Going blind and learning to love audiobooks | Hacker News Reader

Going blind and learning to love audiobooks

audible.com

44 pointsfern1231 comments

I’ve been using Audible during for years, and I love it. I don’t have time to sit and read for long periods, so audiobooks have definitely helped optimize my time.

During monotonous tasks, such as cooking breakfast, vacuuming, or driving on a long highway (when I lived in the US) I could easily finish a book a month. And generally those were 20-40 hour historical or classic books, not the short novels.

A shout out to my favourite audiobook website, https://librivox.org . All free and open.

LibriVox is nice for some things, but almost every book I've tried to listen to from there had untrained amateurish narrators and editors with poor recording quality. I find them pretty hard to listen to compared to professionally produced books. IMO, a much better alternative if you're looking for free audiobooks is your local lending library. In the US you can often access library audiobook collections on your phone or computer with OverDrive.

Hoopla is another good one for books, music... Kanopy has a broad selection of movies too. All paid for by your tax dollars (not free!) so be sure and take advantage.

Many digital library services are paid based on usage, so increased borrowing may actually increase library costs in turn.

Not saying people shouldn’t use services — just saying it’s not a sunk cost like it might seem.

You can search by narrator & also find recommended narrators.

It's a volunteer project, so you get a mixed bag, but there are some very good voices in there as well.

Mark F. Smith has some very high quality recordings. The audio is clear in most of them, and his narration is better than many professionals.

https://librivox.org/reader/204

Around the World in Eighty Days https://librivox.org/around-the-world-in-80-days-by-jules-ve...

Treasure Island https://librivox.org/treasure-island-version-4-by-robert-lou...

The Wind in the Willows https://librivox.org/the-wind-in-the-willows-by-kenneth-grah...

I highly recommend Anna Karenina as read by MaryAnn, in English, and as read by Eva K. in German. They’re both easily professional level.

I'm a big fan of the android tts. A bit robotic, with quite a few prosodic errors (which is simple to get used to), but so convenient. No need to hunt for audiobooks - actually in most languages the size of the audibook market is rather poor...

I can switch easily from audio to reading, e.g. listening while walking to the bus, and if I get a seat then switch to read, and then back to listening etc...

With the rate speech synthesis is developing, it's probably going to be hard to distinguish between human speakers and synthetic speakers in a few years from now.

See https://google.github.io/tacotron/publications/tacotron2/ind...

And the HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15962543

I'm really looking forward to those actually being available to use.

I've just started to use AWS Polly in some demos, but the speech synthesis quality feels 2-3 years old at least :/

I think what's missing is to understand and adapt the speech rhythm and pauses based on the language. At first sight I would say that this requires human intuition, but then again, lots of literature is repetative, so I think ML could actually work quite well well, with actual understanding of the text, given enough data.

As someone who grew up on printed editions I have trouble adjusting to digital editions. Now I have 3-4 boxes full of books which is a pain while shifting houses.

I tried ebooks but retention is an issue. So, taking notes has become a big priority.

Recently started listening to audiobooks but a lot of times I find my mind starts drifting towards unrelated topics. Are there any tips which can help focus my mind?

You might try increasing the narration speed. Many (most?) audiobooks are recorded at WPM comfortable for a narrator reading aloud for long periods of time but far slower than natural speech. Maybe your mind is wandering because the gap between words is too long for you to process aurally. Audiobook apps (like the Audible app, for instance) allow you to speed up playback without changing the pitch.

Agreed. I regularly listen to audiobooks at anywhere from 1.2x to 1.6x, and find that much more satisfying.

Frustratingly (for me) Audible only supports faster reading speeds on its mobile app.

Its webapp doesn't, neither does its Alexa skill, nor does iTunes (which is what it recommends if you download, since it can negotiate the DRM). Anything else requires ripping the DRM.

Many years ago I used to play Audible files on a 2nd generation iPod nano, and it supported speed adjustment for books too. That's still a mobile device, of course. But maybe it's an alternative? The only scenario I can think of where playing them in a mobile app is a problem is if you don't have a smartphone.

