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20,858 Public Domain Audio Books

(librivox.org)
119 points smooke | 5 comments | 21 Oct 25 15:48 UTC | HN request time: 0.668s | source
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freedomben ◴[21 Oct 25 23:45 UTC] No.45663216[source]▶
I really love librivox for what they've done and their mission, so please don't interpret this as a criticism. It simply is what it is, and I appreciate all the effort people have graciously donated to make life better and information more accessible for their fellow humans.

That said, the vast majority of the recordings from Librivox I've listened to are pretty bad. There are some narrators that are decent, but many are borderline unlistenable. For those, an AI voice narrator would be much better, even with the current state of TTS. Is anybody working on an effort to produce these works with an AI voice?

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1. xattt ◴[22 Oct 25 11:44 UTC] No.45667630[source]▶
> … the vast majority of the recordings from Librivox I've listened to are pretty bad. There are some narrators that are decent, but many are borderline unlistenable.

Is there a name for this “value stuffing”? This seems to appeal to some form of subconscious hoarding. There is no possible way that you’ll listen to 20,000 audiobooks.

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2. kelipso ◴[22 Oct 25 12:40 UTC] No.45668173[source]▶
What’s the implication here? You can sample and make inferences about the rest. There’s a whole field called statistics that tells you how to do it.

He is right and pretty sure he was being generous in his description. I’ve tried listening to a few audiobooks there and almost all of them were bad. I only say almost because I didn’t listen to all of the audiobooks on there. I couldn’t get past a few minutes for any audiobook, and I listen to a decent number of audiobooks.

3. freedomben ◴[22 Oct 25 14:05 UTC] No.45669375[source]▶
> Is there a name for this “value stuffing”? This seems to appeal to some form of subconscious hoarding. There is no possible way that you’ll listen to 20,000 audiobooks.

If you read what I said, I explicitly scope limited my criticism. It should be pretty clear that I didn't (and don't claim to have) listened to 20,000 audiobooks (emphasis added in quote below):

> That said, the vast majority of the recordings from Librivox I've listened to are pretty bad.

As sibling comment noted, there is an entire field called "statistics" that works by confidently making predictions about an entire population based on a reasonably sized sample. So even if I were applying my opinions to the entire library, it would still be reasonable. Over the years I've listened to at 500 to 600 hours of audiobooks from there, maybe even into the thousands.

Also, please explain what you mean by "some form of subconscious hoarding"

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4. yjftsjthsd-h ◴[22 Oct 25 14:17 UTC] No.45669524[source]▶
> There is no possible way that you’ll listen to 20,000 audiobooks.

No, but there is an easy way for you to want to listen to a specific 1 audiobook, and, all other things held equal, having more of them increases the odds of having the one you want.

5. xattt ◴[22 Oct 25 14:32 UTC] No.45669729[source]▶
Sorry, not criticizing your comment. Totally agree that a lot of these are likely terrible narrations.

I am curious in general when features like this get marketed.