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Show HN: Offline audiobook from any format with one CLI command

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Show HN: Offline audiobook from any format with one CLI command

#1

Post by C-Loftus »

QuickPiperAudiobook locally generates an mp3 audiobook on Linux with one easy command. It can convert PDFs, epub, mobi, and many more by using ebook-convert. It uses any piper TTS model, and thus supports a wide variety of languages.

I've had great success using it to read more while reducing eye strain and computer usage. I think I've probably read 30 or so books this way now over the past year. Being able to listen to any content you want in audio form free and offline while going for a walk is extremely handy.

I hope it helps you as well!

Cheers

Show HN: Offline audiobook from any format with one CLI command
github.com

Re: Show HN: Offline audiobook from any format with one CLI command

#5

Post by dewey »

That's interesting, thanks for sharing. Does anyone know of a good solution for seamlessly switching between audiobooks and ebooks for books that are not bought from Amazon on Kindle?

In this case you already have the input file, and the audio output file but I guess there would be an app that takes these two files to provide a good reading experience. As they are based on the same source it should be possible to keep the reading progress matched between them.

Re: Show HN: Offline audiobook from any format with one CLI command

#8

Post by imurray »

alexkubica wrote: post #2

A very cool project, you should build a website interface you could easily charge for it or take donations/advertise on it if you want to keep it free What would it take to add a specific language to piper? And do you know a good speech to text model?

> And do you know a good speech to text model?

OpenAI's whisper, code+model are available, and multiple projects have built on it. You could try this wrapper: https://github.com/m-bain/whisperX -- or for short utterances on a smart-phone https://github.com/futo-org/whisper-acft

Re: Show HN: Offline audiobook from any format with one CLI command

#9

Post by tekkk »

Very interesting. I have listened to an AI audiobook once and although the inflection was somewhat jarring at first you got kinda used to it. I suppose it's good enough for your own use. And audiobook prices being what they are rather affordable one as well.

Re: Show HN: Offline audiobook from any format with one CLI command

#10

Post by noch »

dewey wrote: post #5

That's interesting, thanks for sharing. Does anyone know of a good solution for seamlessly switching between audiobooks and ebooks for books that are not bought from Amazon on Kindle? In this case you already have the input file, and the audio output file but I guess there would be an app that takes these two files to provide a good reading experience. As they are based on the same source it should be possible to kee…

> Does anyone know of a good solution for seamlessly switching between audiobooks and ebooks for books that are not bought from Amazon on Kindle?

Use Calibre's e-book viewer[^0] which uses Piper for text-to-speech.

[^0]: https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/viewer.html#read-aloud

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