I've been listening to a bunch of audiobooks from the public library here recently and there are various levels of production effort. I listened to a Star Wars audiobook (Alphabet Squadron) when I needed something simple for a flight and was blown away by the amount of sound effects (lasers, start ships flying around, environmental sounds etc) and different characters. Is there a term for this?
Some examples:
- Basic narration: One voice artist, maybe they do different voices for characters and narration. Maybe not.
- Multiple artists: Different characters get voiced by different actors. It might be for different POV chapters or even line by line when characters speak to each other.
- Sound effects: Environmental sounds (wind, rain, cafe chatter etc), event sounds (alarms, gun shots, etc), audio effects (speaking with radio effect, echos, cave sounds)
- Music: In the Star Wars book there was even background music for the various characters. Wow! Also the Star Wars into music is always welcome.
I guess it's way more expense to do it this way and would love some more examples of good audio production.
"booktrack edition" is the same narration with "ambiance"and other effects set behind it.
I just learned of this a few days ago.
Cast edition tends to be the performers from whatever medium the work is best known in, rather than an individual narrator.