Re: [school-discuss] free audio books in .mp3 format

[mikee <meschman@engima.com>]

hello,

(1) the text is available now - go to http://www.engima.com
and look at the fourth "box" on the left <Modules>.
click on <Audlib>.  There you will find the first 100+ books,
including everything in this week's broadcast.

you really didn't look too hard for this ...


(2) unintelligible words can be fixed with manual edits,
this is the best voice synthesis module currently available.
do you want to help ?

(3) you are obviously unaware of any of the cost issues involved
for non-profits, in making audio books available.
i would guess you have invested something less than 40 hours in 
balancing cost and quality issues for audio book production.

(4) the blind community finds the quality acceptable.

(5) i personally enjoy the books.

(5) sounds like more FUD from a competing vendor.  Are you a vendor ?

mike eschman, etc...
"Not just an afterthought ...
http://www.engima.com



On Saturday 11 May 2002 01:27 pm, you wrote:
> The original was published in books, and a copy was made to text files. 
> The broadcast seems to be a computer-generated speech based on the text
> file.  The quality is medium low, some words can't be understood.
>
> Instead of turning text into low-quality speech, then turning that into an
> MP3, then distributing these large files, it would be much easier and
> efficient to distribute the text itself, and have free speech readers of
> equal (or hopefully better) quality.