Cold Open Stories

I love the brief fast fiction format. Interesting stories in digestible lengths. Keep it up!

Recently discovered this show, and it’s a lot of fun, but the production quality makes it hard to listen to at times. Specifically, when there’s a lot of action and sound effects going on, they often drown out the voice actor. Sound design should enhance the narration, not cover it. Compression and EQ are really your best friends when working on something like this, and hopefully it gets better. Other than that, really entertaining. I especially love stories like However Small, However Hidden that are about just regular people dealing with the grim darkness of the 41st millennium.

I love this program, I miss the long form stories. Multiple episodes, in-depth concepts. I could be wrong, just how I feel.

These are some of the most fleshed out fan fictions I’ve read/listened to in any setting. There are great lore references, the grimdark is alive and well, and characters don’t feel like Gary Stus/Mary Sues. However, there are some technical issues in audio mixing that rob from the experience. 1) Voices are drowned out behind super loud music and background sounds, no amount of turning up helps, and usually just hinders. 2) There are story telling elements in the audio mixing that breaks immersion. I.E., in the Mechanicus storyline, the narrator has many internal dialogues that make sense, they are louder than normal, and are not affected by physical elements. In other times, especially towards the end, the internal monologues are winded, gasping for air, and are muted. This does not really add up, as a characters internal thoughts aren’t really affected by their current physical state. 3) I have worked in TV and Film production in the past, and while I know what your team is going for in some of the audio choices, in an audio drama, losing out on the ability to hear dialogue because you’re trying to portray motion doesn’t quite work. Perhaps tune that effect to be more subtle? Overall, great work, and your writing team is fantastic. Perhaps just tweak the audio to be more consistent across the board, and then you’ve earned a firewall 5 review.