From a classic discussion of self-interest as applied to shared grazing-land:

Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit — in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.
– The Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin (1968)

This is quoted at The Cornucopia of the Commons by Dan Bricklin (2000) who further says, in regard to the peer-to-peer music sharing network Napster, but it applies to LibriVox too:

What we see here is that increasing the value of the database by adding more information is a natural by-product of using the tool for your own benefit. No altruistic sharing motives need be present, especially since sharing is the default. [...] In our case, we find the Cornucopia of the Commons: Use brings overflowing abundance.

More information, in our case, is more recordings. A reader benefits by having fun in contributing, and sharing is implicit in the LibriVox model — it’s made effortless (for non-admin readers, at least.) All the work is in activities such as recording, editing and proof-listening. Also, the act of sharing (cataloguing) has been refined over the years to be as easy as possible for admins, though it still remains a non-trivial task.

In a follow-up piece, Dan says:

Instead of making you feel bad for “only” doing 99%, a well designed system makes you feel good for doing 1%. People complain about systems that have lots of “freeloaders”. Systems that do well with lots of “freeloading” and make the best of periodic participation are good.
– Blog post by Dan Bricklin (2005)

In this sense, recording one short poem is as welcome as a full solo of War and Peace, because the most important consideration is the happiness of the contributor. LibriVox, as it is strictly defined, is a community around readers, so I don’t think it’s possible to have freeloaders as such. However, if one equates “freeloader = listener”, the system still benefits from them, in that it can provide a source of fun for some readers to see how many listeners they have (as measured vaguely and unreliably by archive.org, one of many file distribution methods) and also sporadically by feedback via the forums or other contact methods. Many contributors start as listeners, so here, success breeds success: more recordings, more widely distributed, bring in more people wanting to participate.

This is, in my opinion, also part of the reason not to have any sort of direct reviewing system. It’s largely meaningless within the “have fun” framework! By the time a file reaches a listener, the initial fun has already been had, and it’s just an (enormous!) added bonus when subsequent audiences also “have fun”. A Cornucopia indeed.

I have a dedicated room, formally known as the hall cupboard (closet, for American readers) which is lined with noise-reducing foam tiles and material (mostly heavy velvet curtains.) It has a couple of shelves, one of which has an old-but-quiet laptop with its screen at a comfortable-to-read height. The lower one, at hand-height is for water, lipsalve and my keypad (more on that in a bit.)

My microphone is a Blue Yeti, it has its own floor stand which it is always attached to. It has sound card/encoding settings on board, so it just sends data to the laptop by USB and I don’t have to worry about pre-amps, computer sound cards and so on. Easy!

Before I record, I clean my teeth, get a glass of water and put on lipsalve (these all help reduce mouth noise for me.)

I record in Sony’s SoundForge to WAV. This takes about 75 mins for 60 mins of polished audio; however, I rarely record for more than half an hour at a time, followed by a 5-10 min break. SoundForge allows me to ‘punch in’ edits, that is, re-record immediately over the top of a mistake, and I have a gamer’s keypad set up with keyboard shortcuts to make this process easy. The keypad is old, cheap and effective! However, this way of recording extends the time spent in the booth significantly, so I don’t often work this way. I probably should … even though I’d still have to do a full listen/edit for overall smoothness, it’d still be quicker to process.

I then save a copy of the WAV file and noiseclean gently in Audacity. This step and all subsequent work is done on a file tagged -nc, (e.g. candy08-nc.wav.) That’s not what the final name of the file will be, just a shorthand that helps me know whereabouts in the process I am — very useful when I have several files at differing stages of the production process. My Audacity is version 1.3.12-beta (Unicode) and the Noise Removal settings I use are: 13 // 200 // 0.00. I always leave at least 10 secs quiet at the end of the recording, and use at least 2 secs as the sample of ‘room noise’ for the Noise Removal process. Happily, there’s very little background noise, just a gentle, constant hiss. Though, if the laptop’s fan has come on, these settings will also remove it without fuss as long as I include that steady fan-sound in the room noise sample.

