I have been working on remastering some audiobooks from there, once I got more books done, I will have a proper section for people to download them for free from my website (direct links from the listing, no bs).<p>Remastering as in removing background noise, EQing, compression and normalization of audio levels and reducing the librivox intro to the start of the audiobook only, rather than annoying people every chapter.
For a technical audience, I would look at some TTS (text to speech) programs especially by google and IBM.<p>It's definitely robotic and nothing like a nice narrator but audiobooks are amazing regardless. And your mind actually starts filling in the emotional blanks. It can also be really cool to use like internet archive's scanned book's OCR -> TTS and make an audiobook from a cool old book that would never be professionally narrated<p>And for anyone who listens to a lot of audio, I'd look into using an audio equalizer. Pulling down the high frequencies (especially for some woman narrators) makes it more comfortable after many hours of listening. On android the "Smart audiobook" app has this and it's really nice. Maybe some headphones/android phones can do this globally
I am very thankful for librivox. I have listened to "Heretics", "Orthodoxy", and "Against Eugenics and Other Evils" by G.K. Chesterton. I've also listened to some works of St. Patrick read by librivox contributors, quality has been very high (exceptional when you consider that it was all for free).
Past related threads:<p><i>LibriVox: Free Public Domain Audiobooks</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23558686" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23558686</a> - June 2020 (81 comments)<p><i>Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22104143" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22104143</a> - Jan 2020 (84 comments)<p><i>LibriVox: free public domain audiobooks</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11141452" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11141452</a> - Feb 2016 (37 comments)<p><i>LibriVox hits 100 Million downloads, looking for a PHP Dev </i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3808080" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3808080</a> - April 2012 (9 comments)
As a learner of French, I absolutely love Librivox. Science fiction (Jules Verne), fairy tales (Charles Perrault), poetry (Charles Baudelaire), novels (Victor Hugo) -- there is so much really good source material in French. However, as one would expect from a free/public domain resource, classics over 100 years old are well covered... But for anything newer, you'll probably need Audible*...<p>*edit: Or check out audiobooks from your local library!
I listened to Treasure Island[0] on librivox and was impressed with the quality of the voice actor (Adrian Praetzellis). Beware though, some books are fragmented and performed by N different voice actors/actresses which can be jarring.<p>[0] <a href="https://librivox.org/treasure-island-by-robert-louis-stevenson-2/" rel="nofollow">https://librivox.org/treasure-island-by-robert-louis-stevens...</a>
If anyone has a few free cycles & wants to help, the project is on Github & there are plenty of open tickets.<p><a href="https://github.com/LibriVox" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/LibriVox</a>
It's been a while since I've listened to something on librivox. When I did, it was hit or miss in terms of narrator quality (as you'd expect from a volunteer-led initiative). If you have access to something like Overdrive or Libby through your public library, I'd check there first. You'll probably be more satisfied with a professionally recorded audiobook.
This is a great resource for classical works, but to me, it emphasizes what a damn shame it is that copyright terms are so long. In my mind, a copyright term of, say, 25 years is reasonable, and more than long enough to compensate authors for their work. Imagine if we had free access to works written in the 80s and 90s, rather than the 1800s.
A german resource is: <a href="https://vorleser.net" rel="nofollow">https://vorleser.net</a>
Anyone who is interested in merging a set of mp3 files to a single m4b file or use a single mp3 file with chapters, check out <a href="https://github.com/sandreas/m4b-tool" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/sandreas/m4b-tool</a>
(Author here)
Who wants to hear Edward Kemper (the serial killer, a tall, imposing “co-Ed killer”, who was also well read) recite audiobooks? Anyone heard his Star Wars reading before? He’s absent from this library.<p>edmundkemperstories.com/blog/2019/03/09/list-of-17-books-narrated-by-edmund-kemper-for-volunteers-of-vacaville-the-blind-project-part-1-of-2/
Can anyone recommend a microphone / audio setup for recording audio books? I'd like to record some and I want to avoid the quality problems some Librivox recordings have.<p>Actually, more important: is there an app that makes recording audio books easier? Like, can I record in one shot, and mark places I want to cut out so I can just re-speak one passage, and later on it'll automatically be cut together like I want? I could probably jury-rig some keyboard-based app to do it...
I've been working on something similar to this specifically for crowd-sourcing readings of the Bible available here: <a href="https://thereadbible.com/" rel="nofollow">https://thereadbible.com/</a><p>It's super MVP and currently uses youtube for the recordings, but it works and is entirely hosted on GitHub Pages (including user-submitted data that runs through a github action).
I've downloaded these audiobooks for my grandad (in german). He really enjoyed listening to the stories. Thanks to all the volunteers for their hard work !
The the text to speech market is so suppressed. I've seen some amazing demos but nothing that comes out and open source or consumer markets outside of Amazon and other big players.
reminds me of an episode of planet money where they read a whole book that just entered public domain: <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/01/14/956800308/the-great-gatsby" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/2021/01/14/956800308/the-great-gatsby</a>
Not really related to this site but I have been dying for a version of the Hitchhiker’s Guide books different than the ones on Audible. All the books other than the first one are read by someone who gives Zaphod a New Yorker style accent which totally kills the character, and thus the books, for me.
This was a fun listen - Around the World in Seventy-Two Days by Nellie Bly
<a href="https://librivox.org/around-the-world-in-seventy-two-days-by-nellie-bly/" rel="nofollow">https://librivox.org/around-the-world-in-seventy-two-days-by...</a>