[bookshare-discuss] N L S Narators thread continued.
- From: "duane iverson" <diverson@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:58:28 -0500
I would have written Karen Lewellen off list except I don't have her email
address. It might be in the message I am quoting from but outlook says "from
read only Karen Lewellen"
In any case.
Hi Karen.
In a message earlier in March you wrote "My Daisy experiences have not been
great. Ellipsis I may be missing what is so good about the sound quality.
Ellipsis compressed formats like MP3 are poor in quality when compared with
real
traditional audio mixing, or even.aif or .wav."
A few points.
1. I doubt that traditional CDs would be very practical. A CD recorded in *.cda
format is, I think, 74 minutes. I believe a 16 and 2/3 record is about 40
minutes per side just two long to fit on one CD. The Old 33 and 1/3 record
would fit, but imagine the impracticality of say The Rise and Fall of the Third
Reich which was on fifty-six records on CD. Yes, I know we did it back in the
day but that was "back in the day!"
2. more and more commercial CD players are coming with built in MP3 capability.
Your new car probably has a CD already that plays MP3's driven by the rise in
audio books. and the Bose Acoustic Wave, if you can afford that, has MP3
capability.
3. I have found DAISY audio books to be quite satisfactory. I have a victor
reader stream and have downloaded several talking books and talking magazines
from the NLS digital book pilot program. the quality is better then the
cassette versions of the same books and magazines. Admitededly that's not a
high standard, but so far it works. I have also read several DAISY books from
RFB and D using the book wizard reader from APH. In all cases the quality was
better then a cassette version of the same book. Some of these books were books
I had read on cassette so I could compare. Unfortunately RFB is rerecording
some of their older titles. This is not always good. RFB had some very talented
readers. In college I read Chawser in middle English read by a wonderful
professor somewhere. It would be a shame to lose that recording.
The quality of the recording on the old 16 and 2/3 or 33 and 1/3 records has
always been higher then anything ever achieved by the slow ips 4 track
cassettes NLS has used. If the masters of these records still exist then one
could re-press records and record from the newly minted vinyl. I believe in
many cases the masters still exist.
4. Once the file was recorded and cleaned up it would be Childs play to
transform the recording to what ever format one could wish. Let us say, for
example, you record a book and brake each chapter in to a separate MP3 file. If
the book has 32 chapters you would have 32 MP3 files. How hard would it be to
convert these in to daisy files if one wished.
5. MP3 files can be of quite good quality. you have to use a high sample rate.
I would suggest the same rate used by commercial music sellers such as ITUNES
but having done so you would have a good quality product. If I am anywhere
close to being right, you have about a one to six compression ratio. That is
you get the equivalent of about six CDs on one MP3 CD.
So in a Perfect World what should happen?
a foundation should be formed which cooperates with but (Please God) is NOT
part of the National Library Service. NLS will agree to make their old masters
available to the foundation.
Before we go much further with this, we are going to need a congressional fairy
god mother so we're going to have to get Senator Leghorn on our side. I don't
expect this set of suggestions to cost the government any money, but the
bureaurocracy will have to be persuaded to cooperate and the persuasion will
have to be done in such a manor that we get genuine cooperation not the
by-the-book perfectly executed Till-Hell-Freezes-Over kind of cooperation that
a bureaurocracy can be so good at.
The foundation could generate income by selling, chiefly to libraries and other
institutions but possibly commercially as well books with literary merit.
The sound and the Fury and to Kill a Mockingbird: The Iliad and All the Kings
Men:
The foundation only has to generate enough income to pay for the pressing of
the records. (Not an inexpensive problem I doubt not) and for some equipment
necessary for Curtis Deltzer Et Al to make this happen.
Ah To Sleep. Perhaps to Dream.
Sincerely Yours:
Duane Iverson
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