Next I move to Adobe Soundbooth and compress gently. This is a relatively new step for me, but I was spending HOURS manually editing volume spikes and boosting quiet bits, so that’s much reduced by this step. Compression in very non-technical terms smooths out the volume, so the quieter sections are made louder and the loud spikes are quietened down. It took a LOT of faffing about (and reading lengthy explanations of exactly what compression IS, which I immediately forgot) to find good settings that work with my voice without changing the sound quality significantly. My Soundbooth is version 1.0 — a demo version that I’ve never upgraded. I would pay full price for the newest version if I could trust it to record, but it’s been unpredictable in that area in the past, and I don’t want to risk recording a lengthy passage and then have to rerecord because Soundbooth paused or glitched, both of which have happened in past trials. One day I’ll try out Audition … The (Advanced) compression settings that seem to work for me are: -3.0 dB, ratio 5.0, attack 1.0ms, release 100ms, output gain 1.0dB. Just to emphasise, I’m pretty good at listening to my own voice now, and these settings work well there, but aren’t at all guaranteed for anyone else! It’s definitely worth experimenting, if you have software with compression — just go GENTLY or you’ll squash the life out of your voice.

In non-LibriVox recordings, I leave the sound processing stage here; however, for LibriVox, I then reduce the whole file’s gain (volume) by 1 dB (on the Soundbooth scale, though I don’t know how that matches to Audacity etc.) Most LibriVox recordings are relatively quiet and especially if I’m working on a collaborative book, I don’t want to blast a listener’s eardrums too much compared to the previous reader! My settings are still on the louder end of many files I’ve seen, but not as far away from everyone else. The volume is increased during the compression stage, so really this is just putting it back to how it was before I did that smoothing out.

Here I’ll note that I do all my noise-cleaning before editing, so if it’s wrought havoc on the recording, I’ll pick that up as I listen through. Noise-cleaning at the end, just before MP3ing, caused me a few problems in the past which were only caught by PLs / end-listeners. However, there’s an equally good case for doing the processing after editing, in that if there IS a problem with the noise-cleaning, fixing it is just taking one step back in the process, not potentially having to do all the editing again too! My noise and noise removal settings are generally constant, so I seldom have problems with it and the first order works for me. Also, I have a decent pair of Sony MDR-XD200 headphones, which I do all my sound processing and editing with. It’s well worth listening through a few different pairs to find ones that let you hear as much as possible. There’s no way to know what end listeners will use, and it would be crazy to process the recording with a particular pair of headphones in mind … but you have to use SOMETHING so it might as well be something that sounds nice. It’s also very educational to try with a bad pair of earbuds, since many of your listeners will use those! Much of the detailed fussing I do over sound is made completely irrelevant there. :) Helps me not to be obsessive about it! Also, the Sony ones are extremely comfortable — very important when I spend so long in them.

Once the file is processed and tidied up — which only takes about 5 mins, even for long files — I begin the editing. I use Soundbooth — it’s not the most obvious software, but I’m very used to it, and have lots of keyboard shortcuts set up to make it faster, e.g. C instead of Ctrl-C. I don’t make a noise/click when I make a mistake during recording (as some people do) because I’ll be listening all the way through anyway, editing as I go. I edit pauses (usually making them a bit longer), mistakes and annoying mouth-noises. This takes 4-6 hours for 1 hour of finished audio.

Finally I save a copy of the finished WAV file, then and then MP3 it. I use Soundbooth for this step too now: I used to use RazorLame, but then found I could HEAR a little sound degradation in the MP3 files produced that way. After checking every MP3 maker I could find, using exactly the same settings, I settled for using Soundbooth. Note: I couldn’t hear any difference IN Soundbooth (or Audacity) but in other players (RealPlayer & WinAmp) there was a definite difference. So that’s another way to check sound quality, using different software, or even a standalone MP3 player if you have one. Obviously I don’t do this for every recording, but it’s worth doing when I make a change in the process, just to be sure I’m still happy with the end result across a variety of output systems.

