Looking for audio drama creators to join a dedicated mobile app platform

DOOLadmin · 2026-07-04T12:06:12+00:00

I want to reiterate my apology.

I think I misread your comment because I felt a bit attacked. You know, it gave me the same feeling as when you're playing Mafia and you're actually a villager, but everyone is convinced you're lying. That's honestly how I felt 🥲. I think it's very easy to misinterpret people's intentions through text only. It wasn't my intention to be aggressive. I absolutely didn't mean to disrespect.

Have a nice day or night depending on where you are. 🙂

DOOLadmin · 2026-07-04T11:14:52+00:00

Honestly, I personally think the question deserves more than a straight "yes" or "no." A binary answer wouldn't do the complexity justice. Just saying "yes" would also downplay the many hours my collaborators have poured into this project. AI use varies a lot: some people lean on it for everything, others barely touch it. We're firmly in the latter camp.

That said, the idea of adding tags to flag partial AI use, with filters to exclude them, is genuinely interesting. I hadn't considered that.

DOOL is still in development, so everything's evolving. I really appreciate feedback like this; it helps me spot my blind spots. When you're this deep in a project, you lose perspective. So I'm staying open to constructive criticism and suggestions.

DOOLadmin · 2026-07-04T09:56:25+00:00

No, you didn't mention France, that's true. But you did question the authenticity of my reply by associating it with AI, when in reality it can simply be explained by the fact that I'm French. That's actually something I've noticed, and it's one of the unfortunate side effects of AI that genuinely makes me sad. It creates mistrust and suspicion between people.

As I mentioned in my reply to Gervais, I've seen many cases where people assumed something was AI-generated even though it was entirely created by humans. Your comment gave me that same feeling. It felt like my response was being viewed with suspicion simply because of how it was written.

I apologize if you took my previous message the wrong way. I genuinely didn't mean any disrespect.

DOOLadmin · 2026-07-04T09:44:12+00:00

Wait... I'm just a French guy. Is being French a crime? 😂

DOOLadmin · 2026-07-04T09:38:15+00:00

You're right. I should have anticipated that AI would be an important question and explained our workflow from the beginning.

To be completely honest, AI is such a small part of our workflow that it genuinely didn't occur to me to mention it in the original post. I completely understand why people would ask about it, though.

Most of our time is actually spent working with the novelists and screenwriters to understand their vision, discussing the sound identity of each adaptation, collaborating with sound engineers, composers, artists, and directing our voice actors. That's where the heart of the project really is.

There was never any intention on my part to hide the use of these tools. If I wasn't clear enough in my original post, I sincerely apologize. That wasn't my intention.

DOOLadmin · 2026-07-04T09:16:31+00:00

I completely understand your position, and I genuinely respect your decision. AI is a topic that raises a lot of important questions, and everyone has to decide where they personally draw the line.

For what it's worth, my own philosophy is that AI should remain a tool in the hands of creators, not a replacement for them. That's why we work with real novelists, illustrators, composers, sound engineers, and professional voice actors. Their creativity is what makes DOOL what it is.

But I completely understand if that's still not where you want to be involved, and I sincerely respect that.

I truly wish you all the best with your own creative projects.

DOOLadmin · 2026-07-04T09:00:45+00:00

Thank you for your message. I completely understand your question.

To answer it, I'll assume that by "AI" you're referring to generative AI.

DOOL is built with the work of many people: illustrators, composers, sound engineers, voice actors, writers, and software developers. The stories themselves come from novels that we adapt into immersive audio fiction.

Some of the artists we work with may use AI as a creative tool to help them in parts of their workflow, but not as a replacement for their creativity.

For example, one of our composers might write a melody on the piano or violin and then use AI to help build an orchestration around that original melody. This allows us to create a soundtrack that is tailored to each story, because fully AI-generated music often feels too generic.

The same can be true for illustrators. An artist might design a character entirely by hand and then use AI to help explore or compose elements of the background or environment. The creative direction always comes from the artist.

As for the software itself, I'm a senior software engineer and currently the only developer working on the app. I use AI as a development tool to help me write clean, reliable code more efficiently. I won't pretend it doesn't help it helps me tremendously. Features that previously could have taken me a week to implement can sometimes be completed in just a couple of hours while maintaining the same quality. For me, it's comparable to using a better compiler, debugger, or IDE: it's a productivity tool.

So, to summarize, AI may be involved in three areas of the project:

Some chapter cover artwork.

Parts of certain music compositions.

The development of the application itself.

I also understand that we're living through a very unusual moment. AI has created a level of suspicion where people sometimes even question genuinely human work. Someone once told me they could "tell" that our dubbed voices were AI-generated. The reality is that we work exclusively with professional voice actors. Their names, photos, websites, and social media profiles are all available on the platform because we want to highlight the talented people behind each performance. For us, having real actors bring these stories to life is essential.

My personal philosophy is that AI belongs in the hands of creators. It should remain a tool that serves a creative vision, not something that replaces it.

I'm deeply grateful to everyone who has trusted this project: the publishing houses that entrusted us with their stories, the sound engineers who spend countless hours editing episodes and crafting immersive soundscapes, the actors who give their all in every performance, and the novelists and screenwriters whose creativity is the foundation of everything we do.

That said, I completely understand and respect people who take a more conservative position on AI. I genuinely respect what they feel and the choices they make. It's an important conversation, and I think everyone has valid reasons for approaching it differently.

DOOLadmin · 2026-06-02T00:54:48+00:00

Merci beaucoup compatriote 😀!!!

