[HN Gopher] Free public domain audiobooks
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Free public domain audiobooks
Author : agmm
Score : 227 points
Date : 2021-11-29 16:49 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (librivox.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (librivox.org)
| savant_penguin wrote:
| This kind of work is a great candidate for a multilingual
| text<>speech dataset
| umvi wrote:
| I listened to Treasure Island[0] on librivox and was impressed
| with the quality of the voice actor (Adrian Praetzellis). Beware
| though, some books are fragmented and performed by N different
| voice actors/actresses which can be jarring.
|
| [0] https://librivox.org/treasure-island-by-robert-louis-
| stevens...
| hcrisp wrote:
| Another excellent narrator with a British accent is Karen
| Savage. She has read many complete works by Jane Austen and E.
| Nesbit, among other titles, and is as good as any professional
| voice actor: - 'Pride and Prejudice' (Austen)
| - 'Sense and Sensibility' (Austen) - 'The Story of the
| Treasure Seekers' (Nesbit) - 'The Railway Children'
| (Nesbit) - many others (says 141 total matches)
|
| http://www.karenrsavage.com/blog/
| RobertLoblaw wrote:
| HN lurker for years, created an account just to say how much I
| love the librivox recordings by Adrian Praetzellis. His "Wind
| in the Willows" is just wonderful.
| hidden-spyder wrote:
| Any Android app recommendations that let me access LibriVox
| contents?
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Archive.org has a pretty easy interface. I prefer it over the
| Android apps I've tried, because I can easily move to desktop
| using synced browser data, or send books to other devices.
| Example:
|
| https://archive.org/details/scaramouche_gm_librivox/
| mmcdermott wrote:
| The mobile site is actually half-decent. You can download the
| MP3s and listen to them in something like VLC as well.
| JonathanBuchh wrote:
| You can grab the RSS feed from LibriVox and put it into most
| podcast apps.
|
| I'm on iOS and really enjoy using Overcast.
| JZL003 wrote:
| For a technical audience, I would look at some TTS (text to
| speech) programs especially by google and IBM.
|
| It's definitely robotic and nothing like a nice narrator but
| audiobooks are amazing regardless. And your mind actually starts
| filling in the emotional blanks. It can also be really cool to
| use like internet archive's scanned book's OCR -> TTS and make an
| audiobook from a cool old book that would never be professionally
| narrated
|
| And for anyone who listens to a lot of audio, I'd look into using
| an audio equalizer. Pulling down the high frequencies (especially
| for some woman narrators) makes it more comfortable after many
| hours of listening. On android the "Smart audiobook" app has this
| and it's really nice. Maybe some headphones/android phones can do
| this globally
| Simorgh wrote:
| I've been playing around with the IBM TTS for audiozing
| research papers. I think that research should be more
| accessible and I think that the audioform is the way forward.
|
| The comprehension of powerful ideas should be easy, effortless
| and intuitive. Listening to content has the double benefit of
| ensuring that talking about complex subjects is all the more
| familiar. If you've been introduced to a topic through speech,
| talking about it is all the more natural.
| meremortals wrote:
| highly recommend @Voice Aloud Reader (TTS Reader) on Android
| too
| primaryobjects wrote:
| iPhone users can enable Spoken Content.
|
| Open an ebook. Swipe down with two fingers. Instant audio book.
|
| Also, you can select the Voices option (under Spoken Content)
| to download high quality Siri voices.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Thank you for the suggestion. I had been using Voice Over
| which is a very similar feature but not quite as good for
| reading ebooks and the like.
| badguybeetle wrote:
| i am unable to do this on my iPhone do i need to enable it in
| the settings.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| This support page may help:
|
| https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/spoken-content-
| iph96b...
| gxqoz wrote:
| I've listened to enough TTS for non-fiction that it doesn't
| really bother me. In fact, I sometimes prefer the TTS over a
| low-quality narrator. TTS for fiction less so.
| JZL003 wrote:
| my problem with non-fiction TTS (or at least the non-fiction
| I read) is it often involves diagrams or figures and that
| really doesn't work with TTS, sadly. But histories are nice
| FloatArtifact wrote:
| The the text to speech market is so suppressed. I've seen some
| amazing demos but nothing that comes out and open source or
| consumer markets outside of Amazon and other big players.
| FloatArtifact wrote:
| For text-to-speech services such as Google or Amazon it costs
| more (end user perspective) to process audiobooks from eBooks.
| Compared to buy the audiobook through a subscription service.
|
| Deep fakes audio sounds better than most text to speech models
| that are freely available.
| [deleted]
| gxqoz wrote:
| It's been a while since I've listened to something on librivox.
| When I did, it was hit or miss in terms of narrator quality (as
| you'd expect from a volunteer-led initiative). If you have access
| to something like Overdrive or Libby through your public library,
| I'd check there first. You'll probably be more satisfied with a
| professionally recorded audiobook.
