’s or something. Or a London street thug trying to pick up a prostitute or rather Hollywood’s portrayal of these character types. T. Gilbert’s portrayal of Kat, however is really good. For example, I can feel her awkwardness, while trying to keep her cool during their rated R practice conversations with Bones! I plan to finish this book because based on other similar reviews there’s a chance I’ll get past the lead male’s unsexy accent. 🤞

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Ms. Gavin’s voice. What happened?

Revisado: 06-18-22

I just went back and listened to Ms. Gavin‘s voice circa 2014 (Book 13). I realize that there is a six year gap between book 13 and book 14. And women’s voices naturally tend to lower in pitch as we get older. However, The drastic drop and Ms. Gavin’s vocal register, (barring any health issues 🤞🙏🏼), sounds like 6 years of accumulated vocal chord damage caused by heavy smoking. (And probable overuse of voice ) The raspy vocal fry level even from book 15 to 16 is more noticeable. Her acting, is still stellar and completely believable. However, for me, it’s not a pleasant sound anymore. The difference between some of the male and female characters voices are not as distinct. Nor do they sound their age.
Maybe it’s my vocalist background/training, but listening to this most recent narration makes me want to recommend a good ENT Who specializes in healing vocal cord damage. Especially for someone who has built a fantastic career around their vocal mechanism.

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esto le resultó útil a 5 personas

Dial back the wet bodily function volume.

Revisado: 05-14-22

I love this type of audio book to the extent where I’m re-listening to books I’ve both read and listened to the single narrator audio versions. It is so engrossing! I’m sucked in to the point where very little in my environment distracts from it. (Here comes the “but”). BUT, certain sound effects used are unrealistically loud and therefore off putting and downright gross. I absolutely do not need to hear someone chewing their food while they talk, nor do I enjoy listening to another character slurping their drink. Not at the same volume as one would speak. Your sound engineers or whoever adds these sound effects should know that those types of sounds carry farther and faster than speech or other types of sounds due to their high vibration frequency. Therefore in order to compensate for that those bodily functional wet sounds they do not need to be applied at the same decibel as Speech. In other words, in real life and on visual media such as television movies etc. those types of sounds are rarely as loud as the characters voices. We hear them but are not distracted by them. The scene where two characters meet off planet and share tea, is simply too disgusting for me to get through and actually listen to the dialogue due to the over-the-top slurping of said tea! It’s simply made my stomach turn. Maybe part of the problem is that since we are not engaging our visual senses, our sense of hearing becomes a little more heightened. Whatever the case, it would only enhance the listeners ability to become engrossed in the story if you all reduce the volume of the body sound effects. So to speak.

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1980’s flashback!

Revisado: 02-13-22

I didn’t realize that my old Speak & Spell took another job as a book narrator. No? Well, all I know is our female narrator,Tillie Hooper is spot on, in her narration roles. But Tyler Donne’s “performance” could be outdone by most Kindles’ text-to-speech technology in sounding more “human”. The inventors (and voices) of the Speak & Spell only needed to spell things and were limited by the tech at the time. Mr. Donne doesn’t have that excuse. Why even have 2 narrators?

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noticeable inhales from narrator

Revisado: 11-01-21

I’m picky about what I like and a good narrator. And Miss Einstein‘s performance is believable and entertaining. She has a pleasant and emotive voice. Especially when acting out specific character voices. My 3 star performance rating however, is due to the amount of times my suspension of disbelief was interrupted throughput the whole story. Very Audible breath inhaling was the cause. It kept taking me out of the story. Maybe it’s my brain’s and ability to tune out such sounds. Maybe it’s my background of classical vocal singing? (Included Lots of breath control training). Probably a little bit of both. But I like this narrator enough to write this in the hopes that my suggestions might help and I’ll be able continue listening to her sans distraction, in the future. Suggestion 1). Use recording equipment that minimizes how much of the upper frequencies of sound are picked up. Your breath inhale sound is a high frequency sound so it projects at a faster rate than your voice. So it sounds louder to the ear. It’s why the “Shhh” sound cuts through a noisy crowd. Recording studios use different methods, tools, technology, to reduce this and balance with the rest of recording. 2). Stop using commas in the writing as a cue to inhale. Use the end of the sentence’s period to take that breath. Also, Take advantage of the natural breaks in the writing, like between paragraphs, or before starting new chapter, etc…, and take an extra big breath slowly in through the nose. If you must breath in middle of a sentence, make it a quick silent one. If you make reminder notes beforehand in your script, and take advantage of deeper breaths, you probably won’t need many quick catch breaths. Loud breathing whether in singing or in narration ruins the illusion of effortless natural performance. No matter how beautiful the voice.

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Horrible narration

Revisado: 08-17-21

“He lahvs hah! Tempah! Ah ah ah! Is it really necessary for our narrator to darn near shout every line. I tried. I reeeeally tried to give her a chance despite reviews and not liking the sample piece offered. Was there an accent mark above any word ending in the letters “er”? And pronouncing it as “AH!” each time? The voice was grating. The heroine’s voice was stilted and monotonous. I think I’ll charge my kindle and use my text-to-speech option

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