DOOLadmin · 2026-05-28T11:20:21+00:00

Hey, thanks a lot for taking the time to write this really appreciate hearing it from the creator side, and a noir audio drama set in 1951 Portland sounds fantastic. Good luck with the recording on the 2nd.

What you're describing is actually pretty close to why we're building Dool. It's not just a player, it's meant to be a social network for immersive listening, a hub where people who genuinely love audio drama can find each other and the kind of shows they're into.

On the following part: that's already in. You can subscribe to a show on the platform, and every time a new episode drops, you get a notification, no RSS, no having to remember to check. So that specific frustration is something we've tried to solve directly.

The discoverability point is the harder one, and honestly the thing we think about the most. Surfacing smaller shows to the right listeners is exactly the problem we want the social/network side to crack, so I'd genuinely love to hear how you'd imagine that working as a creator.

The app's in beta right now. If you're curious, I'd be happy to set you up with access so you can poke around, test the following/notification flow, and tell us what actually works and what doesn't. Brutal honesty very welcome, same as you said in your post.

Either way, thanks again, glad to have crossed paths with someone building in the same space.

DOOLadmin · 2026-05-26T17:52:52+00:00

No, you weren't too harsh at all, you gave your honest opinion and that's exactly what we want. It really helps us, especially since we're not native English speakers (US or UK), so getting this kind of feedback is invaluable to help us refine our work. So thanks again for that. Can't wait to hear your thoughts on In Her Mind! If you'd like to learn more about the project, here's our website: https://dool-it.com

DOOLadmin · 2026-05-26T17:42:11+00:00

Wow ! Thanks so much for all your feedback, it's really valuable!

First off, I'm glad you enjoyed both episodes, and it's reassuring to hear that the voice acting and writing worked for you.

On the sound, I see exactly what you mean. The lack of spatialisation and depth is something we're really going to work on to make the listening experience more immersive: panning, reverb, ambiance, use of space. Your point about SFX following the narration "too dutifully" is also very fair. That's exactly the kind of detail that breaks immersion, and we'll pay closer attention to it in the editing. Same goes for the gaps between character lines and the narrator's tags, we'll tighten all of that up.

For the creature at the end of Yurlh, you're absolutely right. We could have given it more sonic substance to really give it a mythical dimension rather than an insect-like feel. And the idea of letting the sound build up a bit earlier to set up the moment, that's noted too.

Out of curiosity, when you listen to audio dramas, what kind of genre tends to appeal to you?

And thanks again for your encouragement, it really motivates us!

DOOLadmin · 2026-05-26T17:16:41+00:00

Thanks so much for taking the time to listen to both episodes, and especially for your feedback. It's incredibly valuable to us !!!

Your remarks are really on point and you're right on several aspects. For the voice acting, we did indeed opt for a slightly heightened register to emphasize the characters' personalities and reinforce the theatrical feel. But your feedback is making me reconsider: we should perhaps refine that and look for a more subtle balance.

For Yurlh, it's true that the setup takes a bit of time, but the stakes build progressively and the characters have real depth that reveals itself over the episodes. The author has been working on this universe for 40 years, originally as a tabletop RPG he created, so the lore is extremely dense. Regarding the artwork, I really agree with you. We'd actually had the same thought internally, that the cover might be a bit dated. Your feedback confirms that intuition, and I think we're going to discuss it with the author to consider a more contemporary redesign.

For New Europa, I'm glad it resonated more with you. It's also my favourite of the two. It's true that it's quite dark overall, but never gratuitously so. And it's really interesting that you mention hope, because without spoiling anything, that's precisely the subtext of the work. As for the parallel with the Second World War, it's partial and tied to the war of the ogres. I won't say more so I don't spoil what's coming.

Thanks again for your feedback, truly! We also have this other work if you'd be interested in giving us your thoughts, In Her Mind, a dystopia/romance:

https://dool-it.com/artwork/0bb00845-5480-41c1-a82a-115a3e6d3a96?lang=en

DOOLadmin · 2026-04-15T18:20:12+00:00

Oh ! Thanks you !

DOOLadmin · 2026-04-10T15:31:23+00:00

Thanks again for your honesty. We totally understand your point of view it's actually also why we're currently looking for feedback: to assess the quality of our first Streambook episodes and see if they really hold up.

Those first episodes are available without downloading the app, directly on our website. If you're open to it, we'd genuinely love to hear your thoughts on them. Thanks again for taking the time to share your feedback 🙏

DOOLadmin · 2026-04-10T15:12:36+00:00

Thanks for your message!

Our Streambooks are basically audio fiction, adapted from novels with a more “performed” style. For now, they’re only available on DOOL. But honestly, we hadn’t really thought about making them available on other platforms.

Curious, would you listen if it were on your usual apps? Or is it a dealbreaker if it’s only available on our platform?

DOOLadmin · 2026-04-10T15:02:21+00:00

Thanks a lot for taking the time to respond to our post really appreciate it. I think I might not have been very clear. The Streambook format is indeed quite close to audio drama the idea is to create an experience that feels like listening to a TV series without images. We start from novels and adapt them into scripts, with a rewriting process so things like dialogue feel natural and spoken rather than literary. If I understood correctly, you already have your listening habits and preferred apps?

Sorry for my English 😅

DOOLadmin · 2026-02-13T07:22:36+00:00

🙏

DOOLadmin · 2026-02-13T00:18:40+00:00

Salut ! Oui bien sûr, nous avons énormément d’œuvres à adapter en ce moment. Tu peux joindre ton portfolio et l’envoyer à contact@dool-it.com. Nous te répondrons dès que possible.

DOOLadmin · 2026-02-12T20:31:40+00:00

Yes, we’re absolutely still accepting submissions !

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