For audio book, will it be fine to use a digital recorder?

[CollinSK]

Good day~ I created an Audio book of my travel essay and I used a digital recorder in British accent because I thought the native speaker's accent would be better than mine although I speak intermediate level of English, lived in Toronto, Canada before.
Digitization has advantages and disadvantages. Will it be better to use my poor English for the recording or to use the digital recorder as it is for now. Please kindly let me know your opinion. Thanks for your time.

-Collin.

*With my voice

*With mobile App voice

 

[Robo]

Good day~ I created an Audio book of my travel essay and I used a digital recorder in British accent because I thought the native speaker's accent would be better than mine although I speak intermediate level of English, lived in Toronto, Canada before.
Digitization has advantages and disadvantages. Will it be better to use my poor English for the recording or to use the digital recorder as it is for now. Please kindly let me know your opinion. Thanks for your time.

Personally I always find those 'robot' voices hard to listen to.
Is your own English that bad? I would think it better.
Don't worry about accent or errors in grammar. It's better than a 'robot.

Another option, is to have it professionally 'voiced'.

It's actually not too expensive. Depending on the number of words of course!
If you look on https://www.fiverr.com/
Hmmm. The cheapest I saw with a quick look was 10c a word.
It's another option.......

Or ask someone here to narrate it for you

 

[Mark Day]

I'm with Robo, your own voice would be much better, the automated voice is very hard to listen to and you easily lose interest. Try it out you might surprise yourself.

 

[CollinSK]

Personally I always find those 'robot' voices hard to listen to.
Is your own English that bad? I would think it better.
Don't worry about accent or errors in grammar. It's better than a 'robot.

Another option, is to have it professionally 'voiced'.

It's actually not too expensive. Depending on the number of words of course!
If you look on https://www.fiverr.com/
Hmmm. The cheapest I saw with a quick look was 10c a word.
It's another option.......

Or ask someone here to narrate it for you

Aha, the web site is like upwork site. It has 39,138 words. This means 391,380 cent = 3,913.8 usd. hmm. I will consider it. It is a good advice for other simple books for the future.

At least, I could see that human voice might be better than "robot' voice. Thanks for the advice.

 

[CollinSK]

I'm with Robo, your own voice would be much better, the automated voice is very hard to listen to and you easily lose interest. Try it out you might surprise yourself.

Thanks for the opinion. I gotta make time to create audio files soon.

 

[C clearly]

I think you need to ask yourself what you want to achieve with your book, who your intended audience is, and how to engage them in your story.

I found it slow and ponderous to listen to that voice and would not do it for more than a few minutes. Why do you want an audio book rather than a printed/e-book?

If you are doing this for family and friends, they would rather hear your own voice. If you think there is a larger market, be aware that there are many many self-published accounts of people's camino experiences!

 

[CollinSK]

I think you need to ask yourself what you want to achieve with your book, who your intended audience is, and how to engage them in your story.

I found it slow and ponderous to listen to that voice and would not do it for more than a few minutes. Why do you want an audio book rather than a printed/e-book?

If you are doing this for family and friends, they would rather hear your own voice. If you think there is a larger market, be aware that there are many many self-published accounts of people's camino experiences!

Good point. I should ask myself what I can achieve by the audio book. Right. I need time to think. Thank you~

 

[Robo]

Good point. I should ask myself what I can achieve by the audio book. Right. I need time to think. Thank you~

You could break it up into a series of 30 minute 'podcasts' ?

But as @C clearly says. What is the purpose behind it. Good place to start!

 

[CollinSK]

You could break it up into a series of 30 minute 'podcasts' ?

But as @C clearly says. What is the purpose behind it. Good place to start!

Yep. I just simply want to share the experience of the journey with people regardless of languages because there was no language barrier during the Camino journey with friends.

 

[Rick of Rick and Peg]

You want to generate excitement, or at least interest. You need a real voice to do that. An actor or voice artist could do that but I suggest using your own voice. This may work okay for an audience of native English speakers but to help them along or for non-native English speakers you could have always on subtitles or maybe indicate early on that closed captioning (CC) can be turned on.

