Private Lives : AUDIOTAPES : Books Turn a New High-Tech Page : Read a good tape lately? In a move to appeal to new listeners, audio-books are featuring multiple voices, music, sound effects, CD recordings and even full-cast productions.

In a crisp, elegant voice, actor Edward Herrmann reads the first passages of the audio-book version of “Lost Moon,” the story of the aborted Apollo 13 mission to the moon. As he gets to a section about rumors that the astronauts carried suicide pills, he is interrupted.

“Forget about it,” says the cheery voice of Jim Lovell, the Apollo 13 commander and the book’s co-author. “There just weren’t any situations where you’d ever consider making, well, an early exit.”

Just who is in charge of reading this book, anyway?

The answer is: both of them. This is an audio-book publisher’s experiment with multiple voices, a rarity in an industry devoted almost exclusively to a single-reader format. And in the coming months, publishers will tinker even more with tradition: New titles will feature music, sound effects, CD recordings and even full-cast productions.

That is enough to make some audio-book purists buy earplugs. But some producers say more elaborate productions are the future of audio-books, as publishers jockey to distinguish their new releases and try to appeal to new listeners.

“By double digits, people are coming into the audio market, and they’re bringing in more tastes,” says Donald V. Allen, president of High-Top Sports Productions, an audio publisher in Hollywood. “Some people want more stimulation, more involvement in the product.”

His firm’s example: Richard Bak’s “Ty Cobb: His Tumultuous Life and Times,” a December release featuring the sounds of a baseball game.

“This is one that lends itself,” Allen says. “You have the roar of the crowd, the sound of the ball hitting the bat, the catcher talking to the umpire.”

Although the industry is still dominated by simple productions, two audio-book hybrids recently made it to the Publishers Weekly bestseller list: “Star Wars: Dark Empire,” a full-cast recording of a comic book, and “Neuromancer,” a new audio production of William Gibson’s cyber-novel that features unreleased mixes by rockers U2.

“This is part of the same technological campfire (as radio dramas),” says Maya Thomas, a producer at Time Warner AudioBooks, which released both bestsellers. “We’re telling the tale and setting the mood.”

“Lost Moon,” just released by Simon & Schuster Audio, features the voices of Lovell and Herrmann, as well as the original recordings between Mission Control and the Apollo spacecraft.

“This is a medium you can play with,” says Seth D. Gershel, publisher of Simon & Schuster Audio. “You don’t just have to have someone sit down at the microphone and read. You can experiment.”

Simon & Schuster Audio originally planned for “Lost Moon” to be a traditional production. Lovell, who co-authored the book with Jeffrey Kluger, was to have read the six-hour abridgment on his own, but he had the same problem that many writers have behind a microphone: They aren’t trained as narrators.

“Some people are astronauts, some people are publishers, some people are readers,” Gershel says. “But we really wanted his voice on there. He really has a peaceful-sounding tone for a guy who sat up there in a tin can, wondering if he would come back or not.”

Their solution was to split the duties. Herrmann, a veteran audio-book voice, narrates the bulk of the book, which is written in third person. Lovell voices more personal passages, such as the tense moments when he and the two other astronauts wonder how they will make it back to Earth. His passages were rewritten in first person for the audio production.

“The book really has a double focus,” Herrmann says. “It shifts between what was happening at Mission Control in Houston and what was going on in the spacecraft. . . . This makes it more authentic, hearing it from (Lovell).”

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For other publishers, casting multiple voices is a simple way to discern the characters. Steven Weber (“Wings”) voices much of “Dream Lovers,” Dodd Darin’s book about his parents, Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee. But Alison West takes over the reading when the book covers Dee’s personal life and her troubles with an overprotective mother.

Gender isn’t always the issue. In its upcoming release of James Patterson’s “Kiss the Girls,” Time Warner AudioBooks will feature different voices for a cop and two serial-killer villains.

“It makes for a quicker identification and more variety,” says John Wynne, another producer at Time Warner AudioBooks. In “Kiss the Girls,” he says, the action “shifts suddenly to the killers’ point of view as the cop is tracking them down. Having different voices heightens the suspense.”

Time Warner, in its attempt to reach new listeners, has been among the most aggressive in releasing audio-books with new twists. For example, in the audio version of his autobiography, Motown founder Berry Gordy sings a few chords of some of his record label’s hits. Then the production features vintage recordings of the full singles.

Some producers argue that listeners expect to hear music and sound effects, especially when the audio-book is an offshoot of some other form of media. Simon & Schuster’s “Star Trek” novels feature the sounds of phasers and laser guns. Time Warner’s “Star Wars” comic books include the popular score. Random House’s “Baseball,” the companion audio-book to the PBS series, features music from the documentary.

“When the James Bond novels were first released, something was missing,” says Gershel of Simon & Schuster. “It was the theme song at the beginning. The audio cried out for that. People expect to hear it because they saw the movie.”

Yet sound effects and music have a limit, Gershel says:

“People new to the business tend to overload. You want the story to just blend in the background. You’re not going to take Barbara Bush’s biography and juice it up with music. It doesn’t need that.”

Some audio publishers say that the more elaborate productions will only distract from the story.

“It’s like storytelling,” said George Hodgkins, president of Audio Renaissance Tapes in Los Angeles. “If you characterize too much, it gets to be silly.”

Technology could change the format. Producers are looking to three-dimensional, compact disc sound but so far have limited titles to ones popular to collectors, such as “Star Wars” and “Star Trek.”

But Herrmann argues that elaborate productions will turn off many fans. Commuters, who make up almost half of the audio-book market, listen to books to escape the cluttered world of radio talk and music shows, he says. “Tapes are an exercise in shutting the world out. They give you time to yourself. People listen to them because they aren’t bombarded by images.”

Says Gershel: “You want people to say, ‘The story is terrific,’ not ‘This is a good tape.’ “*