
LibriVox: Free Public Domain Audiobooks - drummer
https://librivox.org/
======
louniks
Hey, so I'm the very part time volunteer sysadmin for LibriVox, can I use this
opportunity to ask for help?

I have a day job and two kids, the amount of time and energy I give to
LibriVox is sufficient to keep the lights on, but not much else.

We don't have money, in fact we don't even have a legal entity, any donations
we get are handled by Internet Archive, who also kindly provide us our two
servers (yes, only two).

If you want to help and know PHP and CodeIgniter, we'd be very happy to have
you on board! While I _am_ a developper, it's currently Python, and not at all
web related. LibriVox's tech sack has fallen woefully out of date (PH 5.6,
CodeIgniter 2), and I can't bring it up to date all by my self.

I'll be honest, it's not glamorous work. There's no automated testing,
anything we change has to be tested and validated by the volunteers themselves
- who are awesome, by the way. But we're a fantastic little nugget of
Internet, and I think we should stick around on a solid tech stack for as long
as possible ;)

All of our code is on GitHub:
[https://github.com/LibriVox/](https://github.com/LibriVox/)

~~~
eXpl0it3r
While checking out the project on GitHub I noticed that you're using GerritHub
for reviews and made me wonder whether this is holding back some people from
contributing. Not that it's bad in anyway, but I assume it's something a lot
of people are unfamiliar with and the description of how to use it for the
project is very limited, plus work in progress isn't directly visible as PR on
GitHub.

Additionally, you mention in the CONTRIBUTING.md that there's a Google doc
with a lot of issues listed that should be converted to GitHub issues. Where
does one find that Google doc?

~~~
louniks
I'm not married to Gerrit, and I concede that it could be a hurdle. It's what
I use for my day job, so I chose it out of laziness and familiarity more than
anything else. I'll probably drop it, and learn the GitHub PR tools and
workflow - I've gotten a few random PRs already.

Edit: I'll talk to the volunteers about making that Google doc public, good
suggestion.

~~~
eXpl0it3r
I think one can go either way, but the important part is that it's clear to
those willing to contribute. I think explaining a bit more how Gerrit reviews
work and who is actually reviewing them, would already help, and maybe adding
a link to the README, so it's easier discoverable.

Cool, I wouldn't mind copying/creating a bunch of issues on the side.

~~~
louniks
Done.

[https://github.com/LibriVox/librivox-
catalog/blob/master/CON...](https://github.com/LibriVox/librivox-
catalog/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md)

Have fun, and many thanks!

(I'll try to make time this weekend to drop GerritHub as well, and convert
what I currently have there to PRs)

------
dcminter
My late father did a number of recordings for LibriVox.

In fact in the last conversation I had with him, he said to tell the people on
the LibriVox forums "Cheerio" from him, so he had certainly enjoyed being part
of that community.

After he died and I posted his farewell message there, it was quite emotional
reading through the tributes to him and his skill as a storyteller. Later
still I found a dozen or so "fan mail" letters - so he knew he was
appreciated.

I'll always be grateful to LibriVox for giving him an avenue to exercise a
talent that wouldn't otherwise have been public.

~~~
Ice_cream_suit
Your father's reading of of Oedipus Rex is superb.

Please accept my thanks.

~~~
dcminter
I thank you on his behalf. Most of his fan mail was for his reading of The
Prisoner of Zenda, so perhaps try that if you haven't already and the genre is
to your taste?

------
reedwolf
There are also a huge number of audiobooks available on YouTube.

I made a Reddit bot [0] that continually scans comments across the entire site
for mentions of science fiction and fantasy book titles. It uses a dataset of
book title/author pairs that were scraped from the Speculative Fiction
Database, a compendium of all known science fiction/fantasy literary works.

If an SFF book title/author pair is detected in a comment, the bot searches
YouTube for an audiobook of the mentioned title, then replies with a link to
it should one be found.

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/user/EmotionalField](https://www.reddit.com/user/EmotionalField)

~~~
seesawtron
Cool stuff. Is this open sourced so one can modify it to search for specfic
genres of books or specific authors? Cheer!

~~~
reedwolf
Sure. The code's up on my site [0].

