
LibriVox: free public domain audiobooks - pmoriarty
https://librivox.org/
======
taylorwc
University of South Florida has an amazing program called Lit2Go, in which
they have public domain books narrated by professional voice actors[0]. I have
had mixed results with the quality of librivox recordings, though I very much
respect and appreciate people who are willing to attempt it. Lit2go is
wonderful quality.

[0] [http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/](http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/)

~~~
ericmo
I've listened to a few pieces of audio in this Lit2Go and also had some mixed
quality. This is a very good one: [http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/220/a-defence-of-
free-thinking-in-...](http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/220/a-defence-of-free-
thinking-in-mathematics/5550/a-defence-of-free-thinking-in-mathematics/)

This other one seems to be missing a pop filter during recording, there are a
lot of awkward mouth sounds, and the audio is muffled:
[http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/168/common-
sense/2961/part-1/](http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/168/common-sense/2961/part-1/)

Still, audio quality is better than LibriVox. Are the recordings also public
domain in Lit2Go?

~~~
taylorwc
Yes, all of the Lit2Go ones are public domain--it's how they are able to
legally produce them.

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LanguageGamer
I believe reading a book out loud is as difficult of a performance as singing
a song, and the talent of the readers on this site varies widely.

For me, the key to deriving value from this site is finding those performers
whose work I enjoy.

Since it is volunteer based, would it be obnoxious to start using some sort of
rating system for the readers?

~~~
randycupertino
He's not on librivox, but the best audiobook narrator I've ever listened to is
Ray Porter, who does a lot of books on Audible. His 14 by Peter Clines and the
Fold by Peter Clines were two of my all time favorite audiobooks. Also his The
Cartel and the Power of the Dog by Don Winslow were both great.

~~~
mkartic3
Another recommendation: Stephen Fry. He's also a famous British comedian. He
has narrated all of the Harry Potter books and the first Hitch Hiker's Guide.
Some of the best audiobook narration I've encountered.

(The second HHGTG is narrated by Martin Freeman, I think. It was part of the
2005 HHGTG movie release. )

~~~
Adam_O
HHGTG by Stephen Fry... that sounds like a great combination, will have to
check it out.

In terms of narration, my favorite audio book is The Odyssey, read by Ian
McKellen.

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DigitalJack
I was thinking about this the other day. Recordings have a potentially much
higher quality than a speech engine. There a lot of reasons for this, but a
couple of them, like mispronouncing words, or the wrong cadence, are fixable
through human intervention in the engines interpretation of the text.

Wouldn't it be interesting if we had a speech engine that could take hints
that were annotated in the text? Similar to how one can add type hints to
clojure variables to clue the compiler in for better optimization. Perhaps it
could even be unobtrusive and even readable, a la markdown, such as a tick
mark to indicate a stressed syllable or earmuffs (asterisks) for an emphasized
word. Perhaps inverted angle brackets >>could indicate speeding up a
passage.<<

With such a system, it would be possible to use something like git/github to
take "patches" for improving the speech of a piece of text.

This came to me when I was thinking about reading some of PG's essays to
create audio versions that would be useful for long drives and accessibility.
I emailed him asking for permission, but no response (I didn't expect one, he
probably is flooded with email and/or didn't have the time for a response, but
I thought I would try anyway.)

I suppose I could just start doing it, and if it garnered attention and ran
afoul of YC's sensibilities, I'd get a response then.

However, it occurred to me that 1) my voice isn't particularly pleasant, and
2) audio files are very inefficient storage of textual information. Text to
speech, while greatly improved over the decades, still isn't much of a
substitute. But perhaps with hinting it could be good enough.

