I don’t mind the sounds. I don’t feel they added or took away anything. My problem is with the soundstage shifting. It may not be obvious in a car, and less obvious on my earbuds, but with headphones on it’s a dealbreaker.
The position of the characters on the soundstage shifts when dialogue between two or more characters are ‘speaking’ to eachother. One voice will be center left, the other center right, then return to the middle for non dialogue reading (meaning the majority of the volume comes from either the right or left headphone when characters are talking to eachother). In chapter seven or eight it gets really bad with Kron’s speaking part coming entirely from the far left.
Messing with the soundstage for this book fails for the same reason 3d televisions failed. That is not how human perception works. It’s disorienting and entirely unpleasant.
I’ll never buy another Soundbooth produced book again if this is the new norm.