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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

#21

Post by dewey »

babs42 wrote: post #20
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/

Very cool, thanks for sharing! I'll follow the project and hope there's some way to get this running on Kobo or other eInk readers in the future.

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

#22

Post by archargelod »

Cool app! I've had some issues with getting it to work, though:

- ebook-convert is not a small dependency, it seems that it only comes bundled with calibre software. And calibre has huge number of python dependencies (>400 packages on OpenSuse) - don't know about you, but I'm not polluting my install with that for a small tool. So, I've grabbed appimage version of calibre, extracted it and added symlink to the bundled ebook-convert. It is still around ~500mb of wasted space, but atleast it's local to a single folder.

Could you replace it with another tool/library, or include only necessary stuff with binary?

- Then I've encountered another problem. I have no piper installed on my system, but readme says:

> You don't need to have piper installed. This program manages piper and the associated models.

It didn't download piper release and proceeded without errors. Then it did download some models. After that it errored out on trying to change directory to non-existent "~/.config/QuickPiperAudiobook/piper" So naturally, I looked in source code, found link to piper tarball and extracted it myself.

A-ha! Now it works. Until..

- Done. Saved audiobook as /home/archargelod/Audiobooks/text.wav

You could try to guess what was the problem, but I'm going tell you right away: it didn't create "Audiobooks" folder and again there were no errors.

Thankfully, that was the last issue and after I created ~/Audiobooks manually, my generated wav was there.

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

#23

Post by falcolas »

As a former audiobook narrator, may your cereal always be soggy and your socks too.

On a more serious note, this is a cool application of the technological advancement in AI voice models, and inevitable in today's society. It just really sucks to watch this race to the bottom actively put people out of work.

But hey, at least we can save a few bucks on an audiobook, right?

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

#24

Post by fsckboy »

falcolas wrote: post #23

As a former audiobook narrator, may your cereal always be soggy and your socks too. On a more serious note, this is a cool application of the technological advancement in AI voice models, and inevitable in today's society. It just really sucks to watch this race to the bottom actively put people out of work. But hey, at least we can save a few bucks on an audiobook, right?

>It just really sucks to watch this race to the bottom actively put people out of work

the entire progress of civilization has depended on putting people out of work by increasing productivity and efficiency. Subsistence hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers were put out of work by cheaper agriculture systems, and some of those unemployed realized they could support themselves by reading books to other people, a task they enjoyed much more.

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

#25

Post by OptionOfT »

Tangentially related: I like to leave my phone at home when I go exercise, and just listen to books via my watch (21st century problems...)

But to this date I cannot use Apple's Books app on the watch to listen to audiobooks I have on mp3/mp4a/... It only works with audiobooks you have purchased in their walled garden.

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

#26

Post by mistrial9 »

fsckboy wrote: post #24
falcolas wrote: post #23

As a former audiobook narrator, may your cereal always be soggy and your socks too. On a more serious note, this is a cool application of the technological advancement in AI voice models, and inevitable in today's society. It just really sucks to watch this race to the bottom actively put people out of work. But hey, at least we can save a few bucks on an audiobook, right?

> It just really sucks to watch this race to the bottom actively put people out of work the entire progress of civilization has depended on putting people out of work by increasing productivity and efficiency. Subsistence hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers were put out of work by cheaper agriculture systems, and some of those unemployed realized they could support themselves by reading books to other people, a…

this broad-brush take seems so persuasive.. for about one minute of thinking.. systems of humans are built for humans first.. which work of which humans are being replaced and why? Is anyone actually driving? If the modern answer is "money answers all questions" then, who makes money simply by moving money? Anyone who is not moving money right now is fair game because money is the only decider ?

this superficial thinking is full of holes from the first examination, and, actively harms others.. and is an excuse to ignore the statements of a audio book narrator here.

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

#27

Post by C-Loftus »

OptionOfT wrote: post #25

Tangentially related: I like to leave my phone at home when I go exercise, and just listen to books via my watch (21st century problems...) But to this date I cannot use Apple's Books app on the watch to listen to audiobooks I have on mp3/mp4a/... It only works with audiobooks you have purchased in their walled garden.

Yeah unfortunately I am not sure about the Apple Watch. On iOS I personally use BookPlayer [0] and find it easy to transfer mp3 files via USB. I think there are cloud sync options as well. Been very happy with that if you are looking for other mobile options.

[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bookplayer/id1138219998

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

#28

Post by falcolas »

fsckboy wrote: post #24
falcolas wrote: post #23

As a former audiobook narrator, may your cereal always be soggy and your socks too. On a more serious note, this is a cool application of the technological advancement in AI voice models, and inevitable in today's society. It just really sucks to watch this race to the bottom actively put people out of work. But hey, at least we can save a few bucks on an audiobook, right?

> It just really sucks to watch this race to the bottom actively put people out of work the entire progress of civilization has depended on putting people out of work by increasing productivity and efficiency. Subsistence hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers were put out of work by cheaper agriculture systems, and some of those unemployed realized they could support themselves by reading books to other people, a…

> Subsistence hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers were put out of work by cheaper agriculture systems, and some of those unemployed realized they could support themselves by reading books to other people,

The replacement of hunter-gatherers by farming is a change that took centuries to take hold. Nobody lost their ability to feed their family because their ability to hunt and gather was automated away. Ironically, the move away from hunter/gatherer subsistence took free time away (for things like storytelling) instead of adding to it, in exchange for greater reliability in their sustenance.

The loss of entire swaths of employment is a fairly new development. As is the lack of safety nets (US Centric for obvious reasons) for those who become injured or otherwise unable to sustain themselves.

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

#29

Post by C-Loftus »

archargelod wrote: post #22

Cool app! I've had some issues with getting it to work, though: - ebook-convert is not a small dependency, it seems that it only comes bundled with calibre software. And calibre has huge number of python dependencies (>400 packages on OpenSuse) - don't know about you, but I'm not polluting my install with that for a small tool. So, I've grabbed appimage version of calibre, extracted it and added symlink to the bundle…

Thank you for the feedback and I'm sorry you had those issues. I cannot replicate at the moment on Ubuntu 24.04 but will check back on this. I presume it is something simple going wrong with how I am getting the home directory in golang and checking if the path exists.

Your feedback on ebook-convert is very valid. I can take a look at breaking it up. (Granted I am not sure how much of a lift that would be)

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

#30

Post by C-Loftus »

falcolas wrote: post #23

As a former audiobook narrator, may your cereal always be soggy and your socks too. On a more serious note, this is a cool application of the technological advancement in AI voice models, and inevitable in today's society. It just really sucks to watch this race to the bottom actively put people out of work. But hey, at least we can save a few bucks on an audiobook, right?

For what it is worth, I still listen to and love human-read audiobooks! However, it is particularly useful to have an AI option for books that are too niche for there to be an incentive for an individual to narrate them. Lots of academic and personal texts fall into those categories.
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