Please note that I'm a beginner programmer, so the code probably looks really
ugly to professional devs. I plan on refactoring the code once I get more
advanced in programming.

[0] [https://capybasilisk.com/posts/2020/04/speculative-
fiction-b...](https://capybasilisk.com/posts/2020/04/speculative-fiction-bot/)

~~~
Breza
Don't hate on your code. If it runs and does what you want, then it's good
code. Refactoring later can be useful and improve things like performance and
readability but what matters is that it works.

~~~
reedwolf
Thank you! It was the first time posting my code here, so I was kinda nervous,
haha.

------
bueno
I created and maintain an audiobook iPhone app, Bound. I’ve been meaning to
integrate LibriVox as a source but the API leaves a lot to be desired. Has
anyone had experience with this? It seems like I should just use Archive.org
as the source instead.

If anyone wants to check out my app: [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bound-
audiobook-player/id10417...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bound-audiobook-
player/id1041727137)

~~~
elektor
Bound was the best $4 I’ve spent on an app, thanks Tim.

~~~
bueno
Wow! Thank you for the compliment. I really appreciate it.

~~~
askjdlkasdjsd
As an android user, I'm so jelly. Those screenshots look delicious, well done.

I feel like amazon literally hasn't bothered updating their UI since the 90s.
I love audible, but god damn their UI is depressing and actually makes
listening to audiobooks a worse experience. There's no better alternative
either :(

~~~
glomph
I can recommend Voice
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.ph1b.audiob...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.ph1b.audiobook)
which is open source!

------
AnonC
With public domain ebooks in text based formats, if desired, it’s easy for a
distributor or for the end user to change the display fonts (and font
attributes) to make it easier or more pleasant to read. For audiobooks, these
factors — the voice of the narrator, the intonations and expressions, accent
and more — matter to have a good listening experience. Even commercially
published audiobooks are dissed on the basis of having a poor narrator. An
audiobook player doesn’t have a lot to provide on these factors (with the
current technology) compared to ebooks.

With the above context, how is a dump of audiobooks like this useful to the
masses without reviews from people who have listened to the works? The lack of
reviews here is not a problem as much as the lack of a reviewing or commenting
interface would be, IMO.

How do the current listeners (on HN) of works here decide what to download or
not? Or is it just a matter of “download, listen and see if it’s good enough
or move on”?

~~~
nsomaru
The LibriVox app on iOS has reviews.

Otherwise, uh, it’s free. Take a listen, if it works, keep it. If not, drop
it. Conundrum solved.

~~~
X6S1x6Okd1st
It has non-zero opportunity cost. The search for LibriVox seems to have no
indication of the user rated quality of the recording and lists entries with
no completed books.

I love audiobooks, but honestly don't see an easy way to interface with this
site

~~~
chooseaname
> It has non-zero opportunity cost.

Then just don't use it at all. Go buy a sub to Audible.

~~~
X6S1x6Okd1st
Fuck audible. I get most of my audiobooks from the public library

------
seven4
_LibriVox recordings are Public Domain in the USA. If you are not in the USA,
please verify the copyright status of these works in your own country before
downloading, otherwise you may be violating copyright laws._

Is there any easy-access repository that goes over the copyright patchwork for
different works around the world? I yearn for the day when we have a more
global schema for copyright/distribution rights.

As someone who travels frequently - it does my head in when a subscription
content provider geo-blocks something I'm accessing.

~~~
shakna
Copyright is ridiculously hard. Beyond difficult.

Even if you have general guidance across the varying nations, most of the time
you can't expect it to be compatible. In fact, I've run across differing and
incompatible copyrights across states within the same nation. I've seen
copyright laws that contradict themselves, and the courts reinterpreting that
law in seemingly random ways, so understanding the law isn't a guarantee that
you can obey it.

As things currently stand even determining who holds a copyright may not
always be possible, and the person who holds the copyright may not be aware
that they do.

Even just the concept of Public Domain does not exist in all countries, and
does not mean the same thing across most countries - there are subtle
differences that can lead to insane incompatibilities.

Distribution rights, whilst complicated, are far less complex than the tangled
web that is copyright law.

~~~
seven4
Thanks - this more or less echos what i suspected but never really delved
into. It is a touch disheartening - and I don't see who would be incentivised
(or even capable of) clarifying/simplifying things.