* * *

As I said in my forum post, the more one knows about recording, the lengthier the process seems to get. The more I learn, the more I want to apply to my recordings, and though I’m very happy with the output at the moment, there is a definite trade-off to be found between time and quality. This process has evolved significantly from the days when I recorded straight to MP3 using a headset mic, doing a quick edit before finishing, and I think my recordings over the past five years reflect that. Not all my improvements have been for the better (argh!!) and circumstances like house moves have changed the set-up too.

As audiobooks go, this probably isn’t the most obvious choice for beach-listening or an absorbing commuting option. But there’s nothing else like it in the catalogue (yet!) and I sincerely hope it hits the spot for lots of listeners. We-at-LibriVox would love to know future listeners’ stories … why HAVE you picked this book..? There’s a new feedback feature available, which could be used for exactly this, or just sign up to the forum and post.

Enjoy, World!

Download audio file (anatomy5_31_gray.mp3)

(18:26) — The Urinary Bladder.
If you think I’ve pronounced “ureter” or anything else wrong … I’m sorry, I did do my best, (including completely rerecording this chapter!) and Brit and US pronunciation vary all over the place.

http://librivox.org/anatomy-of-the-human-body-part-1-by-henry-gray/
http://librivox.org/anatomy-of-the-human-body-part-2-by-henry-gray/
http://librivox.org/anatomy-of-the-human-body-part-3-by-henry-gray/
http://librivox.org/anatomy-of-the-human-body-part-4-by-henry-gray/
http://librivox.org/anatomy-of-the-human-body-part-5-by-henry-gray/

Firstly, it’s TRUE that there are some few recordings that are problematic for various reasons. Some have content which causes certain listeners concern, but I’m not going to bother discussing censorship, I disapprove of it, end of story. However, where it’s down to the audio itself — some folks would like to be able to warn others to avoid these, or perhaps, target them to produce their own (hopefully better) versions. However, it’s an extremely central tenet of LibriVox that ALL readers are welcome. As long as they are able to record themselves audibly and stick to the text, it doesn’t matter about age, gender, accent, ability to ‘do voices’ or even whether they understand the book. And the rest of this post is where I contend that this is not only a Good Thing — but essential to LibriVox’s past and future success.

“But wouldn’t some kind of vetting or rating be a good thing for listeners?” It’s not going to happen, because it’s honestly not that easy. It’s not a question of “make people audition, and then only the ‘good’ people are allowed to record.”

For starters, the standards of measurement could vary a lot (as you can see by the bad reviews of professionally read audio-books.) The audience has a wide and sometimes contradictory range of ideas about what various members of it want to hear.

Then there’s the practical consideration of improvement — if “bad” readers can’t ever start, and therefore don’t get encouragement, feedback, gentle support, then they’ll never become “good” readers. The professionals are paying for coaching, they’re studying at drama school or voice-over classes. What’s available for free? On a global scale? In every language people are interested in reading?

To say LibriVox has NO quality control just isn’t fair — today. Historically, there was no proof-listening phase, and so yes, a number of finished recordings are too quiet to be heard. (And some are likely too loud!) Some have horrible background noise, or reading-stumbles left in. Some of these are being revisited as admins find time and energy. However, the books we are producing NOW have much better quality in these respects. Accented readers are still welcome, people still record with headset / pinhole mics — but technical problems can be picked up earlier and mitigated as best we can. Readers are given help with noise-cleaning, editing, general settings and volume … and if they aren’t able to do it themselves, someone else will polish it up before it’s catalogued. But at the end of the day, it’s the reader’s voice, pace, spoken words — no change in that.

