Yeah, I missed a very Thematically Significant tape recorder's presence in one of the later episodes and now I'm just going to go back and read the transcript after every episode I think.

I kind of think it's hypercorrection from TMA, when the mixing was also crap, as in non-existent, for the first season and a half, which was also hard to listen to. Now they very clearly have the equipment and experience to be much fancier. But the thing with audio is that you can't forget that you aren't controlling the listeners or their environment (unless you're mixing for a movie theater or something where there are specifications for the output equipment)! Out here we have crappy speakers, terrible earbuds, noisy environments, and auditory processing disorders.