Listening to Treasure Island on Audible. Sounds great. Does anyone on here work on similar productions? Are the actors all recorded together, then sfx added later (with spatial panning), or are some sfx recorded at the same time with the actors actually moving around, getting closer/farther away from the mic like the old BBC binaural recordings (the ring, the stone tape, etc.)?
I’m an audio producer and I’ve produced some German audio dramas like »Paul Temple und der Fall Valentine«. It depends on how the studio / director works, budget and availability of the voice actors.
In my case I recorded the both main characters mostly together, partly isolated. The sfx always come last. In some cases I asked the actor to move away or past the mic. But 99% of room fx and movements are post sound design.
Back in the day audio dramas were more seen as recorded theatre stages. So, in old audio dramas you have lots of movements in front of the mics, because the literally recorded on a stage and not in a smaller booth.
Anyway, it’s a lot of extremely fun work. Especially if you also compose the music 
I do lots of’em. One of the latest was Spinal Tap with all of the guys. It’s a great example of how you do everything necessary under the circumstances. Recorded them as a group in a circle, separated enough for decent isolation, but due to the improvisational nature of that aspect, still had to use gating to avoid various issues. Worked great!
Other phases of production included solo narration in studio and various location recordings… not to mention bits sent in by iPhone by cameo personalities (thank you DX Revive!).
All in all the challenge was to create a unified-sounding production (the material spoke for itself). And with the built-in Nuendo tools and a couple of third-party additions, it was absolutely doable.
Other projects– have done stuff in the style of an old-time radio drama with fans for airplanes and live “Foley” footsteps and the whole shebang, with one main mic for various roles, just like they did it back then. Ton of fun. And… editorial challenges in post, but… ton of fun. 
And then there’s the basic record and then add SFX later…
The moral of this story: whatever it takes, by any means necessary. Each project is different. Intrepid improvisation! Template/Shmemplate!!
Or whatever gets you through the gig…
Chewy
Thanks for the responses. As I was listening to some, I was thinking that it would be a lot more trouble to add SFX later and try to make it fit into the scene, rather than just recording it while the action was happening. But that would take more PRE production. That’s why we get the big bucks I guess…after all the budget has been spent. 
Will definitely check out the Spinal Tap one!
It was so much effing fun. And ultimately tragic, as after about a year of working with Mr. Reiner… a month after we finished…you know.
Chewy
I know…sad for sure. Glad you got to work with him. Here is the latest episode of 20k Hz which discusses how the latest Harry Potter audio books were made. Interesting, but for me, the sfx were too overwhelming in the examples they played. Also, they spend time talking about how it was a deliberate decision to play the sfx BEFORE the passage in the narration (kind of criticizing radio plays), but then in the next example, the sfx plays after the narration. Whatever dawg.
Yeah. I actually had to buy that one in preparation for my last full production–it made a splash as one of the first “full production/full cast/music & FX” titles, and because it’s Harry. Potter, sold a bunch.
I agree completely with your assessment. The Harry Potter thing gave me a headache, and I advised our production team (I was music supervisor for this one) NOT to follow that model and to leave a little something to the listener’s imagination. Talk about overkill, hyper-indicating, and as a friend of mine puts it, “over-egging the pudding.” FIGHT BACK!! 
Chewy
Probably had a nice budget and had to give the producers their money’s worth. I guess you can’t make a big release like that and have it sound similar to other releases. But yes, way too over-the-top. Some of the spell sfx were interesting though.
The most recent spell reads:
“Petroleum Expensive!”
I refrain from further commenting on that one…
I have done some scores for audio dramas for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation NRK (sadly the audio drama department that has existed since 1925 was shut down in 2021 
). As far as I know, they’ve always stuck to the method of recording actors simultaneously in the same room and moving them around the microphone. Most of the SFX is added later, but also in the later years I think they still did certain effects live like pouring water into a glass, putting on a jacket and so forth. 
Sorry about the department closing. Fast-moving times. This is exactly what I was envisioning in regards to ensemble production. Though I’ve never worked like this, it seems so much more intuitive to work this way rather than record everyone individually and then try to make them all all sound like they’re in the same room.