I love listening to the episodes, but lately I have been having more and more trouble with the audio. The intro and outtro are often louder or quieter than the reading. Sometimes the reading varies in volume from section to section. And every single time, when the story is over, the music comes on and it's so loud in comparison to the reading that it hurts, if I don't remember to jump for the volume knob before it's too late.
The other issue is that the whole podcast, in general, is fairly quiet when compared with other audio like music files or other podcasts (especially the reading, but the entire thing is pretty low). I listen to them at work with my iPod and a set of standard computer speakers, and sometimes I have to have both cranked up to max, to be able to hear it at all. I do work in a somewhat noisy environment, but it's not anything worse than the road noise you'd hear while traveling down the interstate.
I would really like to see a little more attention paid to this sort of thing - I've done some sound work myself and this is a 30 minute job, tops, to scan through the sound file and make sure things are about equivalent (you don't even have to listen to it all the way through to do this) and then to amplify the whole thing so it's a bit louder in general. You can get a free program to do this - Audacity - that works great.
I love podcastle; it makes the long hours go by that much faster, and with something that makes me think, and enjoy, the time I spend on mindless tasks. These issues aren't enough to make me stop listening; it'd take a lot more than that, really. But they are something that grates my nerves every time, and I'd bet I'm not the only listener wishing these things.
I'd like to hear other people's views on the subject. I've been listening for so long and I finally decided I just had to say something about it.