[scinerio]

I personally find that lack of character and inflections has completely turned me off of audiobooks in favor of podcasting. The typical monotone audio narration causes me to zone out into other thoughts and I find myself rewinding or just turning it off.

[ivansavz]

I've experienced that too, but only for "bad writing."

I'm normally able to follow narrative (both fiction and non-fiction) that has something to teach, and also enjoying listening to classic literature no problem...

But sometimes I'm reading a long article from the internet and I experience what you describe (losing track of what author is saying, having to rewind to get the point). After a while, I realize it's not the computer's fault, but the article is just very low content (e.g. some authors just pile on words, emotions, opinions without a coherent narrative or point). Recently I noticed I'm able to detect GPT-generated text this way too... words without content or message.

Perhaps the monotone TTS can be a test for the "meaning" contents of a text.

[rockemsockem]

If you're still interested, give graphic audio a try. They're full-cast (usually a different reader for each character) high production quality audiobooks. They cost accordingly too though.

https://www.graphicaudio.net/