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by smeej 753 days ago
Is it possible to switch back and forth between the written text and the audio, like Amazon's Whispersync? I prefer reading with my eyes when I can (especially on my ereader, so with pagination instead of scrolling), but I would love to be able to flip narration on when I need to set the book down to do something like wash my dishes, then pick the book back up when I'm done.

I've been looking for something that would let me synchronize Librivox recordings with Project Gutenberg epub files, but as much as I love the Librivox volunteers for their contributions, a lot of the recordings are such low audio quality that they're not fun to listen to. This would be a big step up, and there's no copyright worries for this use case because the works are in the public domain!

3 comments

I've used Storyteller to create an epub book with Media Overlay but not sure it works in all ebook readers. It worked in Calibre.

https://smoores.gitlab.io/storyteller/docs/what-is-this/

My ereader is an Android tablet under the hood. I don't know of any apps that can do this on Android, but I can go hunting!
Storyteller itself does have an app, just requires you to be hosting the service: https://smoores.gitlab.io/storyteller/docs/reading-your-book...

It also says that BookFusion can read the files it produces: https://smoores.gitlab.io/storyteller/docs/reading-your-book...

I use the app Moon+ Reader that can do this. It uses the built-in text-to-speech engine so if someone makes another engine with more natural speech, it can plug in seamlessly.
I’m making such tool, you can both read and listen, although reader functionality is very simple right now

App is Listenly.io