Is it worth the effort to produce audiobooks?

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by arjaybe

Darn rights! I've had my knuckles rapped more than once, and I want no more admonishment from this site's brave and intelligent moderators.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by arjaybe

It does seem to militate (as Danny Gallivan used to say) against commercial text-to-speech. Especially since I give it away. I would hesitate to pay the equivalent of at least $50 for personal use, and positively balk at over $500 to let others hear it.

My novels are around 80 on the Flesch Reading Ease scale, so very easy. A machine could probably do a pretty good job on them, but I've got so much good feedback here that I am greatly encouraged to continue doing the readings myself.

Please do give my audiobooks a listen. Let me know what you think. Drop a comment on my blog. Post a review somewhere ... Okay, I'm getting carried away.

Thank you for the help.

Scream I love your voice from the rooftops! !!!

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Scream I love your voice from the rooftops! !!!

Yes! Except in my case it would be sonorously mellifluate from the rooftops.-)

[Barbara1955]

Originally Posted by arjaybe

If you mean my recordings, I have completed the reading of the third book in the trilogy. No abandonment here.-)

[RobertDDL]

Beautifully read - way better than any voice synth could do it!

A few technical comments:
- The recordings are mono, but you've saved them as stereo. You could significantly reduce file sizes, without any loss of quality, if you saved them as mono (you do still have the uncompressed originals?)
- You have sub-sonic noise (I think this is the side effect of noise reduction, or other editing). Doesn't do much harm, but you might use a high-pass filter to get rid of anything below, for instance, 50 Hz?
- There are those unavoidable little noises and clicks that can only be properly dealt with by manual editing, probably not worth the effort.

All in all, great work!
(And, epub looks fine, but PDF ... but that's not what you've asked anyone's opinion of ...)

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by RobertDDL

Beautifully read - way better than any voice synth could do it!

A few technical comments:
- The recordings are mono, but you've saved them as stereo. You could significantly reduce file sizes, without any loss of quality, if you saved them as mono (you do still have the uncompressed originals?)
- You have sub-sonic noise (I think this is the side effect of noise reduction, or other editing). Doesn't do much harm, but you might use a high-pass filter to get rid of anything below, for instance, 50 Hz?
- There are those unavoidable little noises and clicks that can only be properly dealt with by manual editing, probably not worth the effort.

All in all, great work!
(And, epub looks fine, but PDF ... but that's not what you've asked anyone's opinion of ...)

Thank you for the tip on mono. Decreasing the size will be a good benefit. I don't save the original recordings, but I have the WAV files, edited and normalized. Should be easy to try a mono conversion.

Thank you for the tip on the high-pass filter for the low frequency noise. I wonder how low my voice goes. I wouldn't want to cut off any of those good vibrations.-)

So far I haven't edited using headphones, but if you're finding unacceptable noises that I'm missing, maybe it's time to start. Dang, I was hoping to avoid that level of anality.

[RobertDDL]

Originally Posted by arjaybe

Thank you for the tip on mono. Decreasing the size will be a good benefit. I don't save the original recordings, but I have the WAV files, edited and normalized. Should be easy to try a mono conversion.

Thank you for the tip on the high-pass filter for the low frequency noise. I wonder how low my voice goes. I wouldn't want to cut off any of those good vibrations.-)

So far I haven't edited using headphones, but if you're finding unacceptable noises that I'm missing, maybe it's time to start. Dang, I was hoping to avoid that level of anality.

I have no experience with .ogg, so I don't know about the effects of what parameters there are, but I've tried out mono/stereo, and it does make a difference.

Don't worry about the good vibrations, they will not be affected by cutting off anything below 50 Hz! I don't know if you use Audacity? If so, look at "Analyze / Plot Spectrum" to see what I mean. I've often seen this sub-sonic stuff, also in my own recordings, and still haven't found out exactly where it comes from - if it's there, I remove it, but it's probably more visually annoying than an actual problem. What is a problem is that Audacity, when you apply a high-pass filter, sometimes increases peak levels - I don't understand the mathematics behind it, but it can cause clipping, and that's a disaster. Slightly changing cut-off frequency and/or rolloff sometimes makes a difference, but you may need to reduce over-all volume by several dB before applying the filter, and normalize volume afterwards.

Those noises - yes, you only hear them with earphones, but you can easily see them. But, my (limited) experience is with editing recordings of poems, and of course there's a difference in what you can reasonably do when it's a recording of one or two minutes, or several hours.

If you want to, we can continue to discuss this by mail!

