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The Work of the Audiobook

lareviewofbooks.org

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Re: The Work of the Audiobook

#41

Post by generated »

dalbasal wrote: post #19

Audiobooks' recent history surprises me. I expected that if they continued to grow, audiobooks' and written books would undergo speciation. Books are a medium. Audiobooks are a different medium. Film may have dabbled in being recorded theatre... but it didn't remain there for long. No one watches recorded plays. Audiobooks have, mostly, stayed just audio versions of the book. It's just surprising that audiobook liste…

I've really enjoyed "graphic audio" adaptation of books with better sound effects, voices, and adaptations to the medium. Too bad it's not a wider selection.

https://www.graphicaudio.net/

Re: The Work of the Audiobook

#42

Post by zeroonetwothree »

monkeywork wrote: post #29
jmondi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this just depends on what style of learner you are. Me, I am definitely an audio learner. In school, I just needed to listen to the teacher say something once, and as long as I was paying attention during that, it would stick with me. Same with podcasts and audiobooks, I just remember them so well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhgwIhB58PA&pp=ygUceW91IGFyZ...

Sure there is no evidence that the popular depiction of “learning styles” has any effect on learning. But it’s pretty obvious that everyone is different and will learn better from certain sources than others. It’s just not able to be reduced to a simple concept like a style.

Re: The Work of the Audiobook

#43

Post by zeroonetwothree »

damontal wrote: post #28
ljf wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know - I struggle to remember what I've read half the time. I listen to audio books while walking, and even now I can recall learning about King John (and there reason there has not been a king names John since him in the UK) while walking along the beach. As I do the walk again, similar parts of that book and others return to me. But might just be me!

Sometimes I pass a place I've passed before while listening to an audiobook and have an immediate recall of what I was listening to at the time. It's like the place is associated with what I heard at the time.

In fact this is a common technique used for memorisation

Re: The Work of the Audiobook

#44

Post by zeroonetwothree »

Handprint4469 wrote: post #12
saargrin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except when its an audiobook chances are you're gonna remember much less of it at least thats my experience

What does it matter? Remembering is not necessary for enjoyment.

Indeed, as proven by the massive popularity of alcohol

Re: The Work of the Audiobook

#45

Post by zeroonetwothree »

brianaker wrote: post #3
aabhay wrote: post #2

The interesting and fascinating thing about audiobooks is that we will likely within the next 1-2 years have essentially complete generative AI produced versions of everything imaginable, meaning that the definition of book and audiobook will become one and the same.

With AI? Every character in the book can be voiced in a unique manner, with the narrator matching only the character as needed. Additionally? Those voices can be tuned for the listener; an AI that has been trained for your preferences well beyond the simple matching that AirPods do today with an audiograph. If you listen to Audiobooks, try listening to one that has been performed by a cast.

I dislike when it’s a full cast, I actually prefer a single person to voice it. Having different voices makes it feel like I’m listening to a movie rather than reading a book.

Re: The Work of the Audiobook

#46

Post by 1bent »

I think of audiobooks as a very different form from books; I read lots of books, but listen to almost no audiobooks, though I've bought a few, and have listened to my favourite, Spider Robinson reading a collection of Heinlein short stories, a few times.

For me, books allow me to listen (with my mind's inner voice) to the author's voice directly; a human's dramatic performance gets between my imagination and the author.

When I want to enjoy hands- and eyes-free reading, I turn on TTS in my ebook-reading app; the mechanical, robotic voice doesn't get between me and the author. It's more like reading with my eyes.

Back before Android, I'd use flite (Festival Lite, a simple, single-file, pure-C spinoff of the Festival TTS research project) to convert a few books from txt to wav, then to ogg, and load them on an iRiver before a long drive.

I do like Librivox as a recommendation service; there's a lot of books in Project Gutenberg, but the ones that get to Librivox had one or more volunteers who thought that book worth the time and effort to read aloud.

Re: The Work of the Audiobook

#47

Post by aaronvonbaron »

3littlefish wrote: post #15

Car journeys with the kids (and dog walks) are saved by good quality audio books (Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter and David Tenant reading the How to Train Your Dragon books are standout favourites). Its one of those rare areas where it's still crucial to have a trained and thinking human behind it - vocal ticks and pronunciation quirks are part of the charm. I think an AI reading would be sterile and produce an unp…

The first audiobook I played for my kids was How to Train Your Dragon. David Tennant did an amazing job. Now my kids love audiobooks. Although, I still need to force them to read paper books. We also loved the Zamonia series by Walter Moers.

Re: The Work of the Audiobook

#48

Post by adhesive_wombat »

3littlefish wrote: post #15

Car journeys with the kids (and dog walks) are saved by good quality audio books (Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter and David Tenant reading the How to Train Your Dragon books are standout favourites). Its one of those rare areas where it's still crucial to have a trained and thinking human behind it - vocal ticks and pronunciation quirks are part of the charm. I think an AI reading would be sterile and produce an unp…

Just William (read by Martin Jarvis) and Jeeves and Wooster audiobooks (various narrators, but obviously they must be British!) are also very good way to while away a journey.

Though, if a child these days got up to half as much as William, the parents would be in jail for neglect and the child would be in care and up to his eyeballs in Ritalin. And that's before we get onto the Famous Five constantly trying to get themselves murdered by smugglers.

Re: The Work of the Audiobook

#49

Post by adhesive_wombat »

macNchz wrote: post #31
3littlefish wrote: post #15

Car journeys with the kids (and dog walks) are saved by good quality audio books (Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter and David Tenant reading the How to Train Your Dragon books are standout favourites). Its one of those rare areas where it's still crucial to have a trained and thinking human behind it - vocal ticks and pronunciation quirks are part of the charm. I think an AI reading would be sterile and produce an unp…

Voice synthesis AI has gotten pretty impressive: https://www.audiostory.ai/2065785/12139903-a-fragment-from-t... I listen to a lot of audiobooks and have definitely sampled some with narrators I found harder to listen to than that. That said, there’s a sort of droning evenness to the voice that makes me unsure I’d want to listen to an entire book’s worth, and the voice reading Gatsby is way better than the voice read…

> which I definitely couldn’t listen through.

Some (presumably) professional human audiobook narrators have that effect on me!

Re: The Work of the Audiobook

#50

Post by parkersweb »

I love audiobooks; I've listened to a massive number of them, I've read, recorded and edited for Librevox, I briefly looked at moving into audiobook production while I was a dubbing mixer on TV programs - and I'd still love to do it if I could.

But audiobooks suffer from some of the same malaise as the publishing industry in general - in that it's both blessed and cursed by Amazon.

Audible has a stranglehold on the audiobook market - but as Brandon Sanderson recently said "The deal Audible demands of ... [authors] ... is unconscionable". The fact that they only pay 40% of the sale price to the author for an _exclusive_ deal (25% if not exclusive) is frankly criminal.

It's bad for authors, but the knock-on effects on the industry where one player has a 90% market-share and a exploitative relationship with the creators is considerable.

About 12 years ago I spoke to one of the leading audiobook production studios about contract work editing audiobooks. The hourly rate they paid was terrible - barely a working wage. Worse still, the rate was based on per finished hour rather than per hour worked, so the liability for a poor quality reading / recording was entirely put on a contractor who had no control over it. Other engineers who were working in the field basically did the job for beer money between other gigs.

So - I can't imagine that AI won't replace a great deal of audiobook production - but that's because even now, with best-selling authors the economics barely work thanks to one behemoth of a player. With lower volume books it'll be a labour of love or an AI reading that is the only viable means of production.

[1] https://www.brandonsanderson.com/state-of-the-sanderson-2022...

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