COMPLETE: Call of the Wild, by Jack London

[Alan Anderson]

I recently d/l Call of the wild as my first sample of librivox and have these comments.
1. I found the changing of readers in different chapters disconcerting and sometimes difficult to understand. I would think that trying to keep it to one reader would be best, if possible.
2. Several of the readers had problems with their mics and especially chapter 7 had many loud pops, I mean really loud.
3. Chapter 7 had a accent plus a high pitch voice that made listening to her while driving quite difficult.

While I applaud this effort, I probably will go back to buying audio books to play in my car. Does librivox have a rating system to let people know about the quality and listenability of the completed books? Will there be any efforts to go back and re-record poor chapters? I might want to support this effort in the future but would want to record the whole book, not just a chapter or two. If I were to make the effort I would want it to be a quality work.

[kri]

I recently d/l Call of the wild as my first sample of librivox and have these comments.
1. I found the changing of readers in different chapters disconcerting and sometimes difficult to understand. I would think that trying to keep it to one reader would be best, if possible.
2. Several of the readers had problems with their mics and especially chapter 7 had many loud pops, I mean really loud.
3. Chapter 7 had a accent plus a high pitch voice that made listening to her while driving quite difficult.

While I applaud this effort, I probably will go back to buying audio books to play in my car. Does librivox have a rating system to let people know about the quality and listenability of the completed books? Will there be any efforts to go back and re-record poor chapters? I might want to support this effort in the future but would want to record the whole book, not just a chapter or two. If I were to make the effort I would want it to be a quality work.

Alan, I think that perhaps Librivox is not the place for you. It's difficult for me to say this, but many of the things that you find as problems of Librivox recordings are part of this project.

We make it a policy not to turn away recordings for any reason except technical. This means excessive background noise, many mistakes, unable to hear or understand, etc. The popping sounds are...a difficult issue. Unless they detract from understanding we don't refuse a recording that has them. We will, however, attempt to educate readers in ways to prevent the popping sounds, and improve their overall recordings.

We do not turn away readers because we may not like their voice, or anything of the kind. It is inevitable that you find reader styles, or voices that you don't like in the Librivox projects that you listen to. I tried to listen to a project in our catalog the other day (one I won't name) and I couldn't stand listening to the reader. The reading style was very difficult for me to listen to, and I had to stop. However, I still value this person's contribution to Librivox, and others will likely have a different opinion than I have.

All projects that are on the catalog page as complete, and uploaded to Archive.org will not be re-recorded. However, we do allow and even encourage in some measure duplicate recordings. Some day when Librivox has a multitude of recordings, the ideal would be to have multiple readers having done their version of a recording. Perhaps even a solo and collaborative version of each work. This way we could accomodate for different preferences in recordings.

Regarding the multiple readers: That is part of what makes this project what it is. We would not be able to put nearly so many complete books out for completion as we do if we didn't have the collaborative projects. I know that many volunteers wouldn't bother recording a thing if they had to committ to a whole book. I wouldn't, or at least I would be very hesitant to. You may note that the catalog page does have a little note (solo) beside the projects that have been read by one reader.

There is a review system at Archive.org, but we don't really do anything with that. You are welcome to create a username at Archive.org, and review our projects to your hearts content. The catalog page for each project links to its Archive.org page. Keep in mind, this project is very much in its infancy. We do have aspirations towards a database project to organize all our completed works, which may include some sort of ratings system. It's still in the planning stages really, though.

Alan I would definitely encourage you to contribute to this project. We applaud those who make an effort to improve the quality of their recording. We do have many solo projects that are started, and this is definitely an option for you.

I think it is important for people to remember what Librivox is not. We are not a group of professional audio artists. Some of us have very ad hoc set-ups to create recordings, while others have quite professional studios. The purpose to give to the public free recordings of works that we love, and in some ways something is better than nothing. With that said, don't think that we don't strive for quality.

[thistlechick]

Please see: http://librivox.org/feedback/

Thanks for listening ... and feel free to jump in and start recording works in the public domain. We're happy to have you read entire books for us. Enjoy! =)

Here's another page that gives you a good idea how to begin: http://librivox.org/wiki/moin.cgi/NewbieGuideToRecording