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Show HN: Offline audiobook from any format with one CLI command

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Re: Show HN: Offline audiobook from any format with one CLI command

#11

Post by dewey »

noch wrote: post #10
dewey wrote: post #5

That's interesting, thanks for sharing. Does anyone know of a good solution for seamlessly switching between audiobooks and ebooks for books that are not bought from Amazon on Kindle? In this case you already have the input file, and the audio output file but I guess there would be an app that takes these two files to provide a good reading experience. As they are based on the same source it should be possible to kee…

> Does anyone know of a good solution for seamlessly switching between audiobooks and ebooks for books that are not bought from Amazon on Kindle? Use Calibre's e-book viewer[^0] which uses Piper for text-to-speech. [^0]: https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/viewer.html#read-aloud

Thanks, but clarification: I meant on iOS / mobile devices as I'm not reading on my computer. On second thought, it would be an amazing feature for https://prologue.audio, which is a beautiful app and works very well for audiobooks already.

Re: Show HN: Offline audiobook from any format with one CLI command

#12

Post by Bilal_io »

imurray wrote: post #8
alexkubica wrote: post #2

A very cool project, you should build a website interface you could easily charge for it or take donations/advertise on it if you want to keep it free What would it take to add a specific language to piper? And do you know a good speech to text model?

> And do you know a good speech to text model? OpenAI's whisper, code+model are available, and multiple projects have built on it. You could try this wrapper: https://github.com/m-bain/whisperX -- or for short utterances on a smart-phone https://github.com/futo-org/whisper-acft

Deepgram is another alternative. I use it at work, fastest service and also relatively cheap. But Whisper is better for selfhosting

Re: Show HN: Offline audiobook from any format with one CLI command

#17

Post by C-Loftus »

tekkk wrote: post #9

Very interesting. I have listened to an AI audiobook once and although the inflection was somewhat jarring at first you got kinda used to it. I suppose it's good enough for your own use. And audiobook prices being what they are rather affordable one as well.

Yeah that is totally fair. In my experience, I feel that after a while your brain starts to tune out some of the inflection differences. Piper models are honestly pretty solid as well. I think in general, AI audiobook solutions like mine are better for non-fiction compared to fiction. Or at least that is what I read the most of

Re: Show HN: Offline audiobook from any format with one CLI command

#18

Post by SamBorick »

dewey wrote: post #11
noch wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does anyone know of a good solution for seamlessly switching between audiobooks and ebooks for books that are not bought from Amazon on Kindle? Use Calibre's e-book viewer[^0] which uses Piper for text-to-speech. [^0]: https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/viewer.html#read-aloud

Thanks, but clarification: I meant on iOS / mobile devices as I'm not reading on my computer. On second thought, it would be an amazing feature for https://prologue.audio , which is a beautiful app and works very well for audiobooks already.

ReadEra Pro is an ereader app with a decent text-to-speech, I often flip between reading and listening.

Re: Show HN: Offline audiobook from any format with one CLI command

#19

Post by C-Loftus »

alexkubica wrote: post #2

A very cool project, you should build a website interface you could easily charge for it or take donations/advertise on it if you want to keep it free What would it take to add a specific language to piper? And do you know a good speech to text model?

Thank you! Wouldn't a website interface then make it competing with and thus inferior to solutions like those from 11elevenlabs? I am not opposed to creating a SaaS offering, but I feel I do not have the economies of scale nor proprietary models a large company has. Let me know if I am wrong! Maybe I will one day do something as a separate project on the browser with WebGPU.

With regards to adding languages, first check if support already exists [0]. Then there are a few tutorials that might be relevant [1] [2] [3]. Once you have the onnx model you can just put it in the QuickPiperAudiobook model directory and specify it via the cli args.

[0] https://rhasspy.github.io/piper-samples/ [1] https://github.com/rhasspy/piper/issues/51 [2] https://github.com/rhasspy/piper/blob/master/TRAINING.md [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_we_jma220

Re: Show HN: Offline audiobook from any format with one CLI command

#20

Post by babs42 »

dewey wrote: post #5

That's interesting, thanks for sharing. Does anyone know of a good solution for seamlessly switching between audiobooks and ebooks for books that are not bought from Amazon on Kindle? In this case you already have the input file, and the audio output file but I guess there would be an app that takes these two files to provide a good reading experience. As they are based on the same source it should be possible to kee…

Try out Storyteller, they're working on this exact problem: https://smoores.gitlab.io/storyteller/
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