Monsters: text-to-speech audiobook · 1:44pm Jul 28th, 2017
So this is a thing now. User going by Hexatona recently told me about this: it's a complete audiobook of Monsters, using text-to-speech. Obviously it's no replacement for a "proper" audiobook with a real narrator, but I feel it still has its uses; if you just need to listen to Monsters while on a long car trip or something, this will work just fine.
In fact, this is probably as well made as a text-to-speech thing can be. It's not just some dumb "text in, voice out" kind of thing. In Hexatona own words:
I go through and fix as many spelling mistakes as I can, make new words pronounced properly in-engine, add pauses between sections and in dialogue for added comprehension, emphasize italicized text, and best of all change the pitch between dialogue and narration so it's always obvious when people are talking!
So the point is, it's actually a pretty neat thing, probably a lot better than you'd expect. Of course, at the end of the day, it's still "just" text to speech, so you know what you're in for.
You can find part 1 here. The rest of the fic is on Hexatona's channel, too. If this sort of thing catches your interest at all, I encourage you to browse the channel a bit more; there are more fics available in a similar format, including my original "Twilight Sparkle: Night Shift" to which "Monsters" is a prequel.
For a long time now I've been looking into "properly misspelling" the text of a fic so that it sounds better using a text-to-speech engine. Some things come out really good but others are difficult to get it to do and not either mispronounce or sound really robotic.
It's one of my many side distractions when I should be writing. XD
Sweat! I think it's finally time for me to dig in to Night Shift.