So it will immediately be trashed by GenAI bullshit and killedbygoogle within three years, right?
Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio
121–130 of 251 posts
Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio
#122Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sure do wish podcasters would learn about compression. I am constantly getting my ears blown out in the car from a podcast with multiple speakers who are at different volumes.
podcaster here. what does compression have to do with it? youre just talking about different levels from diff mics
Probably a lot of the problem GP is describing comes from people having inconsistent distance to their microphone, moving around a lot. Then using an audio compressor effect plugin is an appropriate answer.
I've often thought about adding a compressor pedal to my TV sound system. It would be excellent for when you're watching action movies with hard to hear dialogue mixed with loud noises, and the kids are asleep, so you spend the evening turning volume up and down eight times per minute.
Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio
#124Imagine reading a math or programming textbook where each statement was true with probability 0.95.
errata. Also real humans often make mistakes in live interviews. The biggest difference is that eventually these fake humans will have lower error rates than real ones.
> eventually these fake humans will have lower error rates than real ones
Source?
Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio
#125Great idea. I wonder how long until we'd see a lot of "autogenerated" podcasts with syndicated advertising inside spamming the podcast space. Like with robovoiced videos on YT reading some scraped content.
Would you listen to an auto-generated podcast? Seems like removing the humans from the equation kind of defeats the purpose.
I listen to a number of podcasts which are reading books, stories, literature, etc. Having a professional actor read a text has appeal (e.g., Selected Shorts), but many are less-than-professional. A sufficiently-competent automated text-to-speech would fit at least some roles.
There are a few podcasts for which I'd have greater interest if the narration were by someone other than the current host....
There are also services such as the National Library for the Blind (UK) and BARD (US) which provide books, including a large number of audiobooks, for the blind. Automated text-to-speech would make a vastly larger library available, particularly of very recent publications, niche publications, and long-since-out-of-print books. Such services do take requests, but tend to focus on works published within the past five years.
Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio
#126One useful use case would be helping making academic papers more accessible. It would be useful also for people to listen to arxiv papers that seems interesting. It would be useful tool in academic world. Also useful for students who would have more accessible form of learning.
I have a project idea already to use arxiv RSS API to fetch interesting papers based on keywords (or some LLM summary) and then pass it to something like illuminate and then you have a listening queue to follow latest in the field. Though there will be some problems with formatting but then you could just open the pdf to see the plots and equations.
Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you listen to an auto-generated podcast? Seems like removing the humans from the equation kind of defeats the purpose.
I listen to a number of podcasts which are reading books, stories, literature, etc. Having a professional actor read a text has appeal (e.g., Selected Shorts ), but many are less-than-professional. A sufficiently-competent automated text-to-speech would fit at least some roles. There are a few podcasts for which I'd have greater interest if the narration were by someone other than the current host.... There are also…
What are your favourites? A podcast curating great short stories sounds interesting, done well
Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sure do wish podcasters would learn about compression. I am constantly getting my ears blown out in the car from a podcast with multiple speakers who are at different volumes.
podcaster here. what does compression have to do with it? youre just talking about different levels from diff mics
Setting the levels equally to start would help, but doesn't control when someone suddenly gets loud. With compression, you can increase quiet sounds, decrease loud sounds, or both.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression
A type of compressor used to limit the maximum signal is a limiter. "Limiters are common as a safety device in live sound and broadcast applications to prevent sudden volume peaks from occurring."
Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio
#129So podcasts are now automated, anything with a speaker or a screen is now assumed to be not human. Is this supposed to be a good thing that we want to accelerate (e/acc) towards?
like Max Headroom
Re: Google Illuminate: Books and papers turned into audio
#130Great idea. I wonder how long until we'd see a lot of "autogenerated" podcasts with syndicated advertising inside spamming the podcast space. Like with robovoiced videos on YT reading some scraped content.
It isn't spam. It is the present and the future. Advertising however is the spam.