A great blog that I've been reading recently is A Thriller a day covering not the 1970s UK TV series (which I also enjoyed) but the early 1960s US series hosted by Boris Karloff. There was a vast amount of "word of mouth" about this, including comments by Stephen King in his non-fiction book Danse macabre but, for many years, it wasn't available on legitimate DVD, only bootlegs. As soon as I saw the announcement that the whole series was being released, with extras, I knew I had to have it. In case I give the wrong impression, let's admit that this is an old series with highly variable standards and some boring episodes. However, the good ones make it worthwhile. So far I've probably watched about a fifth of those with good reputations, and have really enjoyed them. While I didn't quite "get" the supposedly classic The cheaters - yes, it's a clever idea, well worked out, but it's neither chilling nor emotionally involving, as it has no sympathetic characters - I've been impressed by others like The hungry glass (featuring the wonderfully histrionic William Shatner) and Pigeons from hell (creepy in a way you just wouldn't see on today's TV). I'm delighted to read that Peter Enfantino and John Scoleri, authors of A Thriller a day, are planning to cover another of my favourites, The outer limits next.
It's amazing how many producers of these seem to forget the name. As podcasts are (by definition) for mobile devices and therefore meant to be listened to on the move, the likelihood is that there will be background noise from traffic, etc. For safety reasons, the volume shouldn't be turned up so loud that this is drowned out. If the listener is on a bus or train, things are often no quieter. For these reasons, it's essential that the volume of a podcast should be "normalised" (i.e. the peaks should be at the maximum allowed undistorted level) and its dynamic range should be severely curtailed - that is, there should be very little difference between the quiet and the loud bits. I probably have hearing that is just below average in efficiency and I've lost count of the number of times the podcast was so quiet that I couldn't hear most of it (even when turned up to full volume on my phone), or had a section with various speakers muttering inaudibly in t...
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