Integrated Chinese Audio

My classes have been using Integrated Chinese for several years now. I must admit that I am frustrated with the books. One of the things I dislike is the audio recordings that come with the books. Considering the price (several hundred dollars for lab permissions), the recordings are lacking in quality. They only make use of two voices, no matter how many different characters there are in the dialogue. There are three different speeds of speaking, but these seem to have been created by slowing down and speeding up the recording, not by having real speakers speak at different rates. Though some might have other opinions, I think the recordings sound more like readings of the dialogues than actual conversations, that is, they are very unnatural. Also, there is only one type of reading of the dialogues, from beginning to end, without sufficient pauses for students to repeat after. It would be much more useful if there were various versions, some with pauses for repetition, some with only speaker A's lines, some with only speaker B's lines, etc.

Overall, for the price, the recordings do not seem particularly useful for students. Considering the popularity of this series, I hope that someone will invest the time and money to make higher quality recordings that will be truly good models, and good listening practice for students.