Category: Culture

It was years ago when I heard my first computerized voice.

My father–a mechanical engineering professor–had always been uncommonly computer-literate and had encouraged the same in his family. (Incidentally, that’s Edgar Allen Poe in the picture; not my father, though they do look a bit the same.)

To that end, he bought primitive home computers for us when the technology was still in its infancy.

One of these had a primitive, robotic, computerized voice that could "read" texts on the screen.

It was awful.

At least by contemporary standards.

As part of my recent audiobooks quest, I realized that the computer voices that are now available were undoubtedly much better than the clunky computer voices I had known in real life or heard on radio and TV shows.

I had no idea.

The voices curently available are not just better, they are a world of difference.

Let me show you:

Currently the top-of-the-line voices are the NaturalVoices from AT&T and available for about $30. You can buy and download them for use with programs like TextAloud. Though they’re still not perfect, they are head and shoulders above what you’re probably familar with.

HERE’S NATURAL VOICE "MIKE" READING EDGAR ALLEN POE’S POEM "THE RAVEN." (.mp3 format)

I made this .mp3 file myself using "Mike," TextAloud, and the public-domain text of "The Raven."

Poetry is a particular challenge for artificial voices due to its atypical cadence, but you’ll be amazed at how well "Mike" does with "The Raven." Take a listen!

As good as computerized voices are now, I can imagine how good they’re goint to be in the future:

• Already the voices that are available are staring to vary by accent. You can buy voices, for example, that have British or Indian accents. Soon you’ll be able to buy voices that have Texas, Boston, New York, or Georgia accents. (This is just a diversification of what is already happening.)
• You’ll be able to input sheet music and have the voices sing to you in realistic fashion. (This is actually already being done, but is not yet commercially available to my knowledge.)
• You’ll be able to read a prepared text and so reverse-engineer your own voice so that you’ll be able to read texts to yourself.
• You’ll be able to plug your TiVo into your home computer and have it reverse-engineer voices from telvision so that, in no time, Captain Katherine Janeway will be reading you Jane Austen novels.

I can’t wait.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

One of the ideas I got for how to get more audiobooks for my Christmas trip to Texas arose like this:

1. There’s a bunch of freely available, public domain texts online, such as those at Project Gutenberg.

2. I bet I could download a text-to-speech program that would read these to me. Years ago, I had speech-to-text software that could also do text-to-speech. I was never very pleased with this software, but I figured that it would be possible to get a simpler version that just does text-to-speech and have my computer read these texts to me.

3. I then went to hotfiles.com and found some downloadable programs that do just this.

4. Some of these progams would speak the text directly into .mp3s for you.

5. Therefore, I could use the freely available e-texts in conjunction with the software to produce my own audiobooks in .mp3 and burn them to CD for listening on the way to Texas.

Yee-haw!

Now, turns out that the Project Gutenberg folks have already figured this out, so they have been adding their own homestyle audiobooks to their inventory. (Sven pointed this out in the comments box a couple of days back, but I had to delete it as it was a spoiler for this post.)

Iff’n yew want to make your own, however, you can also use the technique described above.

After looking at different text-to-speech programs, I decided to go with TextAloud, which is inexpensive and has a feature combination that I like. (Among other things, it dosen’t try to integrate itself into every other text app you have; programs that grabby are generally bad news.)

Since my Christmas trip to Texas didn’t happen this year, I haven’t used it to produce audiobooks for my pickup, yet, but I’ve been very pleased with using it to listen to all kinds of downloadable e-texts.

One of the nice things about it is that it supports multiple different voices, and the voices have improved amazingly in the last few years.

But that’s the subject of my next post. (Don’t want to spoil myself.)

Yesterday I blogged about my interest in audiobooks. This is an interest that has grown with time.

The Christmas I was considering a roadtrip to visit my kin in Texas, like the one I took last summer.

I didn’t end up going (good thing, too, as the weather was horrible), but while I was gearing up for the trip, I decided that I wanted to find a better way to listen to audiobooks while I was gone.

In particular: I didn’t like having to change CDs every hour. That’s a big pain if you’re doing ninety, whipping down the curvy, boulder-avoiding road through Texas Canyon in Arizona.

So I thought to myself: .mp3s of spoken word can be much smaller than ordinary CD files, and many new car stereos will play .mp3s, so here’s what I’ll do: I’ll get me one of the newer stereos for my pickup, then download a bunch of books on .mp3 from Audible.Com (which advertises your ability to listen to its books on portable devices), and I’ll be all set.

So I went down to Best Buy, bought a car stereo for like $130 that would play CDs, .mp3s, and Windows Media Player files, and had it installed the next day.

I was all set.

So I went ot Audible.Com to download some books and made a horrible discovery: Audible doesn’t let you download books in .mp3. They have a proprietary format that won’t play on my new player.

So I did a little research about what portable devices will play Audible files. It turns out: iPods can.

So I went out and got an iPod.

I also got a cheap broadcast device to let me play the iPod through my car stereo.

I haven’t actually set up the broadcast device yet, but barring another misfortune, I should be set.

VISIT AUDIBLE.COM.

LEARN MORE ABOUT .mp3s.

