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Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M

claudio.uk

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Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M

#231

Post by kamarg »

oldgradstudent wrote: post #216
jhbadger wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the mistake happened in the typesetting stage, printed books could spread errors much more efficiently, as in the infamous "wicked bible" of 1631, where a typesetting error made the ten commandments contain the amusing phrase "Thou shalt commit adultery". Surviving copies are quite the collectors' item as most were destroyed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_Bible

Usually, though, errors are corrected and every every printing has fewer errors than the previous one.

What percentage of books get a second print run on a printing press? And what's the process for that? Do they have to reset each word for the second run? I genuinely don't know how a physical process like typesetting can result in increased accuracy on each print.

Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M

#232

Post by karmasimida »

delegate wrote: post #151

The quality is great (amazing even), but I can't listen to AI generated voices for more than 1 minute. I don't know why, I just don't like it. I immediately skip the video on youtube if the voice is AI generated. Might be because our brains try to 'feel' the speaker, the emotion, the pauses, the invisible smile, etc. No doubt models will improve and will be harder to identify as AI generated, but for now, as with dif…

Yeah same.

Doesn't mean the quality is bad. In fact I think Kokoro's quality is amazing.

But it is not the right tool for narration, the kind of training data they use make the sound too flat, if that makes sense.

Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M

#233

Post by littlestymaar »

sigilis wrote: post #208
littlestymaar wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Napoleonic wars beg to differ.

While they didn't have trains, the Napoleanic wars did feature the first use of canned food to aid in logistical supply of armies. You could argue that the lack of trains (and can openers) probably meant that they jumped the gun on starting giant wars. We Americans fixed that in the Civil War, to great and deadly effect.

Appertization was invented in 1804 but Appert did not sell his technology to the French army before 1810 so it's fair to say that most of the Napoleonic wars were run before canned food was even a thing. Maybe it has seen mainstream use in the Grande Armée in the end of his reign, but it was definitely not a deciding factor in Napoleon's logistics for most of his campaigns.

Without trains, the logistics of canned food isn't much better than the logistics of any bread-based food you give to your soldiers. It doesn't solve the weight problem which is the key problem with preindustrial army logistical issue.

Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M

#234

Post by stevenwoo »

laserbeam wrote: post #21

On the one hand, this is very convenient. Probably cool for some non-fiction. On the other, some of my favorite audio books all stood out because the narrator was interpreting the text really well, for example by changing the pacing during chaotic moments. Or those audiobooks with multiple narrators and different voices for each character. Not to mention that sometimes the only cue you get for who's speaking during d…

A couple of my favorite audiobooks are Stranger in a Strange Land and Flowers for Algernon where the performer changes the intonation and enunciation of main character with the character’s journey and it was a revelation and made me appreciate the stories in a way I did not get reading the printed books the first time. Just the consistency of the performance is sometimes difficult to do in my imagination perhaps.

Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M

#235

Post by stevenwoo »

anothermathbozo wrote: post #172
j4coh wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RIP to future top-enders that would normally have started out on the bottom to middle end.

Virtually every book I want this for has been around for 70+ years and still no high or low quality audiobook has been produced. How long do I have to wait for those aspiring top-enders before an audiobook can be made available?

Piracy may have made some of these accessible by ripping the US library of congress recordings for the blind.

Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M

#236

Post by grwthckrmstr »

This is wonderful, and so happy to see the post where the author ran it locally on their Macbook.

I am curious, is there an equivalent light model for speech to text, that can run real-time on the MacBook? I'm just playing around with AI models and was looking into this (a fully locally running app that lets you talk to your computer).

Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M

#237

Post by loktarogar »

em-bee wrote: post #67
loktarogar wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, for accessibility purposes on things that aren't already narrated, this is kind of thing is huge.

that's the thing. it's not just for accessibility. anything not already narrated is a fair target for TTS. i don't have time to sit down and read books. all reading is done on the go, while getting around or doing daily routines at home. i have a small book that i am reading now, which should take a few hours to finish, but in the time i manage to get done reading it i will probably have listened to two or three audi…

Accessibility is generally framed around providing accomodations to people with disabilities, but at its core it's about more people being able to access things they otherwise couldn't. By this metric we agree

Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M

#238

Post by monophonica »

gampleman wrote: post #125
oldgradstudent wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big difference. Printing presses produce superior products. A mediocre audiobook is certainly better than no audiobook at all, but it is an inferior product to a well produced audiobook.

> Printing presses produce superior products. That seems like a highly dubitable statement. Many hand illuminated manuscripts are masterpieces of art. The advantage of the printing press was chiefly economical making the cost of a copy dramatically less, not an increase in quality (especially so by the aesthetical standards of the time).

I would say it is the perfect metaphor.

I love audiobooks but at this point, most of what I want to listen to is stuff that would not sell enough to bother having someone read.

There are also many voice actors who I simply don't like the way they read.

A future that I can pick a voice that I like for any PDF is a huge upgrade.

I think a problem people have is if on the young side, maybe didn't expect the future to change like this.

No one I knew went on the internet when I graduated high school. Change like this is all par for the course. The only advice I got in high school from a guidance counselor was that I had a nice voice for radio. Books on tape was not exactly a career option at the time. The culture will survive the death of a career path that didn't even really exist when I was a senior in high school.

Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M

#239

Post by Oneunscripted »

laserbeam wrote: post #21

On the one hand, this is very convenient. Probably cool for some non-fiction. On the other, some of my favorite audio books all stood out because the narrator was interpreting the text really well, for example by changing the pacing during chaotic moments. Or those audiobooks with multiple narrators and different voices for each character. Not to mention that sometimes the only cue you get for who's speaking during d…

I guess using different narrators is essential for both fiction and non-fiction books if you want the full experience. Personally, I love it when audiobooks have narrators who stick to the characters’ personalities—it just feels right. Some of the audiobooks I’ve listened to have narrators who switch up their voices for each character, and others even use a different narrator for every character, which gets really good. Narration Box has been doing a really great job with this lately

Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M

#240

Post by [deleted] »

azeirah wrote: post #228
aredox wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bingo. AI is going to destroy any pathway for training and accruing experience. An embalming tech for our dying civilization.

We'll be ok lol, while it is a significant transition, it IS just a transition in the media landscape. AI is big and significant, but we'll be ok. There is also no such "one" thing as "our civilisation". We're deeply interconnected extremely vast and complex interconnected networks of ever-changing relationships. AI does indeed represent the commoditisation of things we used to really value like "craftsmanship in boo…

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