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20,858 Public Domain Audio Books

(librivox.org)
120 points smooke | 1 comments | 21 Oct 25 15:48 UTC | HN request time: 0.348s | 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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delichon ◴[22 Oct 25 00:17 UTC] No.45663488[source]▶
I think we're at least near the point where it's better to get the text and feed it to an AI reader app, that can be customized in various dimensions, like actor(s) and pace.

I have some favorite audio book narrators, like Patrick Tull, Stephan Fry and Stefan Rudnicki. Sure I'd rather have them read for me, but I'm not going to be able to afford that. I maybe could afford for their licensed AI mimic to read it, and that is an improvement over many random amateur contributors. With AI "personalities" it may become as simple as "have personality X read me text file Y, moderato".

Also it would be great to be able to conversationally control the narration. "Pause, hey what does that big word mean, go back two sentences and restart, stop, who is this Watson guy?, ok keep reading but adagio."

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1. bayouborne ◴[22 Oct 25 23:42 UTC] No.45676557[source]▶
I am such a fan of Patrick O'Brian's "Master and Commander" series of books that I could not let myself even consider the possibility of listening to audio book narrated version. I felt O'Brian's prose voice on the page was so powerfully distinctive that any attempt at putting a real voice to his material would be awful. Imagine my surprise when I found Patrick Tull's work shockingly good.