Lois’s answer to “Was Komarr recorded in multiple sessions for Audible? I listened to a lot of it w ear buds; I could…” > Likes and Comments

While I can't speak to Blackstone's particular methods, as an audiobook narrator, audio editor, and podcaster, I can tell you that "pick-up lines" are common in audio production. Sometimes the narrator says a line incorrectly, omitting a word or mis-pronouncing one. When the editor catches this, the narrator has to come back to re-record. Since the audio environment is never exactly the same from one day to the next, a listener with decent headphones can often notice the change.

Normally, in a situation like this, I have the narrator re-read the entire paragraph, so that the differences aren't so noticeable. I would never have a narrator re-record just one word in a sentence, but I know that there are big publishing houses where this has, in fact, been done. One audiobook maker that shall remain nameless screwed up the title of an important character in their first edition of an audiobook; when fans complained about the mistake, they re-released the book with an obvious re-take patched over every incident of the character's title. It was appalling, and to this day I don't know if they were just oblivious, or if it was a big middle finger to the fans who had complained.

Guh. Thanks for explaining that. I rather suspected that was the case, and also that Lois probably didn't know, I just thought I would ask anyway. It's a bit jarring; most of the books I've only noticed one or two sentences and thought, meh. With Komarr, though, it's rampant. Thanks again for your time. :)

Assuming you received your recording of Komarr as a download from Audible.com, I wonder if there may have been a glitch in your download. I am very particular about the quality of my recorded books: usually only purchase recording produced by either Recorded Books, or Blackstone. My .mp3 of "Komar" produced by Blackstone, is free from those audio errors that you encounter in your recording of the book. I have listened to "Komarr" at least ten times for the specific purpose of following the authors sentence structure and general language use.

I'm quite a critical listener on Audible, and I've listened to Komarr at least twice without noticing a problem. In fact the narration and audio quality of the VK renditions is consistently one of the best on Audible.