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Abogen – Generate audiobooks from EPUBs, PDFs and text

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Re: Abogen – Generate audiobooks from EPUBs, PDFs and text

#51

Post by fudged71 »

8s2ngy wrote: post #4

I've been using Kokoro TTS with the CLI app, audiblez, mentioned in the "Similar Projects" section of the README. The model is fast and delivers impressive quality for its small size. Some issues I have faced, however, are: a) It doesn't distinguish periods at the end of sentences from the dots in abbreviations such as "Mr." or "Mrs." The result is an awkward pause between "Mr." and the name. b) It doesn't handle ell…

Look into SSML phoneme tags. Some TTS supports it. That was you can use a powerful LLM to fix these issues ahead of TTS

Re: Abogen – Generate audiobooks from EPUBs, PDFs and text

#52

Post by OfflineSergio »

baxtr wrote: post #23
dsign wrote: post #18

Nice! As an aside, while this tool can be used to create an audiobook from a book you have in text format, for your private consumption, having an author employ something like this to create files for distribution is extremely risky, even if they acknowledge its use and intend those files to only be available on their website. Indie authors struggle a lot to promote their works, and the new normal is that potential r…

I am big time user of Amazon’s WhisperSync feature. With that feature I can simultaneously read the book and listen to it. This is especially helpful when you’re on the go but still want to have a visual now and then or highlight text for later. The problem is that many books don’t offer that feature. There is a built-in read function now in the kindle app, but it’s crap. So, if you ask me, I’d prefer a good human-wr…

I'm obsessed with "simultaneously read the book and listen to it". Thats why I built WithAudio. You can checkout the demo here: https://desktop.with.audio/reader-demo

I'd love to hear any feedback you have. "prefer a good human-written book with an additional AI voice on top to enable that feature for me" is exactly what I prefer when it comes to reading.

Re: Abogen – Generate audiobooks from EPUBs, PDFs and text

#53

Post by xtracto »

I assume it doesn't work well for books that have non-text structured elements (code, diagrams, etc)or images (which is expected).

I wonder, is there some open source NN that can consume PDF pages and produce a "pure prose" version of it. Say, a page with mixed text and an image of a car engine would be output to the text and then a detailed description of the image, or what it is depicting.

Re: Abogen – Generate audiobooks from EPUBs, PDFs and text

#54

Post by parineum »

anotherpaul wrote: post #7

Does it turn it into spoken word or an audiobook? Because good audiobooks often have voice actors that read the characters with different emphasis and dialects. I imagine tools like chatgpt could do this for a few sentences but what about an 8-20 hour audiobook? I think there are still basic hurdles to take before we can go epub to audiobook in a quality that can compete with current state of the art. Or am I missing…

> Because good audiobooks often have voice actors that read the characters with different emphasis and dialects.

I actually hate this. I like quotes to be read with the tone and inflection implied by the context but I don't like the different voices.

Re: Abogen – Generate audiobooks from EPUBs, PDFs and text

#55

Post by baxtr »

OfflineSergio wrote: post #52
baxtr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am big time user of Amazon’s WhisperSync feature. With that feature I can simultaneously read the book and listen to it. This is especially helpful when you’re on the go but still want to have a visual now and then or highlight text for later. The problem is that many books don’t offer that feature. There is a built-in read function now in the kindle app, but it’s crap. So, if you ask me, I’d prefer a good human-wr…

I'm obsessed with "simultaneously read the book and listen to it". Thats why I built WithAudio. You can checkout the demo here: https://desktop.with.audio/reader-demo I'd love to hear any feedback you have. "prefer a good human-written book with an additional AI voice on top to enable that feature for me" is exactly what I prefer when it comes to reading.

Thanks! Will definitely check it out

Re: Abogen – Generate audiobooks from EPUBs, PDFs and text

#57

Post by yepyip »

numb7rs wrote: post #56

You will want to reconsider the name if you plan to have a presence in Australia or New Zealand. "Abo" is an ethnic slur similar in offensiveness to the N-word.

Everyone has a gimmick these days. If abos are that sensitive, let them not have access to solutions—no need to worry about them.

Re: Abogen – Generate audiobooks from EPUBs, PDFs and text

#58

Post by someperson »

yepyip wrote: post #57
numb7rs wrote: post #56

You will want to reconsider the name if you plan to have a presence in Australia or New Zealand. "Abo" is an ethnic slur similar in offensiveness to the N-word.

Everyone has a gimmick these days. If abos are that sensitive, let them not have access to solutions—no need to worry about them.

The project presumably is a portmanteau of "audio book generator".

I agree that the project need not be renamed to remove the single syllable that may be an obscure slur, especially since every syllable may be an obscure slur in some language and you can't expect somebody to learn them all just to avoid them.

But there was no need to use that syllable as a slur.

Re: Abogen – Generate audiobooks from EPUBs, PDFs and text

#59

Post by cyberax »

baxtr wrote: post #23
dsign wrote: post #18

Nice! As an aside, while this tool can be used to create an audiobook from a book you have in text format, for your private consumption, having an author employ something like this to create files for distribution is extremely risky, even if they acknowledge its use and intend those files to only be available on their website. Indie authors struggle a lot to promote their works, and the new normal is that potential r…

I am big time user of Amazon’s WhisperSync feature. With that feature I can simultaneously read the book and listen to it. This is especially helpful when you’re on the go but still want to have a visual now and then or highlight text for later. The problem is that many books don’t offer that feature. There is a built-in read function now in the kindle app, but it’s crap. So, if you ask me, I’d prefer a good human-wr…

Thre's a nice project that attempts to do this: https://gitlab.com/storyteller-platform/storyteller

I've been meaning to use its position sync protocol with KoReader, but it's not trivial.

Re: Abogen – Generate audiobooks from EPUBs, PDFs and text

#60

Post by criddell »

gman83 wrote: post #43

I love audiobooks, but I'm a stickler for good narration. I've stopped listening to plenty of audiobooks because I didn't like the narrator. I guess it will be a long time before I can use something like this.

What are some of your favorite audiobooks?
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