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Apple Books digital narration

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Re: Apple Books digital narration

#111

Post by PascLeRasc »

dbspin wrote: post #52
ClassyJacket wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand that sentence fine, I don't see anything wrong with it.

Writer here, it's a terrible sentence. "I know Bill carried within him deep currents of spiritual yearning that he found easiest to express through the beauty he saw in all places wild." "Deep currents of spiritual yearning" is both cliched and unspecific / unclear. "That" is superfluous. It's unclear how Bill is expressing the beauty he sees, and the sentence structure implies he's somehow responsible for the natura…

Thanks for this. Can you do Go Dog Go next?

Re: Apple Books digital narration

#112

Post by ivansavz »

Or you could use the command `say` on the command line on any current mac to get good-enough text-to-speech.

See full script here: https://gist.github.com/ivanistheone/de3ccb244224d101bb93320... and this doc explains how you can setup a keyboard shortcut to turn any text selection into an audio book https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem...

Here is a sample if you want to hear what it sounds like: https://minireference.com/static/tmp/constructive_feedback.m...

which is the audio from this blog post https://productivityhub.org/2019/04/19/how-to-deliver-constr...

IMHO, the computer generated voice like Alex (the default voice on mac OS) sounds better because it doesn't try to do inflections or add human character when it is reading. The real-world narrators (voice actors) seem to add too much "character" into their reading, which me distracts from the story/content. The only exception is when the narration is done by the author, in which case I'd consider the narration as part of the work.

Re: Apple Books digital narration

#113

Post by rickdeckard »

ghaff wrote: post #105

I'm skeptical given the state of the art. There is way more good audio content out there than I have the time/interest to listen too and I can't believe I'm that atypical. And a book is a relatively big listening time commitment. I'll happily pay a few dollars more for a good human narrator.

Indeed. But this option will only be available if a critical mass is also willing to pay a few dollars more for human narration.

In times of flat-fee Audiobook platforms the pressure to bring down audiobook production costs will only increase, funding a full-fledged Audiobook production for each book will only become harder to justify.

Moreover, looking at what Apple describes here, they seemingly want to establish digital narration (quality) as a metric for competition between Audiobook marketplaces, not publishers. So if this works out, the major platforms will compete on digital narration and publishers will have less incentive to actually produce an Audiobook with human narrators...

Re: Apple Books digital narration

#114

Post by dbspin »

drcongo wrote: post #96
dbspin wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writer here, it's a terrible sentence. "I know Bill carried within him deep currents of spiritual yearning that he found easiest to express through the beauty he saw in all places wild." "Deep currents of spiritual yearning" is both cliched and unspecific / unclear. "That" is superfluous. It's unclear how Bill is expressing the beauty he sees, and the sentence structure implies he's somehow responsible for the natura…

Mind if I ask where you're from? While not really adding anything or altering the meaning (so technically it could be called superfluous), removing it here to my British brain makes the sentence sound lazy and I was definitely taught in school that it should be there. I do also agree that the sentence is terribly written in general though.

Sure. I'm Irish. I've been a professional writer for about thirteen years. Formality of sentence construction is context dependent. In prose there's usually little purpose and no solid grammatical rule for retaining superfluous words. Depending on the pace and rhythm of the piece - which in turn dictate interesting things like the readers perception of time. For example you can make time flow faster by using brief, truncated, staccato sentences. Or stretch it out with more formal, grandiloquent sentences. You can also convey the informality of a relationship, or even the physical structure of space or an object in much the same way. These are elements of voice - the character or tone of the sentence or paragraph, which is contextualised by the overall piece. I'm not articulating theory here - more trying to convey how I and other writers intuitively learn to play with prose.

Re: Apple Books digital narration

#115

Post by scinerio »

ivansavz wrote: post #112

Or you could use the command `say` on the command line on any current mac to get good-enough text-to-speech. See full script here: https://gist.github.com/ivanistheone/de3ccb244224d101bb93320... and this doc explains how you can setup a keyboard shortcut to turn any text selection into an audio book https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem... Here is a sample if you want to hear what it sounds lik…

I personally find that lack of character and inflections has completely turned me off of audiobooks in favor of podcasting. The typical monotone audio narration causes me to zone out into other thoughts and I find myself rewinding or just turning it off.