------
hoka
Highly recommend David Clarke's work, especially his Sherlock Holmes readings.
For me, he's the best Sherlock narrator I've heard.

He also runs a chain of Houston coffee shops; their mugs sit proudly in my
cabinet! Felt great to compensate someone for many many hours of public good.

~~~
mapleoin
You compensated the owner of a chain of coffee shops by buying a few mugs?

------
sandreas
There is a similar project for german audiobooks:
[https://www.vorleser.net/](https://www.vorleser.net/)

------
vmilner
Because of the public domain licensing, some LibriVox recordings are simply
copied (with the LibriVox ID removed) and sold on Audible. (Search Audible for
Karen Savage - e.g. Pride and Prejudice).

------
tomerbd
I prefer text to speech than LibriVox I listened to a few books, the only
audio books I can listen with a narrator is when he is really professional
otherwise TTS.

~~~
alessivs
Which is your preferred TTS engine or product for this purpose?

~~~
tomerbd
I have a few years old phone which still has ivona on it, it's just perfect!!
have a look at a sample -
[http://www.ttsforaccessibility.com/](http://www.ttsforaccessibility.com/) I
use british english, female voice, Amy - perfect.

------
KangLi
Librivox rocks dude. I volunteered and must await verification :D

------
zzo38computer
While I prefer text based formats myself, there can be the use for audio
recordings of it, I think, such as people who prefer the audio recordings, or
when it can be useful in different circumstances.

But, some things I don't know. How to deal with footnotes? What if some of the
footnotes are unreferenced (like in a story I wrote)? What if the text has
some word/name that they do not know how to pronounce? (What if the author
also doesn't know, or if the author knew but is now dead or for some other
reason can no longer speak (and didn't write down the pronounciation)?) What
about foreign text? (In the story I mentioned, it is mostly in English,
although there is one passage written in Latin.)

~~~
entropicdrifter
With regard to pronunciation, this is often what separates a quality reader
from a poor one.

------
bitxbit
A bit off topic but what’s the status on any research toward leveraging
audiobooks to produce text-to-speech? What are the hurdles in making it
seamless and imperceptible? And what’s the “theoretical” number of recorded
words/hour required to produce something reasonable?

------
nightowl_games
I found a bug. I'm on Firefox on Windows and when I open genres in new tabs,
they dont open properly. The new tab just shows the top of the genres list,
even though the url is full of information regarding which genre I clicked.

------
DLarsen
If you enjoy Mark Twain, the John Greenman readings
([https://librivox.org/reader/107](https://librivox.org/reader/107)) are
fantastic.

------
softsound
I love librivox. Perfect for drawing too. I find the phone app easier to use
then the website though. Perhaps I might help out when I get some freetime
later.

------
MrTrvp
Could audiobooks be used to train neural networks?

~~~
hamsta
The audio files from LibriVox are commonly used to train neural networks for
ASR and TTS, see e.g.
[https://www.danielpovey.com/files/2015_icassp_librispeech.pd...](https://www.danielpovey.com/files/2015_icassp_librispeech.pdf)
and [https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.02882](https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.02882)

------
AHASIC
I find their categorization amusing as this is there:

Non-fiction > Bibles > American Standard Version

~~~
aesh2Xa1
Probably, a satisfactory justification can be either or both of:

1) historians/theologians reviewing a literal translation 2) believers of the
faith

That said, I agree that the rest of us thinks it's a story. Maybe magical
realism would be close enough?

~~~
mordechai9000
FWIW, the Dewey Decimal system also classifies myths and religious texts
separate from works of fiction. And the two are classified separately.

~~~
zzo38computer
I suppose the Dewey Decimal System is a suitable reason to classify it as
"non-fiction", but then presumably the Dewey Decimal numbers should be present
(even if that is not the classification scheme of LibriVox, which is OK, I
suppose).

(Anyways, the Bible is a collection of texts of various kinds. It isn't really
a work of fiction in the way that most stories are, and even the texts they
have are not entirely fictitious anyways; some parts might be historically
accurate, some parts might be exaggerated, some parts might be lost, and some
parts might be works of fiction, for example.)