~~~
caseysoftware
I've been working on aspects of this one for years, first on the TTS side of
things: [https://www.twilio.com/blog/2013/08/the-pronunciation-
challe...](https://www.twilio.com/blog/2013/08/the-pronunciation-
challenge.html)

And then on the ASR side of things: [http://clarify.io/how-clarify-
works/](http://clarify.io/how-clarify-works/)

I'd love to hear what you're thinking along these lines.. it's always useful
to get outside perspectives. Feel free to drop me a note. :)

~~~
DigitalJack
Interesting work! I've put together some thoughts on how markup/down/left
might be used as slightly lower level tools to address some of these issues.
It was great reading these because a lot of the problems simply hadn't come to
mind when I was first thinking about this.

I want to dwell on it for a little bit (day or so) and then I'll send you an
email.

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Ologn
If you look at this forum discussion...

[https://forum.librivox.org/viewtopic.php?p=743803#p743803](https://forum.librivox.org/viewtopic.php?p=743803#p743803)

You can see that an audio recording of a book published in 1921 was pulled due
to legal letters.

Of course, in the US, works from 1921 are all supposed to be in the public
domain. But already events like this occur for places other than LibriVox -
multi-national companies with large legal departments and law firms on
retainers not only assert rights for works from 1923 on, but for works before
that as well. Most small companies and organizations can't deal with the time
and expense required from these spurious legal threats and are forced to give
in.

Once TPP passes, things will just get much worse.

~~~
TheRealPomax
That would be a more valid argument if the link provided was about an actual
copyright court case, rather than the estate of Agathy Christy asserting their
ownership over the material in question.

~~~
Ologn
How can they win "an actual copyright court case" for copyrights they don't
hold?

When TPP passes, they actually will hold these rights.

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nshm
Worth to note that Librivox also gives a significant boost to text-to-speech
and speech recognition research, currently librispeech corpus based on
librivox is the largest and quite useful corpus of spoken English.
[http://www.danielpovey.com/files/2015_icassp_librispeech.pdf](http://www.danielpovey.com/files/2015_icassp_librispeech.pdf)

------
hotcool
Nice to see LibriVox get some love on HN. I'm currently listening to The Book
of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian, concerning the kingdoms and marvels of the
East: [https://librivox.org/the-book-of--marco-polo-1-by-
rustichell...](https://librivox.org/the-book-of--marco-polo-1-by-rustichello-
da-pisa/)

~~~
riffraff
interesting, that book was one of my favourite when I first read it, but one
of the parts I loved was the illustrations[0]. Just listening to the text
should make up for such a different experience!

[0] I don't even know who did them in that edition, but they were in the style
of gustave dore

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scandox
I am an audio book fanatic, but I haven't been able to use Librivox very much.
Quality of reading is everything and it is both a natural talent (voice) and
an Art. An intelligent reading requires a great deal of preparation and a high
level of dramatic intelligence. I would pay every time for a voice like Sean
Barrett's.

Sadly the commercial market is totally dominated by Audible and the cut they
take from publishers is enormous. So the price of great audiobooks will remain
high. Also I can't listen to them on Linux (unless you count Android which I
don't really).

What I'd love is:

* A new platform that is publisher friendly (perhaps an initiative funded by a group of publishers * DRM free

Not likely though.

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lbenes
I like to listen to podcasts and audiobooks to fall asleep. The android app[1]
works well for me. Some of the Mark Twain[2] books were professional quality.

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=BookDesign&h...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=BookDesign&hl=en)

[2]
[https://librivox.org/author/9?primary_key=9&search_category=...](https://librivox.org/author/9?primary_key=9&search_category=author&search_page=1&search_form=get_results)

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metasean
I'd also suggest checking out [http://podiobooks.com/](http://podiobooks.com/)
. They have more recent offerings, frequently read by their authors.

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willstepp
Some really good stuff to be found here. I recently listened to What I Believe
by Leo Tolstoy, read by David Barnes ([https://librivox.org/what-i-believe-by-
leo-tolstoy](https://librivox.org/what-i-believe-by-leo-tolstoy)), and both
the reader and the recording was as good, if not better, than any audiobook I
get from Audible. But it does vary. They also have a very nice iOS app.

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danidiaz
There are a few Mark Twain audiobooks there that are quite good.

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lamby
Any recommendations for fellow HN readers..?

~~~
Jach
I enjoyed listening to Candide a month ago: [https://librivox.org/candide-by-
voltaire/](https://librivox.org/candide-by-voltaire/)

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swinghu
yep,great repository

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ross-harrison
Also in news: Syria is not a great place to vacation right now

