5 ms·

20,858 Public Domain Audio Books

130 points by smooke 1y ago

Bender 1y ago
This is really cool. Do they by chance offer a rate limited rsync access to archive everything? Asking in the event my small community gets cut off during an economic collapse. If so I would also set up a public rsync mirror.
- freedomben 11mo ago
  I had a similar desire but wasn't able to find anything through Librivox directly. Not everything is up there (at least when I was checking), but I ended up going through archive.org for a number of big collections using the torrent option. I've been seeding some of those torrents now for years and they get very little traffic so I have no problem keeping them up indefinitely.
- danjermaus 11mo ago
  Not to be that guy but if your community gets cut off from the Internet in an economic collapse maybe audiobooks of public domain works are not super important
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - Bender 11mo ago
    Just like in the movie Book of Eli [1] I will keep everyone's MP3 players charged. They can also come over and listen to solar powered Bluetooth speakers and their music, books, whatever. Maybe some children's books for the kiddos to keep some level of normalcy. This may be even more important should we go from economic collapse to societal collapse. I appreciate you being that guy as I am often also that guy. We should form a club. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Eli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Eli
freedomben 1y ago
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?
- delichon 1y ago
  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."
  - manquer 11mo ago
    It is not just about the having a good voice, whilst that is important, you also need voice acting skills to show in the voice, as in a good voice actor would change their accent, tone, language, style for every character and seed it with emotion and so forth. A lot of thought (and skill) goes into it[1] Stephen Fry is good for audio books because he is a talented voice actor amongst his many other skills. Attenborough is a treasure and known for his audio work, but he is not a voice actor - or at least doesn't do that kind of work which requires lot more range rather than one specific one we all recognize. I wouldn't like his voice style to narrate a fiction book for me. A planned production with editing and nuanced prompting even with just AI voice actors will still vastly better for immersion than just an app doing it real time. [1] https://www.youtube.com/@tawnyplatis7866/shorts https://www.youtube.com/@tawnyplatis7866/shorts
disambiguation 1y ago
Semi off topic, but i always thought it would be cool if there was a kind of multiplayer for ebooks - threads and notes in the margins similar to how dark souls lets you write brief hints for other players that you can hide around the game world. Its impractical due to the technical and legal challenges, but it would be neat to see the thoughts of other readers page by page.
- Podrod 1y ago
  On kindles you can highlight passages and there's an option to see the most highlighted passages. Not quite the same as notes but a bit similar. I find it annoying and have it disabled however.
- snoozebutton 11mo ago
  I thought you were going to say multiplayer for audiobooks. Different people could read for different characters and the listener could choose which voice they wanted to read for which parts.
  - yencabulator 11mo ago
    Lots of audio recordings have a "background" that would be jarring to jump between, and getting those backgrounds identical is actually hard work for professionals. I find remote interview-format podcasts sometimes hard to listen to because the audio quality jumps around so much, with background hisses appearing and disappearing.
jspizziri 11mo ago
Coincidentally, I posted a somewhat related Show HN yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45657083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45657083 Crossover is that some of what we’ve done is curate some of the best librivox titles and enhance their audio quality.

130 points by smooke 1y ago

This is really cool. Do they by chance offer a rate limited rsync access to archive everything? Asking in the event my small community gets cut off during an economic collapse. If so I would also set up a public rsync mirror.

freedomben 11mo ago
I had a similar desire but wasn't able to find anything through Librivox directly. Not everything is up there (at least when I was checking), but I ended up going through archive.org for a number of big collections using the torrent option. I've been seeding some of those torrents now for years and they get very little traffic so I have no problem keeping them up indefinitely.
danjermaus 11mo ago
Not to be that guy but if your community gets cut off from the Internet in an economic collapse maybe audiobooks of public domain works are not super important
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- Bender 11mo ago
  Just like in the movie Book of Eli [1] I will keep everyone's MP3 players charged. They can also come over and listen to solar powered Bluetooth speakers and their music, books, whatever. Maybe some children's books for the kiddos to keep some level of normalcy. This may be even more important should we go from economic collapse to societal collapse. I appreciate you being that guy as I am often also that guy. We should form a club. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Eli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Eli

freedomben 1y ago

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?

delichon 1y ago
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."
- manquer 11mo ago
  It is not just about the having a good voice, whilst that is important, you also need voice acting skills to show in the voice, as in a good voice actor would change their accent, tone, language, style for every character and seed it with emotion and so forth. A lot of thought (and skill) goes into it[1] Stephen Fry is good for audio books because he is a talented voice actor amongst his many other skills. Attenborough is a treasure and known for his audio work, but he is not a voice actor - or at least doesn't do that kind of work which requires lot more range rather than one specific one we all recognize. I wouldn't like his voice style to narrate a fiction book for me. A planned production with editing and nuanced prompting even with just AI voice actors will still vastly better for immersion than just an app doing it real time. [1] https://www.youtube.com/@tawnyplatis7866/shorts https://www.youtube.com/@tawnyplatis7866/shorts

disambiguation 1y ago

Semi off topic, but i always thought it would be cool if there was a kind of multiplayer for ebooks - threads and notes in the margins similar to how dark souls lets you write brief hints for other players that you can hide around the game world. Its impractical due to the technical and legal challenges, but it would be neat to see the thoughts of other readers page by page.

Podrod 1y ago
On kindles you can highlight passages and there's an option to see the most highlighted passages. Not quite the same as notes but a bit similar. I find it annoying and have it disabled however.
snoozebutton 11mo ago
I thought you were going to say multiplayer for audiobooks. Different people could read for different characters and the listener could choose which voice they wanted to read for which parts.
- yencabulator 11mo ago
  Lots of audio recordings have a "background" that would be jarring to jump between, and getting those backgrounds identical is actually hard work for professionals. I find remote interview-format podcasts sometimes hard to listen to because the audio quality jumps around so much, with background hisses appearing and disappearing.

jspizziri 11mo ago

Coincidentally, I posted a somewhat related Show HN yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45657083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45657083 Crossover is that some of what we’ve done is curate some of the best librivox titles and enhance their audio quality.