But most of all, avoiding ratings is about supporting people’s self-esteem. And not in a tree-hugging, “isn’t everyone special” kind of way. In practice, very few contributors at LibriVox are professional actors / voice-over artists. They aren’t trained to extract what use they can out of criticism and then let the rest wash over them. If contributions are rated badly, especially early on in a reader’s recording career, they’ll simply stop and find a nicer way to spend their free time. Is that “saving the world from bad recordings”? Yep. So, how many people would be left to make recordings for the world? Impossible to say, but I’d bet it’s a pretty small percentage. Worst of all, it would put off even those who are generally considered “the best”, because few start out that way. Basically, it’s “saving the world from having a large, free audio-book library.” Audible would approve.

There are other online audio-projects who do insist on auditions before allowing people in (or simply record only using vouched-for actors.) They’ve produced a few hundred books, and are often pay-to-download because that’s the only way to subsidise the whole proceeding. LibriVox has completed 3,374 projects, and another 541 are in progress, and that’s been on zero budget, (though, true, the recent donations-drive changes things.) I can’t think of any other audio-projects which work across languages – all the ones I know are mono-lingual. LibriVox encourages people to record projects in 29 different languages (more if you count the contributions to multi-lingual collections.) I firmly believe that the “open doors” policy directly supports this diversity.

I think the main problem LibriVox has, is around educating its listeners. What many listeners want, I suspect, is completely free access to Audible. They’re frustrated because LibriVox is free-but-different (non-pro. voices, mixed voices in books, non-native voices, etc.) They think that just a few little changes, kicking out the very ‘worst’ readers, would fix things. But it doesn’t work like that. A small barrier to entry, however low, would stop all but the most determined voices (or the most pig-headed readers). And that’s not going to benefit anyone.

As an aside, all LibriVox recordings are public domain. There’s nothing to stop anyone setting up librivox-rated.com, linking through to the catalogue, or pulling recordings directly from archive.org. If rating recordings is as essential a part of the listening experience as those who’ve requested the feature over the years tend to claim — it’d be more popular than LV itself – and that’d be fine … we could concentrate on recording and let other people do the thorny decision-making. And of course, the more recordings there are, the more chance there is that some of them ARE “okay”, by the particular standards of any given listener.

Currently, we organise by Category (out of Fiction, Poetry, Non-fiction, Dramatic Works — one per book) and by Genre (list here — multiple selections possible).

However, as our catalogue grows, I think it’s going to get harder and harder to manage this very fixed structure. As we add more books, we’ll need to add more Genres, and it will be a lot of work to retrospectively look over our books when a new Genre is added. For example, Art was recently added to the list, and older books about Art were added to the Genre by people who remembered them. But even with a relatively small number of relevant books involved, some can get missed, like Ruskin’s Lectures on Landscapes. Adding a Genre which would cover a lot of existing books becomes a bit of a nightmare, and there’s little incentive to add new Genres of this type. My point here is definitely not to second-guess the labellers, but to note that it’s going to be very hard to keep using this system when we have 5,000 books. By the time we get to 10,000, we’ll have literally thousands of books in some Genres and it’ll be very hard for listeners to find books that interest them, using the Genre system.

Although we have a lot of extremely altruistic people involved at LibriVox, very few can be recording in the belief that their book will never be downloaded. So I think it encourages readers to have a good catalogue system which makes it easier for listeners to find books they may like. Genres are an important part of this. (I also think some kind of ‘if you liked that, you may enjoy…’ recommendation system will be helpful, but that’s a different discussion. ;)

Also, our current Genres don’t really work for some classic library areas that people often expect to find here, such as Detective Fiction or True Crime. And are autobiographies in Biography or Memoir? How well would a non-native English speaker differentiate Humor and Comedy? (since I struggle myself.) Or Instruction and Advice, for that matter? And would you put a book on learning English into Instruction or Advice, or just Languages? Is the Genre ‘Children’, books about children, or for children? (Books on child-rearing are very different to Mother Goose.) Is Literature of any use at all, since it’s rather “in the eye of the beholder”? Ditto the Genre “Fiction” which ought to be already covered by the Category. We have Epistolary Fiction, but where do we put books of non-fictional letters? What definition of Romance is being used (we do, after all, have a Romance of Rubber in the catalogue!) Are all catalogers using all these terms in consistent ways?