| jbj wrote:
| reminds me of an episode of planet money where they read a whole
| book that just entered public domain:
| https://www.npr.org/2021/01/14/956800308/the-great-gatsby
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| Nate DiMeo recorded it for The Memory Palace too:
| https://beta.prx.org/stories/380337
| TheFreim wrote:
| I am very thankful for librivox. I have listened to "Heretics",
| "Orthodoxy", and "Against Eugenics and Other Evils" by G.K.
| Chesterton. I've also listened to some works of St. Patrick read
| by librivox contributors, quality has been very high (exceptional
| when you consider that it was all for free).
| turing_complete wrote:
| Sounds great. I am reading through C.S. Lewis currently.
| Chesterton might be next.
| sammyq wrote:
| I'm reading heretics currently! Curious why you listened to
| Against Eugenics and Other Evils as opposed to Everlasting Man?
| Seems like Heretics and Orthodoxy and Everlasting Man are the
| three works that people read most often by Chesterton.
| TheFreim wrote:
| It's on the list, but when I was deciding which to listen to
| next I was interacting with some eugenicists online and felt
| like it would be interesting to hear Chesterton's point of
| view.
| hugs wrote:
| As a learner of French, I absolutely love Librivox. Science
| fiction (Jules Verne), fairy tales (Charles Perrault), poetry
| (Charles Baudelaire), novels (Victor Hugo) -- there is so much
| really good source material in French. However, as one would
| expect from a free/public domain resource, classics over 100
| years old are well covered... But for anything newer, you'll
| probably need Audible*...
|
| *edit: Or check out audiobooks from your local library!
| Jaepa wrote:
| If anyone has a few free cycles & wants to help, the project is
| on Github & there are plenty of open tickets.
|
| https://github.com/LibriVox
| dang wrote:
| Past related threads:
|
| _LibriVox: Free Public Domain Audiobooks_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23558686 - June 2020 (81
| comments)
|
| _Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22104143 - Jan 2020 (84
| comments)
|
| _LibriVox: free public domain audiobooks_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11141452 - Feb 2016 (37
| comments)
|
| _LibriVox hits 100 Million downloads, looking for a PHP Dev_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3808080 - April 2012 (9
| comments)
| ganzuul wrote:
| Thank you kindly.
| surfsvammel wrote:
| I love this, but the problem is discoverability. Not sure how I
| would find my next book on here.
| DantesKite wrote:
| Eventually TTS technology will automate all public domain books
| so they can be listened through audio.
|
| In any voice you want.
| sandreas wrote:
| A german resource is: https://vorleser.net Anyone who is
| interested in merging a set of mp3 files to a single m4b file or
| use a single mp3 file with chapters, check out
| https://github.com/sandreas/m4b-tool (Author here)
| Faaak wrote:
| I've downloaded these audiobooks for my grandad (in german). He
| really enjoyed listening to the stories. Thanks to all the
| volunteers for their hard work !
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| Can anyone recommend a microphone / audio setup for recording
| audio books? I'd like to record some and I want to avoid the
| quality problems some Librivox recordings have.
|
| Actually, more important: is there an app that makes recording
| audio books easier? Like, can I record in one shot, and mark
| places I want to cut out so I can just re-speak one passage, and
| later on it'll automatically be cut together like I want? I could
| probably jury-rig some keyboard-based app to do it...
| themodelplumber wrote:
| I did some podcasts using a Blue Yeti and it sounded great as
| long as the knobs and switches on the mic were properly
| configured. Afterwards I used Audacity for noise removal, some
| EQ for things like bass roll-off, and TAP Scaling Limiter for
| adjusting levels. It was helpful to compare to other podcasts
| on the same speakers or headphones. Doing the same today I
| would probably give Ocenaudio a shot, as I like it so far. Good
| luck.
|
| Edit: Yes, apps that allow you to mark and quickly edit are
| common.
| aasasd wrote:
| Youtube is likely full of advice on this topic. With live
| examples.
| GrinningFool wrote:
| Only on youtube, you have to watch everything through a
| filter of "who is an expert sharing their knowledge" and "who
| is trying to sell me this thing".
| worldofmatthew wrote:
| I have been working on remastering some audiobooks from there,
| once I got more books done, I will have a proper section for
| people to download them for free from my website (direct links
| from the listing, no bs).
|
| Remastering as in removing background noise, EQing, compression
| and normalization of audio levels and reducing the librivox intro
| to the start of the audiobook only, rather than annoying people
| every chapter.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I'm grateful that you're willing to do so much work for free.
| Kudos!
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Are you able to submit them back so it's easier for users to
| find your work?
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(page generated 2021-11-29 23:00 UTC)