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Free public domain audiobooks

librivox.org

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Re: Free public domain audiobooks

#11

Post by sammyq »

TheFreim wrote: post #6

I am very thankful for librivox. I have listened to "Heretics", "Orthodoxy", and "Against Eugenics and Other Evils" by G.K. Chesterton. I've also listened to some works of St. Patrick read by librivox contributors, quality has been very high (exceptional when you consider that it was all for free).

I’m reading heretics currently! Curious why you listened to Against Eugenics and Other Evils as opposed to Everlasting Man? Seems like Heretics and Orthodoxy and Everlasting Man are the three works that people read most often by Chesterton.

Re: Free public domain audiobooks

#13

Post by TheFreim »

sammyq wrote: post #11
TheFreim wrote: post #6

I am very thankful for librivox. I have listened to "Heretics", "Orthodoxy", and "Against Eugenics and Other Evils" by G.K. Chesterton. I've also listened to some works of St. Patrick read by librivox contributors, quality has been very high (exceptional when you consider that it was all for free).

I’m reading heretics currently! Curious why you listened to Against Eugenics and Other Evils as opposed to Everlasting Man? Seems like Heretics and Orthodoxy and Everlasting Man are the three works that people read most often by Chesterton.

It's on the list, but when I was deciding which to listen to next I was interacting with some eugenicists online and felt like it would be interesting to hear Chesterton's point of view.

Re: Free public domain audiobooks

#14

Post by gxqoz »

JZL003 wrote: post #5

For a technical audience, I would look at some TTS (text to speech) programs especially by google and IBM. It's definitely robotic and nothing like a nice narrator but audiobooks are amazing regardless. And your mind actually starts filling in the emotional blanks. It can also be really cool to use like internet archive's scanned book's OCR -> TTS and make an audiobook from a cool old book that would never be profess…

I've listened to enough TTS for non-fiction that it doesn't really bother me. In fact, I sometimes prefer the TTS over a low-quality narrator. TTS for fiction less so.

Re: Free public domain audiobooks

#15

Post by worldofmatthew »

I have been working on remastering some audiobooks from there, once I got more books done, I will have a proper section for people to download them for free from my website (direct links from the listing, no bs).

Remastering as in removing background noise, EQing, compression and normalization of audio levels and reducing the librivox intro to the start of the audiobook only, rather than annoying people every chapter.

Re: Free public domain audiobooks

#16

Post by dang »

Past related threads:

LibriVox: Free Public Domain Audiobooks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23558686 - June 2020 (81 comments)

Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22104143 - Jan 2020 (84 comments)

LibriVox: free public domain audiobooks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11141452 - Feb 2016 (37 comments)

LibriVox hits 100 Million downloads, looking for a PHP Dev - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3808080 - April 2012 (9 comments)

Re: Free public domain audiobooks

#17

Post by JZL003 »

gxqoz wrote: post #14
JZL003 wrote: post #5

For a technical audience, I would look at some TTS (text to speech) programs especially by google and IBM. It's definitely robotic and nothing like a nice narrator but audiobooks are amazing regardless. And your mind actually starts filling in the emotional blanks. It can also be really cool to use like internet archive's scanned book's OCR -> TTS and make an audiobook from a cool old book that would never be profess…

I've listened to enough TTS for non-fiction that it doesn't really bother me. In fact, I sometimes prefer the TTS over a low-quality narrator. TTS for fiction less so.

my problem with non-fiction TTS (or at least the non-fiction I read) is it often involves diagrams or figures and that really doesn't work with TTS, sadly. But histories are nice

Re: Free public domain audiobooks

#19

Post by turing_complete »

TheFreim wrote: post #6

I am very thankful for librivox. I have listened to "Heretics", "Orthodoxy", and "Against Eugenics and Other Evils" by G.K. Chesterton. I've also listened to some works of St. Patrick read by librivox contributors, quality has been very high (exceptional when you consider that it was all for free).

Sounds great. I am reading through C.S. Lewis currently. Chesterton might be next.
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