More for the mix:
Yes, indeed, it would be! At the same time, while so excited about all the new voices coming forward, I feel it’s not irrelevant to note that we shouldn’t necessarily take “human voice = better” as an assumed value. It will be better for many, but not necessarily others. As I have articulated elsewhere, for me personally, I prefer to listen to SCV’s Raveena above any human voice I’ve yet heard because I like its ‘personality-light’ quality and find that it helps me listen to the sutta and not the voice. Just speaking for myself, the greatest value humans bring is in the sharing of experience and understanding.
That said, it’s not an either/or thing, it’s wonderful to have both resources. However, one thing I would suggest, is that maybe it would be sensible to maximize our resources. The core of SCV is built on the segmented Pali texts. In a stroke of brilliance, Karl extended that to other Pali texts (so eg. I can listen to a translation by Bhikkhu Bodhi if it’s available on SC, as well as Bhante Sujato’s) and I can’t say how delighted I am he made this decision. But SCV does only cover Pali texts/translations. By my count there are 490 English translations of Agama texts, and to me it would add even more value to use human voices to start making some of these available to listen to as well, rather than in a way duplicate what already exists.
Another other floating item:
I was having a look at Anchor to see if they have any kind of ‘channel’ facility that would enable ‘shoot off series’. One podcast I thought worked very well was 50 Things That Made The Modern Economy. As indicated by the title, it was designed as a contained series that ended after 50 (well, 53, in fact) episodes. Still thinking of my “keep things manageable for the listener” point above, this might be a nice way to handle say a series on the Majjhima, or a theme or whatever under a broader umbrella of something like a “SC Sounds” channel. The one snag with this is that Anchor doesn’t work like that, and they encourage setting up multiple accounts. Of course, with proper, unified branding it should be pretty easy to create a channel-like effect.
One thing of particular attraction to me with the series idea is to essentially, eventually produce audio books for each of the 4 Nikayas. It was something I was actually going to ask Karl about with respect to the development of SCV, but maybe this would be a better way. I know that it’s a bit pathetic, but as I mentioned in some old thread on approaches to reading the Samyutta, much as in theory I’d love to read it (or one of the others) from cover to cover, my funny little mind just can’t cope with it. Now with SCV, that possibility has been opened up for me.
And ending on something completely random, in terms of human readings, has anyone already wondered about doing them with multiple voices (ie, a narrator—or “Ananda” I guess—and individual characters)?