Pimsleur Language Programs
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Very poor quality.
I bought the audio CD version of the Italian course second hand (used) from eBay, and I'm really glad I never paid the full price for it new. At approximately (on average) 30 minutes each, the lessons become long and tedious. I cut them roughly in half on audio-editing software and had far better results at memorizing in the car and bed. However, the worst thing about Pimsleur's Italian course is the many instances of terrible pronunciation and diction. It's not bad for the first four lessons, but after that many of the phrases are spoken far too quickly by the voice actors, with appalling slurring that makes much of it completely unintelligible. Many a time, while using the product in the car, I have ended up shouting and cursing Pimsleur for their disgracefully low standards. They clearly don't care about making a good product as long as the money rolls in. On top of that, the audio quality is not good. As someone else stated on another comment, it's like listening to speech through a thick blanket or two. I have also had to load the files into an audio editor to improve the quality and replace unintelligible spoken phrases with supplanted new ones created using the MSN Bing translator and the naturalreaaders text-to-speech website, all of which takes plenty of hours of wasted life, because I shouldn't have to be doing it! I emailed Pimsleur about my observations but they didn't even have the courtesy of responding.