I don’t have a definite answer to any of this — it needs some major discussion! But I think a piece of the puzzle is given an essay by Clay Shirky, who talks about how to sensibly arrange virtual objects, avoiding the perils of real-world organisation. (Hence, some “there is no shelf” musings on Twitter. We might get some support from thinking about the problem in terms of physical library cataloging, but it’s not the whole answer, as we can see from Shirky’s list of popular library system pitfalls.)

I’m wondering about tagging books — having the reader and prooflistener do the initial tagging, which might look a lot like our current genres (or the LoC categories at Gutenberg) and then opening the system up to the general public to tag also (but with the major limitor that no tag appears until it’s been entered a certain number of times by different IP addresses. This would avoid things getting tagged “rubbish narration” or “horrid background noise” or the random like “vote for X” or spam (you don’t need examples of this one.)

Finally, I’d like to chuck into the mix, the representation of other languages. It’s very important to me that a book in a particular language has its catalogue summary in that language (with an English translation if wanted.) It would be lovely to be able to use Genre in one’s own language too. I realise our current hard-skeleton of Genres lends itself to this better than a big flexible system, but anyway. We have an increasing number of books in languages other than English, and encouraging listeners for those languages will result in more readers for those languages.

Hence, a big ol’ fundraising drive. There’s a specific target – $20,000; and in the first three days of the drive, we’ve raised about half of that! So, we still need a few more pennies in the pot. If you’re a satisfied LibriVox listener, please consider sending a little something to the Internet Archive, stating that it’s a “donation for LibriVox”. LibriVox is not an official entitity, doesn’t have a bank account or any kind of formal legal status … hence the Internet Archive (who host our files) managing the money side of this for us.

Here’s how the money’s going to be spent:

• to cover hosting costs for our website (about $5,000/year)*, which includes:
  • the main LibriVox website & blog;
  • the forum;
  • the wiki;
  • the catalog;
  • a whole lot of back-end software to host and process audio before it goes to the Internet Archive
  • but does NOT include hosting our finished audio files which is done by The Internet Archive at archive.org
• to redesign the site and improve its accessibility
• to make the LibriVox catalog easier for listeners to use
• to make the management software easier for admins to use

We are sincerely hoping that $20K will keep everything running for three years at least, including some room to keep on growing!

* See the main donation page for more information on how this is being spent, and why this probably ISN’T something that we can get “much cheaper somewhere else”.

I have donated already, and if you haven’t, and would like to — just click through to the LibriVox page that explains the process. The most important thing is to note, somewhere, that it IS a donation for LibriVox! Not that the Internet Archive in itself is not a worthy cause, but that’s for another day.

P.S. Neither LibriVox, nor the Internet Archive, will store the emails of those donating: no spam threat there!

P.P.S. LibriVox’s Official Announcement, read by Ruth Golding: Download audio file (librivox_needs_your_help_rg.mp3)

Download audio file (whatkatydidnext_05_coolidge.mp3)
(24:26)

There’s also a new podcast out … I was sent an interesting contribution for the 2009-retrospective by Nicholas, which inspired me to do an entire show on the subject of actively developing resources for language-learning at LibriVox. It’s already a great place to find lots of recordings in many different languages, often by native speakers with varied accents, to help ‘train the ear’. However, we’ve also been working on Primers, Grammars and other intructional material, in several languages, to help people learn. The podcast includes an introduction to the subject, a perspective from Leni who’s recording a Portuguese primer, some samples from different books — and most splendidly, the slight downside of recording books over 100 years old … you’ll be learning how to ask your coachman how long the horses will need to rest, and how to request sealing wax and a light (for sending your postal cards!) Availle quotes from a German/English text, what a hoot!

