AudioBooks

[Glowwy2000]

What is the chance that The Infected series will become audiobooks? I spend a lot of time on the road driving and would love to be able to listen to them.

[OBRIB01]

That's the dream, isn't it? I'm not on the road much, but I tend to listen to audiobooks while working and I'd love to see ALL the books be audio, not just Infected ones. I have no doubt that time investment and cost have to play a huge part in why we aren't listening to them RIGHT NOW, although if I recall correctly, Scott Sigler did his own narration for the first few books, which I imagine would cut down on production costs significantly. Bottom line, though, if they were available, I'd be buying them.

[qHnED7SnYgQs]

For years now (since the birth of our twins, when the availability of any time to sit down and do nothing but read evaporated), I've been "reading" all my books by listening to them via TTS on my android phone.

I'm using:

Moon+ Reader Pro (as ebook reader):
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... oonreaderp

IVONA Amy UK (as TTS engine):
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... .ivona.tts
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... ng.gbr.amy

I found this to be *much* preferable over actual audiobooks.

"Amy" has a very nice natural sounding voice that I find preferable over a lot of professional audio books.

And Moon+ Reader Pro allows to set the reading speed from 1 (10%) to 50 (500%). I find this to be absolutely essential. By slowly (1 step per day) increasing that speed, I was easily able to train myself to understand very well and be very comfortable at a reading speed of 50 (resulting in about 350 words/min) which is then only slightly slower than the speed that I myself read at. And because this is TTS and not a "speed up" normal audio book, you just get "Amy" speaking fast, but very clearly, instead of a squeaky mickey mouse voice or significant distortions.

And you just can't do that with "real" audiobooks. Trying to listen to a normal audiobook has me dying from boredom within minutes.

This way, I manage to squeeze in quite a few hours of "reading" time every day, concurrently to doing something else (housework and such, everything that doesn't involve the speech center of the brain).

[OBRIB01]

I've given text to speech a shot before and not been impressed with the results, but I do have to admit it's been some years since that experiment, so it's probably time to give it another shot. Thanks much for the suggestion.

[qHnED7SnYgQs]

Most important is obviously the choice of TTS engine.

While I haven't tried the build-in standard engine in newer versions of Android, at the time I started using TTS for ebooks, the standard engine was completely useless.

I went through 4 or 5 different TTS engines and for each a bunch of different voices before deciding on IVONA, and in particular, the Amy voice. Out of probably 40 or so different voices using different engines I tried, IVONA Amy was, by a significant margin, the one I found most pleasant to listen to.

Alternatively, I found

SVOX Classic
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... ox.classic

using the Victoria voice
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... ng_gbr_fem
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... _fem_trial (free 2 week trial)

to be relatively decent and had been using it for a while before switching to IVONA Amy.

[RyanM]

Audiobooks are very expensive to produce, so unless he's guaranteed to a at least break even or willing to take a loss, I don't see it happening.

[OBRIB01]

I took your advice and gave IVONA a shot. I have to admit it's a pretty big improvement over what I tried before. Sometimes she even sounds like a real person talking, which is pretty impressive. Other times it's a little rougher, and I do miss inflection, but nothing's perfect, right? I imagine the more I listen the more I'll get used to it and it won't be as noticeable. While I'd still prefer a narrated book, TTS will do in a pinch.
Thanks!

[qHnED7SnYgQs]

You are welcome.

My preference for TTS over actual Audiobooks is primarily because of the ability to increase reading speed. As I said before, a normal audiobooks drives me to suicide from boredom after a few minutes. Using TTS, by increasing the speed slowly over a few months, I'm now extremely comfortable with listening to it at 500% speed, so that the reading speed finally comes close to what I achieve if I read myself.

[PS Power]

[Ronald Dukarski]

Dale, a friend, who puts out a pod cast recently upgraded his microphone and bridged the sound gap, now sounding much more like himself. Perhaps you should experiment with different mics before dismissing the idea of self recording.

Personally, I don't think a one person reading of a book does it justice. In my head, which I agree is a strange place, I hear any character in a voice I've synthesized to meet my own idea of that character. Sort of like s play, or a movie. So audio books don't interest me. I just like to read.