Malazan Empire: Azath Vitr (D'ivers - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

JPK, on 27 September 2024 - 05:51 PM, said:

Sure. Michael Page (who does the latter MBotF books) is one of my favorites---especially his performances for the Gentleman Bastard series. I like Lister too despite his flaws. Same goes for Anne Flosnik's Rainwild Chronicles. Steven Pacey's great, particularly for the Abercrombie books. Of course Roy Dotrice is my favorite... because he's dead now and ready to be reanimated by AI! (Kidding about that last one---well, the "because" part, that is... hopefully his estate will sign over his vocal likeness, at least initially for other excellent performers to transform their own nuanced performances into his distinctive voices while maintaining most of the nuance.)

I haven't heard any fully AI generated audiobook performances that I like as much as a good human performance. As I've mentioned many times here, I don't like it when audiobook performers sound like they have no idea what they're saying and seem to be just reading off words with minimal preparation and without bothering to redo parts that come out crappily. While AI singing has impressed me with its emulation of emotion that even seems to fit the lyrics, AI generated audiobook performances that aren't directly based on a human performance of the same text (as in the case of voice changers, like the one in the video) have not impressed me yet.

Tiste Simeon, on 27 September 2024 - 06:33 PM, said:

It's very obvious that you didn't bother reading what I wrote after "AI" (... much less listen to the first 30 seconds of the video, which demonstrate that the accent changing technology has already gotten pretty good). Really not trying to troll you. Oh well. Guess I shouldn't have bothered demonstrating how AI can solve the problem you were talking about. It should soon be able to automatically go back through any audiobook and change any voice you want it to into almost any voice you like.

Tiste Simeon, on 26 September 2024 - 06:15 PM, said:

Wonder if AI accent changers will get good enough to be worth using retroactively on audiobooks. Like an option you could select. (Yes these already exist, including some that do it in real-time with negligible latency. And yes if they do get good enough to be used widely in media then actors who are capable of good accent work without AI assistance will probably become rarer... and in the audiobook realm they seem pretty rare already.)



Could also be great for doing character voices more generally---especially gender swaps.

I remember liking Page's Tehol.

The audiobook performer for Mitchell's Gilgamesh seemed pretty decent, for the style he's doing---about 4/5ths "elderly dramatic storyteller addressing an audience" and 1/5th some 20th century Shakespearean actor theatricality (but with an American accent, and not that superfast style...). I studied ancient Mesopotamian ritual theater a little (what little is known or speculated) and his performance IMO misses the ritual and spiritual aspects of it.

... that is, he seemed pretty decent... until I heard the voice he does for Gilgamesh. Yikes. High-pitched, clipped, speaking rapidly, with a bit of a strange accent that doesn't remind me of any nationality in particular (well, at least there's nothing to definitively mess up---unless that's supposed to be an Iraqi accent?).

And some sections are extremely repetitive, but he performs them in a slow and very boring way that's simultaneously lacking in the sorts of ritualistic rhythm or intonation that might make the repetition somewhat entrancing. If he wanted to go for more of a "dynamic storyteller" style he could have at least varied the performance of the repetitions a bit---or if he was reluctant to add to much "interpretation", he could have sped up on each iteration to acknowledge that the reader just heard the same exact paragraph five times, as well as add a bit of excitement and a sense of anticipation, like it's building up to something.

The text has shocked me repeatedly (mostly just because of how little of the story I remembered) and made me lol a couple of times, though it's hard to tell whether the humor was intended by the ancient authors (or the translator). For example,

One thing I don't like about the translation (and which may partly be a product of its 2004 publication date, back when there was still massive opposition to gay marriage in the United States) is that it downplays (so far) the homoerotic elements, which seem pretty clear in some of the ancient texts, and make the story make more sense:

Some other choice bits:

I love the opening sentence of Mitchell's Gilgamesh:

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lol, Gilgamesh already saw it all, so all literature that came afterwards is just redundant.

Or: the rest of human literature is just footnotes to Gilgamesh.

Was surprised to realize that "Uruk" is (obviously---once you realize it) the name that eventually became "Iraq".

Alternate translation:

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Literal translation (whoa this one is actually my favorite):

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Had high hopes for Audible's The Boys: Dramatized Adaptation... until I saw that it's by the same group (Graphic Audio) that did those other terrible dramatized adaptations. In this one the narrator's voice isn't even pleasant, and his intonation and timing are frequently off. As if he doesn't know what he's saying. (And it turns out that---at least in this case---the adaptation of the graphic novel (or of an intermediary imageless novelization?) has a lot of third-person-narrational blather. "A panel is a thousand and one"...) On top of that, the accents are bad. Looked up the actors and they're the same bunch of horrible hacks (in mostly bad ways) from the other awful adaptations.

Now on to... IDK what, going to pick one of the below for my final four hours or so of Audible Plus:

Gilgamesh: A New Translation by Stephen Mitchell - came out after 2000 so I'm pretty sure I haven't read it

The Jade Setter of Janloon (standalone prequel to a series that's in the depths of my "to listen to" pile)

Zelazny (haven't read anything by him yet iirc---well at least nothing I remember):
The Dream Master (interesting premise though I'm leery of the "psychoanalyst" part)
Creatures of Light and Darkness

Botanical Folk Tales of Britain and Ireland

Walking to Aldebaran (Adrian Tchaikovsky, another one on my TLT pile)

The Cretaceous Past (by Cixin Liu, author of The Three-Body Problem)

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lol

From the author's footnotes:

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Hmm, while I don't doubt that it could be useful for some forms of data, maybe even more "effective" than graphs and tables by some measures, but I'm very skeptical about the general claim... not sure if he's kidding or not. "This person's eyes are x % as wide as this other person's"? Have they tried it with penises?