Sound Effects in AudioBooks: Yay or Nay?
This seems to be a topic that audiobook lovers are divided on and love to debate on. Personally, I'm still on the fence but think I'm leaning heavily to the Nay side.
In romance audiobooks, I don't encounter sound effects that often. Holy Crikey can you image what some of those sound effects would/could be? It seems like they might stay away from any and all sound effects for that reason alone!
However, I do find I run across sound effects in Paranormals and Urban Fantasy books more often. The best of them are when they use sound to build to the suspenseful part (think when the serial killer is going to pop out from around the corner in a movie type music) or to end a chapter on a note that propels you to keep listening.
The worst of them seem to be those that just randomly "shoot" out sounds to try to shock. I use shoot out because many times these sound effects are of bullets, explosions, body blows, etc. It's like Summer Action Films on audio - except not. Most of them fall very flat on the quality of the effect. Instead seeming like some child is playing on a keyboard with sounds built in. Half the time the bullets make me think there's a mosquito in my car! :)
What about you - are you a yay or nay for sound effects? What audiobooks have done it well, or maybe which ones did you absolutely hate what it did to the story?
If you haven't listening to an audiobook before, do you think you would want sound effects, or would you rather have just the narrator bringing you the author's words?