Good luck.

 

[CollinSK]

You want to generate excitement, or at least interest. You need a real voice to do that. An actor or voice artist could do that but I suggest using your own voice. This may work okay for an audience of native English speakers but to help them along or for non-native English speakers you could have always on subtitles or maybe indicate early on that closed captioning (CC) can be turned on.

Good luck.

Subtitle is a good idea.

I have checked the traffic of some videos on Youtube. I tried Korean audio book, English Audio book. Although English Audio book has a robot voice, it still creates more traffic. Interesting.

And can you guess what kind of videos which make the most traffic are? The answer is videos without voice, but only with photos. Hmm. This is still my homework to find out why. Probably, general people might be already exhausted with noise or sound surrounded. You can also check. Thanks for advice sincerely.

 

[CollinSK]

I found out her voice is better than mine although it is 'robotized'. I guess "sharing" memories is the stronger motive to make a video with the help of mobile apps than "hesitating to share" these days. I will keep thinking a better solution. Thank you all for the advice. I appreciate it.

 

[CollinSK]

Dear Camino friends,

Good morning, I am trying to make a Free Audio book on Youtube regarding 32 day's walking, 775 km, French way.
Please kindly let me know which version is better, with my voice in POOR English or with the voice from mobile App. Thanks for your opinion. Have a good day~

-Collin.

*With my voice

*Audio reading application

 

[gerardcarey]

I think your voice is better by far. Whatever you decide please advise us when your project is complete and from where we can access it.
Regards
Gerard

 

[CollinSK]

I think your voice is better by far. Whatever you decide please advise us when your project is complete and from where we can access it.
Regards
Gerard

I presume It will take 32 days because I walked for 32 days and I am thinking to record 1 video one day hopefully after I collect opinions from people. I will share it definitely~

 

[FamPed]

I think your own voice is much nicer to listen to. The "robot" voice is hard to listen to and made me loose interest, I turned it off almost immediately.

 

[CollinSK]

I think your own voice is much nicer to listen to. The "robot" voice is hard to listen to and made me loose interest, I turned it off almost immediately.

Yep, now I am thinking to make 32 day's videos with my voice although in very POOR English.

 

[Mark Day]

Your voice

 

[C clearly]

Yes, your voice makes it more personal and therefore more interesting.

You didn't ask for advice/comments on this, but I think that the final result will be very long. I realize how editing to reduce length can take a lot of effort! It is famously known that it takes more time to write a short and concise piece than a long one.

 

[CollinSK]

Yes, your voice makes it more personal and therefore more interesting.

You didn't ask for advice/comments on this, but I think that the final result will be very long. I realize how editing to reduce length can take a lot of effort! It is famously known that it takes more time to write a short and concise piece than a long one.

Good advice about the length of Audio/video book. I will try 10 minutes +- per audio/video book. In addition, I am currently using a simple mobile app to edit videos. I will consider a desktop or laptop in the future. Thanks for your tip again. Buen Camino~

 

[CollinSK]

Your voice

Sounds lovely~

 

[peregrino_tom]

Hi Collin, I think your voice is much more interesting and authentic than the bot.
I would say you just need to work more on the audio quality to get a dry sound. At the moment there's a little bit of the acoustic of the room, created by the distance of the microphone, and this can make listening tiring after a while. Try a proper good quality vocal microphone that is set up closer to your mouth.
BTW, great project!
Cheers, tom

 

[CollinSK]

Hi Collin, I think your voice is much more interesting and authentic than the bot.
I would say you just need to work more on the audio quality to get a dry sound. At the moment there's a little bit of the acoustic of the room, created by the distance of the microphone, and this can make listening tiring after a while. Try a proper good quality vocal microphone that is set up closer to your mouth.
BTW, great project!
Cheers, tom

Thanks for advice. I started checking a microphone to use my laptop or my mobile phone. So far, my Galaxy phone works fine. I am collecting info about the microphone from my friends. I might need a clipper to hold it. Thank you again.

Cheers, Collin.