Just wondering do any of you listen to audiobooks instead of or as well as reading? I personally don't have an actual preference to it. Occasionally if the voice actors are good an audiobook can be more like listening to one of those old time radio shows, a good one that is. (I'm a fan of OTR). The Ender books particularly have good voice actors. It isn't very common, or at least I haven't found it to be, that an audiobook has more than one voice actor. The Ender audiobooks have several voice actors and different voices for each character including accents. This coupled with unique forwards and afterwards by OSC make investing in the audiobooks very worthwhile for any fans of the Enderverse. Just a suggestion.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
There are many of us on here that are Audible users.
I love the new whispersync capability between Kindle ebooks and Audible. I always listen in my car, and love being able to pick up right where I left off before bed. Some of the deals are amazing to. Robert J Sawyer's newest book can be purchased as an ebook and audio book for the combined price of the hard back by itself in most independent book stores. I also paid around $10 total for Joe Hill's Heart Shaped Box for both formats.
I have started to get into Wil Wheaton's narrations. Jim Dale's reading of Harry Potter is a truly magical experience. Frank Muller's readings have also been great.
Also, back to Robert J Sawyer, his WWW series was wonderfully done with multiple readers for different characters as well. One character in the book, the "conscious computer program" chose the voice of the person reading for him (Mark Vietor) as his voice in the novel. So you were truly hearing how the author actually meant for it to sound.
Posted by stilesbn (Member # 11809) on :
I'm a fan of Michael Kramer. He did all the Wheel of Time Series as well as all of Brandon Sanderson's books.
I've generally found the readers on Audible to be quite good readers. In fact the only bad experiences I've had with audio books has been with books I got from sources other than Audible.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
I'm listening to Kramer read Wheel of Time and greatly enjoying it. Stephan Rudnicki does fantastic work with Ender's Game and Enchantment.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
I am what you call an A1 audible member. The kind that Audible user that they know will buy into deals on their site, maintain my subscription, and pass on the gospel to my friends.
They actually have special phone numbers for people like me. True story.
Posted by Sa'eed (Member # 12368) on :
One of my favorite book experiences was listening to "Great Expectations" on audiobook. Unfortunately I can't remember which recording it was! It helped too that it was my first experience of that story.
I think now with many libraries you can digitally check out audiobooks. How cool!
Posted by madvogon (Member # 12938) on :
In the past 4 years, I have depended on Audible, as I am recently blind. The only mistakes we have made with Audible were two badly abridged versions of The Ship Who Searched and The Generation Warriors. Both were pruned with a battle axe. Most of the books I have gotten in the past few years are well produced. Some memorable performances are Robert Charles Wilson's Spin/Axis/Vortex, highly recommended in any format.
My only gripe with Audible has more to do with audiobook production than anything else. I really hate when Audible Frontiers shuffles readers within a series. This sometimes happens with other producers as well. I truly miss Cynthia Holloway reading Anita Blake.
We did have problems importing downloads from Brilliance into iTunes, but customer support dealt with the issue by exchanging our purchase for a disk copy.
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: I am what you call an A1 audible member. The kind that Audible user that they know will buy into deals on their site, maintain my subscription, and pass on the gospel to my friends.
They actually have special phone numbers for people like me. True story.
Audible certainly has my number here. They keep offering 3 credit deals and I keep buying! OTOH, when you consider the expansion of Audible in the past year, assuming no new books come out, my 2 paultry credits a month would keep me busy for the next 4 years. I am particularly pleased with the addition of Rick Shelley and William R. Forstchein, especially the out of print Ice Prophet trilogy.
Finally, for those of use who have been looking for the missing Stephen R. Donaldson books, it turns out that Scott Brick, the reader, owns the rights to some volumes, specifically the first trilogy and Fatal Revenant.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Some years ago Audible offered me a blowout deal that don't think has been offered since. Something like 24 credits at once for like 150 dollars. I took it. Still haven't burned through all my purchases from that era, but it was worth it.
quote:I am recently blind
May I ask how you access and post on Hatrack, and how you web surf generally? I'm not up on brail and voice implementation for web browsers. Is it any good? Or do you just have someone to help you?
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
Yeah seriously, how do you use the interwebs if you're blind?