Re: Apple Books digital narration

#116

Post by ezfe »

carlob wrote: post #14
theshrike79 wrote: post #2

The OG Kindle with keyboard used to have text to speech too. It was killed by publishers who wanted to charge separately for audiobooks. If Apple has somehow managed to get the licensing for this, I might consider buying from Apple Books in the future.

You are never buying from Apple Books, it's the usual DRMed crap, more like a rental. Amazon had gotten a lot of flak, buy Apple is not any better in this respect...

If DRM works offline, it's not a rental. It's not desirable, but don't call it a rental, that just moves focus away from what the real problems are here.

Re: Apple Books digital narration

#117

Post by [deleted] »

botro wrote: post #79
dbspin wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writer here, it's a terrible sentence. "I know Bill carried within him deep currents of spiritual yearning that he found easiest to express through the beauty he saw in all places wild." "Deep currents of spiritual yearning" is both cliched and unspecific / unclear. "That" is superfluous. It's unclear how Bill is expressing the beauty he sees, and the sentence structure implies he's somehow responsible for the natura…

Could you do Hemingway, McCarthy and Joyce next? It's untenable they wrote 'unspecific / unclear / superfluous / awkward / anachronistic' language such that our robots cannot render to speech.

[deleted]

Re: Apple Books digital narration

#118

Post by hiidrew »

ivansavz wrote: post #112

Or you could use the command `say` on the command line on any current mac to get good-enough text-to-speech. See full script here: https://gist.github.com/ivanistheone/de3ccb244224d101bb93320... and this doc explains how you can setup a keyboard shortcut to turn any text selection into an audio book https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem... Here is a sample if you want to hear what it sounds lik…

TIL. This is an interesting capability of the command line. Have any more fun ones? (at least fun to a CL noob)

Re: Apple Books digital narration

#119

Post by ghaff »

rickdeckard wrote: post #113
ghaff wrote: post #105

I'm skeptical given the state of the art. There is way more good audio content out there than I have the time/interest to listen too and I can't believe I'm that atypical. And a book is a relatively big listening time commitment. I'll happily pay a few dollars more for a good human narrator.

Indeed. But this option will only be available if a critical mass is also willing to pay a few dollars more for human narration. In times of flat-fee Audiobook platforms the pressure to bring down audiobook production costs will only increase, funding a full-fledged Audiobook production for each book will only become harder to justify. Moreover, looking at what Apple describes here, they seemingly want to establish d…

That's fair and it's true of a lot of AI/ML versions of content. I still paid for human transcriptions of podcasts when I was doing them because the time needed to clean up the ML versions just wasn't a good return. But the day will certainly come when that calculus changes.

I know nothing about the economics of audiobooks. And will note that there are free public domain audio books already https://librivox.org/. But TTS will improve and, at a minimum, improved TTS will be a benefit for people who can't read for various reasons.

Re: Apple Books digital narration

#120

Post by ivansavz »

scinerio wrote: post #115
ivansavz wrote: post #112

Or you could use the command `say` on the command line on any current mac to get good-enough text-to-speech. See full script here: https://gist.github.com/ivanistheone/de3ccb244224d101bb93320... and this doc explains how you can setup a keyboard shortcut to turn any text selection into an audio book https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem... Here is a sample if you want to hear what it sounds lik…

I personally find that lack of character and inflections has completely turned me off of audiobooks in favor of podcasting. The typical monotone audio narration causes me to zone out into other thoughts and I find myself rewinding or just turning it off.

I've experienced that too, but only for "bad writing."

I'm normally able to follow narrative (both fiction and non-fiction) that has something to teach, and also enjoying listening to classic literature no problem...

But sometimes I'm reading a long article from the internet and I experience what you describe (losing track of what author is saying, having to rewind to get the point). After a while, I realize it's not the computer's fault, but the article is just very low content (e.g. some authors just pile on words, emotions, opinions without a coherent narrative or point). Recently I noticed I'm able to detect GPT-generated text this way too... words without content or message.

Perhaps the monotone TTS can be a test for the "meaning" contents of a text.

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