LEARN ABOUT iPODS.

READER A writes:

I’m a recent audible.com devotee, too, and await hearing about your experiences, Jimmy! Who’s your favorite author?

It took me awhile to get everything with audible set up (part of the problem was that their servers were overtaxed during Christmas). Thus far most of the audiobooks I’ve heard weren’t on audible.

Don’t know that I have a favorite author. My all-time favorite audio books are Robert Graves’ I, Claudius and Claudius The God (which are not for the faint of heart as they show ancient Rome in its glory and its cruelty). Unfortunately, these are only available in cassette at present (though, maddeningly, Audible used to have them, it appears).

Lately, I’ve been listening to Tom Clancy audiobooks. These sometimes have elements that I don’t like in them (e.g., rough language used by people in the midst of international crises), but in the main they’re quite entertaining.

Particularly freaky is the novel Executive Orders, where Jack Ryan has just become president in the wake of a 9/11 style attack (only far worse). The novel is amazingly similar in its general themes to what happened in 2000-2001: A disputed presidency, an airliner terrorist attack, and a biological attack, all in rapid succession. I hadn’t read this book at the time, but I found it totally creepy how well it thematically tracked recent history. People who had already read the novel were absolutely stunned when the events of 2000-2001 unfolded.

Most recently, I read the abridged audio version of his novel Red Rabbit, which is set in 1981 and in which a young Jack Ryan tries to stop the assassination attempt on John Paul II. You know he won’t ultimately stop the attack, but that doesn’t mean that he won’t save the pope’s life. As Ryan (like Clancy, I believe) is a Catholic, this was a really neat read. Non-Catholics may not be as interested in this one (in fact, many such folks didn’t like it since you know at least approximately how it will end), but seeing Jack Ryan woven into real history alongside John Paul II is a treat for me.

On my August trip, I audio-read Robert Ludlum’s Cassandra Compact, which I enjoyed.

Earlier, I audio-read Ken Follett’s retro-Cold War thriller (it’s set in the 1950s),
                        Code To Zero, which I really enjoyed.

On the other hand, I absolutely hated John Le Carre’s Absolute Friends. I seriously thought about asking for my money back. After suffering through the novel hoping against progressively dimmer hope that it’s going to get better, it ends in an absolutely viciously anti-American screed.

READER B writes:

I might point out to you that on your cross-country adventures you
can rent an audiobook at a Cracker Barrel and return it a week later to
any other Cracker Barrel in the country.

Thanks!

Actually, on my August trip I noticed lots of seemingly rental copies of audiobooks at places I stopped. I assumed they were only for rent to locals, but apparently not. Next time, I may pick up one!

READER C writes:

I’ve never tried one of these audio book thingies.

How "abridged" are the abridged versions.  Are they worth your while?

It depends on what the publisher wants. Thus far, I haven’t had a problem with them. Typically the Tom Clancy novel’s I’ve listened to are about 5 CDs (6 hours) long, which is maybe half what the original novel is.

I’ve actually run into people online saying that they like the abridged versions better, because when you’re abridging a novel the first thing you cut out are the non-essential, slower, less-interesting parts.

Apparently, Clancy has a tendency to include informative but non-plot-advancing material in his novels (e.g., how military agencies work, etc.) that some people prefer to have left out so they can focus on the story.

I’ve never read an unabridged Tom Clancy novel, but I’m planning to. I was so pleased with Red Rabbit (noted above) that I plant to download the unabridged version from Audible.Com and have a listen to the whole thing.

The next few days I’m going to be doing a few posts (in addition to other posts) about one of my interests that I haven’t really blogged about before: audiobooks.

For those who may not be aware, an audiobook is simply a book (either unabridged or abridged) that someone has recorded outloud, either to tape, CD, .mp3, or what have you.

I got into audiobooks a few years ago when I discovered that, after so many hours of squinting at print on a screen or on a page, I really enjoyed simply relaxing and letting someone else read to me for a change.

I especially like to listen to audiobooks when I’m travelling. It’s nice to plug in a CD and let the miles roll by.

You can get all kinds of audiobooks, from quite a long while ago (the Bible, the Illiad, the Odessy), to 19th century (Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Fin, the works of Edgar Allen Poe), to twentieth century (I, Claudius, Claudius the God), to the latest bestsellers (Tom Clancy or Michael Crichton’s latest).

At first, I would purchase audiobooks, as one can do from Amazon.Com or in a bookstore, but this tends to have a problem associated with it: Such audiobooks are often expensive–more expensive than hardbacks.

Another solution is to get them from a service like Blackstone Audiobooks, where you can rent them rather than buy them.

More recently, I have been enjoying downloading digital audiobooks from Audible.Com, where you can download them (in a proprietary format) quite inexpensively.

The next few days, I’ll tell you more about ways you can get, use, and even make (!) your own audiobooks.

(ANTI-SPOILER REQUEST: For those who are already into audiobooks, I’d ask you not to spoil some of the neat hi-tech things I’m about to introduce. Kindly wait till I mention a method and then mention your neat-o variation on it. E.g., for this post you might talk about your experience with conventional audiobooks and with services like the ones named above. Much obliged!)