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
You should all read Sawyer's WWW series. The main character is a blind girl who does just that.
Posted by Vasslia Cora (Member # 7981) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Some years ago Audible offered me a blowout deal that don't think has been offered since. Something like 24 credits at once for like 150 dollars. I took it. Still haven't burned through all my purchases from that era, but it was worth it.
Last summer, Audible had a flaw in its programming that if you rapidly clicked the purchase button for the 3 credit sale, you could buy multiple sets of 3 for that sale instead of just the usual 3 credits. (you still paid the for all of them, just got the sale multiple times) The first time it was an accident, I end up with 9 credits. The next 2 times it was on purpose, then they fixed the bug. Oh well I still got somewhere around 18 credits out of it.
I would love 24 credits for that price, its a lot of money at once and I would spend it way to fast for it to be reasonable but still.
As for audiobooks, there are a lot of factors but I am noticing a significant improvement in quality; readers are getting better (or the great readers are just getting more jobs), editing is becoming a large priority (there were several older audiobooks that the editing was so bad I almost stopped reading, one of them was book 9 of the wheel of time, to be 9 books in and ready to give up because of editing is just wrong).
I'm a huge Audible fan, I've listened to well over 1000 hours in the last 6 months alone with their app. I love reading books, audible just gives me more options, I wholly endorse it. (And do I want that A1 status!)
Also a big fan of Sawyer's WWW series
Posted by DDDaysh (Member # 9499) on :
I usually love audio books. That said, occasionally you'll get one that just doesn't work. Either the narrator is bad, or the recording is so old that the sound quality is just terrible.
I purchased all the Chronicle of Narnia books before listening to a sample - BIG MISTAKE! I really dislike the narration for that series.
Posted by Lupus (Member # 6516) on :
I really enjoy audible. Like Stephan, I use the whyspersync feature where I can switch back and forth between my kindle and my audiobook. You can also frequently get audiobooks for dirt cheap if you have the kindle version, I have purchased several for under 5.00
So far my favorite audiobook has been wise man's fear, but under the dome was very good as well. I have been reading/listening to Kim Harrison's Hollows books and have enjoyed them as well.
Posted by jkcook (Member # 12991) on :
I just got my first two books and what a mistake. If you don't have fast internet, it literally takes days to download the books. Then, the readers did not sound at all like they were "supposed to" from my reading of the book. I far prefer the monotone text to voice of my Kindle that leaves the sounds of the characters up to my imagination where it's supposed to be. It's as bad as watching a movie where the characters don't look like what you've imagined them to be. I'm sure I'll have the same dislike of the Ender's Game movie, watching teenagers when they're supposed to be six to eight year olds. I like listening to books on my Kindle, but I'll stick to its text to voice feature from now on. Well, except that OSC was greedy this time and didn't have it turned on. Now I know to resist and just read it if it's not available.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
Well, welcome to the board. Sorry you didn't like the audio books. I can't imagine how slow your connection is if it takes days to download the books. Are you on dial up? Even on DSL it would take a lot less than an hour.
I personally can't stand the text to speech sound, I find it very distracting. But to each there own.
Posted by jkcook (Member # 12991) on :
We have "lite DSL" which is slightly faster than an ISDN dial up. Sadly, Deutsche Telekom does not love its rural customers.
Posted by Lupus (Member # 6516) on :
Wow. I can't imagine being without my high speed Internet. You do have to look at reviews to see how people like the readers. I have seen some reviews complaining about bad narration, and I avoid them.
It can be challenging when you first start listening to a story because the voices will never be exactly what you expect. However I have found that a good narration can really grow on you.
Posted by Jake (Member # 206) on :
Something that I'm finding really irritating about audible (which I'm very new to; I started a subscription late last month): I've been looking at a lot of works in translation. When I open up the page for a given work, I often find that not only are the reviews are for non-audiobook copies of other translations of the books.
That's...pretty much useless.
[Edited for clarity]
[ May 06, 2013, 04:20 PM: Message edited by: Jake ]
Posted by millernumber1 (Member # 9894) on :
I prefer reading, but since I have several commutes, I've added audiobooks to my repertoire of things I do. I quite like OSC's audiobooks - the multiple voices help a lot, especially with the great talent they choose.
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Oh well I still got somewhere around 18 credits out of it.