Lest that put people off, Leni also mentioned this, and notes that most of the book she’s working on is as good today as it was when it was written — even in places you wouldn’t expect!

Download audio file (librivox_community_podcast_110.mp3)
(20:21)

Download audio file (beverlyofgraustark_04_mccutcheon.mp3)
(17m 24s)
Chapter 04 – The Ragged Retinue

http://librivox.org/beverly-of-graustark-by-george-barr-mccutcheon/

I’ve been recording a few other collaborative chapters, but nothing else has popped out into the catalogue yet. Mainly, though, I’ve working on a podcast duo — one looking back at 2009 (completed & released) and one looking forward to 2010 (due this Thursday). Hoping to receive a few more contributions for the 2010 one, since it’s a little short as it stands. The request-post is in the forum here, if you’re interested.

Finally, apologies to people subscribed to the RSS feed here, if old posts popped up all day yesterday marked as new! I had a big clearout of catagories, added some logical new ones, and did some behind-the-scenes tidying and planning. In 2010, I’m intending to write here more often, about the process of making audiobooks at home, LibriVoxing generally, and about the public domain. (And hopefully not use that as a way of procrastinating over producing actual audio, too!)

I’ve been working on my solo recording of Anna Sewell’s “Autobiography of a Horse”, Black Beauty, all summer, as its short chapters and positive attitude were a pleasant change from the intense modern non-fiction book I was recording for Audible (not yet released.) Black Beauty was catalogued at the start of the month, and is averaging 30 downloads a day, which isn’t bad going for a book which has previously been recorded for LibriVox.

Listen to Chapter 1 here:
Download audio file (blackbeauty_01_sewell.mp3)
5:03min (128kbps)

Then there was a poem which I found for the LibriVox Weekly Poetry reading. This is more of a challenge than you’d think; finding a shortish poem, by an author who died more than 70 years ago (to maximise the countries in which their work is in the public domain) and which is in some way interesting for multiple readers to try recording, and hopefully, that then has differences in the interpretations that’ll appeal to listeners. Down the Bayou by Mary Ashley Townsend fits many of these criteria, to my mind. I did find I had to check I knew how to say “bayou” correctly, but once I’d done that, I was away! (Along with 11 others. :)
Download audio file (downthebayou_townsend_cs.mp3)
1:15min (128kbps)

There are three other poems, pending cataloguing … that should happen shortly, since both collections are nearly full. I’ve not read poetry for a while, so it’s been really nice to come back to it.

And finally, lady pirates! Yes, my long-ago-read chapter on the “Adventures And Heroism Of Mary Read” has now been entered into the catalogue, and you can hear it as part of The Pirates Own Book by Charles Ellms (Authentic Narratives of the Most Celebrated Sea Robbers)! Or here:

Download audio file (piratesownbook_26_ellms.mp3)
10:04min (128kbps)

I have a few other things very close to finishing … this will have been a super-productive month, all in all!

Of those 2,500, 359 are in languages other than English (14%). In fact, there are 24 other languages represented by at least one entire work … not to mention LOTS MORE languages which are held within ‘multi-lingual’ collections.

Contributing to those recordings have been 2,816 individuals, who didn’t think that this was too crazy an idea, and went for it with a microphone — and an uncounted number more who supported the readers with organisation, proof-listening, help with summaries and cover art and simple cheering-on.

I’m happy to be part of such a great project and love working with so many wonderful people from around the world … and if by some crazy chance you haven’t yet visited the catalogue, then may I present:

Basic search for totally FREE, no strings, no signups, no download limit audiobooks: http://librivox.org/newcatalog/

Search by genre: http://librivox.org/newcatalog/genres.php

Search by language, reader and other options: http://librivox.org/newcatalog/visitor_advanced.php