> The only scenario I can think of where playing them in a mobile app is a problem is if you don't have a smartphone.

What a thought!

But yes, and in the context of partial sight / blindness, smart phones are not great for accessibility.

I like to play tetris on lower levels while listening to audiobooks, it keeps me focused for some reason. There was another game, which I can't find at the moment... an OpenGL demo of a car at night driving down an infinite highway in a low polygon city. That was great for audiobooks.

It depends on how strong your urge to drift is, but doing some small physical task can help. Some ideas: household chores like washing dishes or folding laundry, going for a walk, going for a drive, maybe knitting?...

I love audiobooks but I can only stay focused while driving or walking. When I try them while sitting I either fall asleep or get distracted. It seems somehow they don't satisfy all senses.

If you’re blind you can also get free audio books from the library of congress[1]. The selection is more limited than audible and you need a special reader, but it is free. My father who’s blind uses both services actively.

1: https://loc.gov/programs/national-library-service-for-the-bl...

Audiobooks have been a real help for me, especially Audible which makes everything very easy. My problem is with some narrators of non fiction books. Is it me ? Or some narrators are so bad that actually makes you don’t want to listen. While the majority of them are good or acceptable, some are really painful to listen. Is like if you have a science book, and the narrator doesn’t find it interesting, he/she will let you know.

You're not alone, the narrator is a very critical experience of listening to audiobooks. If the narrator's voice, tone, or style aren't appealing, it'll ruin the entire experience. The problem is that this is largely subjective - there won't ever be a narrator that'll make everyone happy but like you said, most are good enough with the occasional bad apple.

Audiobooks are great. You can listen to them while doing chores, commuting or having a walk. It is a pity that they are so expensive. I bet Amazon's monopoly has something to do with it. Podcasts, on the other hand, are worth what you are giving back to the creators via means like Patreon.

> It is a pity that they are so expensive.

Some of these books are over 40hrs long I listen to. My current book, Oathbringer, is 55hrs. I find the length and professional voice acting to provide more than enough value for the $15/month audible charges (hope I don't sound like a shill).

Certainly better than 2 movies a month, imo :)

edit: I do wish you got a free kindle version with audible purchase...

> It is a pity that they are so expensive. I bet Amazon's monopoly has something to do with it.

They can be very expensive if you get them one at a time without buying them on sale, but it was like that long before Amazon.

I've been listening to audio books for almost 2 decades. Back before Audible or Amazon or anyone else, audio books came on dozen-packs of cassette tapes and then CDs, and you'd get them at book stores or the library. If you chose to buy them, they'd cost in the neighborhood of $50 per book for your average book. Then Audible came around and started offering a plan giving two books every month for like $15/month. Then Audible partnered with Apple and got a real promotional bump from affiliation with iTunes and soon Audible as a brand became almost synonymous with audio books. The price for that 2 book plan went up a small amount over the years, but not by much, and they grandfathered previous customers. Then Amazon bought Audible and the price didn't change. Actually, almost nothing changed at all, except that they started getting a bunch of new free content, daily deals, frequent sales, and unlimited free returns. I think the only thing they lost in the acquisition was referral bonuses.

But going back to the context of my original point, if you go hunting for a particular book on Audible today, you're likely to find that it costs $20, $30, or even $40. And you're right, it's pretty hard for most people to even consider paying that much. But I think that that's not how most customers actually get their audiobooks today. It's kinda like...have you ever gone into one of those stores where everything is always on sale? Which price is the real price?

On iOS, http://voicedream.com will perform high-quality, rate-adjustable TTS for most (unlocked) text file formats, including PDF and epub. Provides paid, good quality voices for many languages.

While we're talking about audible I wanted to bring 2 things up.

1. You can cancel and restart your membership to get a new token for $15/month.

2. They recently added different portals for different countries. If you've been using the American portal (.com) like me, you may not have noticed your own countries. You should check it out, it may be cheaper. For example, the Canadian portal (.ca) charges $15 CAD a month which is cheaper than $15 USD.

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