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by RobertDDL

I have no experience with .ogg, so I don't know about the effects of what parameters there are, but I've tried out mono/stereo, and it does make a difference.

Don't worry about the good vibrations, they will not be affected by cutting off anything below 50 Hz! I don't know if you use Audacity? If so, look at "Analyze / Plot Spectrum" to see what I mean. I've often seen this sub-sonic stuff, also in my own recordings, and still haven't found out exactly where it comes from - if it's there, I remove it, but it's probably more visually annoying than an actual problem. What is a problem is that Audacity, when you apply a high-pass filter, sometimes increases peak levels - I don't understand the mathematics behind it, but it can cause clipping, and that's a disaster. Slightly changing cut-off frequency and/or rolloff sometimes makes a difference, but you may need to reduce over-all volume by several dB before applying the filter, and normalize volume afterwards.

Those noises - yes, you only hear them with earphones, but you can easily see them. But, my (limited) experience is with editing recordings of poems, and of course there's a difference in what you can reasonably do when it's a recording of one or two minutes, or several hours.

If you want to, we can continue to discuss this by mail!

I don't mind discussing it here. This thread is about creating audiobooks, so this is germane.

I'll probably experiment with mono and subsonics eventually, but I've just finished putting the latest audiobook to bed and, since it's not critical, I'm reluctant to drag it out again already. Especially since I might run into another set of problems when I do. It will definitely be good to know for the next one. Yes, I use Audacity.

In the editing process I often remove things that I can see but not hear. It's good to know that someone might have heard them, but irksome that they might also hear the ones I left in.-)

[RobertDDL]

Originally Posted by arjaybe

(...) In the editing process I often remove things that I can see but not hear. It's good to know that someone might have heard them, but irksome that they might also hear the ones I left in.-)

It takes me at least an hour to record and edit a one-minute poem, so I'm really not someone who has good advice about producing audio books. The little sounds that I've marked can be heard, but that doesn't mean they need to be dealt with - I doubt that anyone who listenes to your voice and to your story will be bothered by them, or even notice them. I do not have any commercially produced audio books, so I don't know what their standards are, or how much editing effort they put into it.

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by RobertDDL

It takes me at least an hour to record and edit a one-minute poem, so I'm really not someone who has good advice about producing audio books. The little sounds that I've marked can be heard, but that doesn't mean they need to be dealt with - I doubt that anyone who listenes to your voice and to your story will be bothered by them, or even notice them. I do not have any commercially produced audio books, so I don't know what their standards are, or how much editing effort they put into it.

There's a possibility. Your peaks are much higher than I'm accustomed to -- more stretched. When I switch to mono I should be able to do that too, then I'll be able to remove more things I can't hear without having to put on the headphones.-)

I admire the effort you put into your work. You're right, though. At an hour for a minute, a thirteen hour recording would be ... daunting. It would be interesting to see what a commercial recording looks like up close.

[Steven Lake]

I actually have a hearing issue, a partial deafness, so I'm nowhere able to catch all of those issues with a recording like a normal person can. Thus why I leave my professional stuff to the professionals.

[Alyssa Miranda]

I read with interest arjaybe's post mentioning VoiceID, which banks the writer's own voice for use in converting text to speech. They note that they are working on a feature that would allow modifying the writer's voice, presumably to make it more appealing to the listener, or what prompted my interest as a fiction writer, possibly to make it more compatible with the genre of the writing. Does anyone know of software that may be further along in developing this functionality?

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by arjaybe

Yes, that's what I assumed I'd use. I'm going to have to get off the pot and give it a try. I mean, how hard can it be? Got no Kindle, though. Won't be able to test it.

I've used Calibre to make mobi conversions of the epubs and I've checked them in the ebook reader, but I don't have a Kindle to test them. If anyone would like to try them, PM me and I'll give you a Dropbox link.

[arjaybe]

I've converted the audiobooks to MP3. With further research I decided the format is now free enough. Thanks to the suggestions I've received here, people don't have to wonder whether they can play OGGs any more. Fortunately, the method I used preserved the metadata tags. I wasn't looking forward to re-writing about 150 of them.-)

[arjaybe]

RobertDDL kindly tested my mobis with some kind of Kindle checking software and they seem to be fine, so I went ahead and put them up on my site. Here's a quote from the announcement.

After a very patient education by my friends on MobileRead, I have decided to make the books available in the mobi format. Contrary to my expectations, given its association with the Amazon Kindle, the mobi format has been freed, along with associated software.

Thanks to everyone here for all the help. I think I now have a much better array of things to offer my readers (and listeners.)

rjb