
Going blind and learning to love audiobooks - fern12
https://www.audible.com/blog/the-listening-life/among-the-blessings-of-blindness-audiobooks/?ref_=pe_3461650_266127620
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otp124
I’ve been using Audible during for years, and I love it. I don’t have time to
sit and read for long periods, so audiobooks have definitely helped optimize
my time.

During monotonous tasks, such as cooking breakfast, vacuuming, or driving on a
long highway (when I lived in the US) I could easily finish a book a month.
And generally those were 20-40 hour historical or classic books, not the short
novels.

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mechatrocity
A shout out to my favourite audiobook website,
[https://librivox.org](https://librivox.org) . All free and open.

~~~
BugsJustFindMe
LibriVox is nice for some things, but almost every book I've tried to listen
to from there had untrained amateurish narrators and editors with poor
recording quality. I find them pretty hard to listen to compared to
professionally produced books. IMO, a much better alternative if you're
looking for free audiobooks is your local lending library. In the US you can
often access library audiobook collections on your phone or computer with
OverDrive.

~~~
intopieces
Hoopla is another good one for books, music... Kanopy has a broad selection of
movies too. All paid for by your tax dollars (not free!) so be sure and take
advantage.

~~~
gnicholas
Many digital library services are paid based on usage, so increased borrowing
may actually increase library costs in turn.

Not saying people shouldn’t use services — just saying it’s not a sunk cost
like it might seem.

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szemet
I'm a big fan of the android tts. A bit robotic, with quite a few prosodic
errors (which is simple to get used to), but so convenient. No need to hunt
for audiobooks - actually in most languages the size of the audibook market is
rather poor...

I can switch easily from audio to reading, e.g. listening while walking to the
bus, and if I get a seat then switch to read, and then back to listening
etc...

~~~
johansch
With the rate speech synthesis is developing, it's probably going to be hard
to distinguish between human speakers and synthetic speakers in a few years
from now.

~~~
gradys
See
[https://google.github.io/tacotron/publications/tacotron2/ind...](https://google.github.io/tacotron/publications/tacotron2/index.html)

And the HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15962543](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15962543)

~~~
JoshTriplett
I'm really looking forward to those actually being available to use.

~~~
johansch
I've just started to use AWS Polly in some demos, but the speech synthesis
quality feels 2-3 years old at least :/

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thisisit
As someone who grew up on printed editions I have trouble adjusting to digital
editions. Now I have 3-4 boxes full of books which is a pain while shifting
houses.

I tried ebooks but retention is an issue. So, taking notes has become a big
priority.

Recently started listening to audiobooks but a lot of times I find my mind
starts drifting towards unrelated topics. Are there any tips which can help
focus my mind?

~~~
BugsJustFindMe
You might try increasing the narration speed. Many (most?) audiobooks are
recorded at WPM comfortable for a narrator reading aloud for long periods of
time but far slower than natural speech. Maybe your mind is wandering because
the gap between words is too long for you to process aurally. Audiobook apps
(like the Audible app, for instance) allow you to speed up playback without
changing the pitch.

~~~
sago
Frustratingly (for me) Audible only supports faster reading speeds on its
mobile app.

Its webapp doesn't, neither does its Alexa skill, nor does iTunes (which is
what it recommends if you download, since it can negotiate the DRM). Anything
else requires ripping the DRM.

~~~
BugsJustFindMe
Many years ago I used to play Audible files on a 2nd generation iPod nano, and
it supported speed adjustment for books too. That's still a mobile device, of
course. But maybe it's an alternative? The only scenario I can think of where
playing them in a mobile app is a problem is if you don't have a smartphone.

~~~
sago
> The only scenario I can think of where playing them in a mobile app is a
> problem is if you don't have a smartphone.

What a thought!

But yes, and in the context of partial sight / blindness, smart phones are not
great for accessibility.

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bbatha
If you’re blind you can also get free audio books from the library of
congress[1]. The selection is more limited than audible and you need a special
reader, but it is free. My father who’s blind uses both services actively.

1: [https://loc.gov/programs/national-library-service-for-the-
bl...](https://loc.gov/programs/national-library-service-for-the-blind-and-
physically-handicapped/about-this-service)

------
lhuser123
Audiobooks have been a real help for me, especially Audible which makes
everything very easy. My problem is with some narrators of non fiction books.
Is it me ? Or some narrators are so bad that actually makes you don’t want to
listen. While the majority of them are good or acceptable, some are really
painful to listen. Is like if you have a science book, and the narrator
doesn’t find it interesting, he/she will let you know.

~~~
askafriend
You're not alone, the narrator is a very critical experience of listening to
audiobooks. If the narrator's voice, tone, or style aren't appealing, it'll
ruin the entire experience. The problem is that this is largely subjective -
there won't ever be a narrator that'll make everyone happy but like you said,
most are good enough with the occasional bad apple.

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ivanb
Audiobooks are great. You can listen to them while doing chores, commuting or
having a walk. It is a pity that they are so expensive. I bet Amazon's
monopoly has something to do with it. Podcasts, on the other hand, are worth
what you are giving back to the creators via means like Patreon.

~~~
chrisan
> It is a pity that they are so expensive.

Some of these books are over 40hrs long I listen to. My current book,
Oathbringer, is 55hrs. I find the length and professional voice acting to
provide more than enough value for the $15/month audible charges (hope I don't
sound like a shill).

Certainly better than 2 movies a month, imo :)

edit: I do wish you got a free kindle version with audible purchase...

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walterbell
On iOS, [http://voicedream.com](http://voicedream.com) will perform high-
quality, rate-adjustable TTS for most (unlocked) text file formats, including
PDF and epub. Provides paid, good quality voices for many languages.

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lamlam
While we're talking about audible I wanted to bring 2 things up.

1\. You can cancel and restart your membership to get a new token for
$15/month.

2\. They recently added different portals for different countries. If you've
been using the American portal (.com) like me, you may not have noticed your
own countries. You should check it out, it may be cheaper. For example, the
Canadian portal (.ca) charges $15 CAD a month which is cheaper than $15 USD.

