Voice Options for Infinite Read Aloud

Hello, thank you so much for creating Voice. I’d love to be able to load large sections of the Samyutta or Anguttara Nikayas for a longer read aloud session. The Majjhima and Digha are fine since they are longer obviously. Or perhaps just an option to just have it keep reading aloud the next section in the particular Nikaya it is on. I saw something about a script for PC, but I just have a smartphone.
Thanks much : )

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Just tagging @karl_lew who is the developer for SC Voice. :anjal:

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Hello NibbanaHunter, thank you for your interest in Voice!

Are you aware of the Voice download option? You can enter a playlist into the search box, like for example “an1.1-627”—which is the entire book of the Ones of the Aṅguttara—click the down arrow to download it and save it on a device for listening.

I’ve never tried downloading on a mobile phone, however. Usually, if I want to listen to a Sutta offline, I download it on my computer and then put the file on an MP3 player or such. @karl_lew does the same, using his mobile phone for listening.

If you try to download very large portions of sound, however—like more than two hours of listening or so—you might get a time out message for downloading. It also depends on whether you want to include the Pali or not: including the Pali more than doubles the size of the sound file. Also select your audio format: OGG or Opus formats have one third of the size of MP3.

I just tried out to download DN 33 in bilingual mode, English and Pali, and unlike last time I tried such a thing, the downloader didn’t endlessly turn around, not coming to no end, but finished after a short time and gave me a sound file saying: “Playlist is too long to be played or playlist must be less than 180 min long.” Karl must have added this at some point, I haven’t encountered it yet—well done! :clap:

So you know, the limit is at 180 min. It’s not infinite. Is that enough for you? We’d love to hear about your experience with downloading on your smartphone, @NibbanaHunter!

And, btw, @karl_lew, I haven’t seen this audio message in the i18n file … could you please add it? Thanks!


I now still tried downloading the AN 1.1–627 playlist (this time Pali & German), and it built me in fact an audio file, but only until AN 1.50. Probably, if there is a reasonable break like the start of a new Sutta, it just includes part of the selected playlist and leaves out what is too much. And with a long Sutta like DN 33 (in particular in bilingual mode), this is not possible. But the file I got is less than an hour. It is about 50 min, and OGG format. So it may not be quite satisfying for you.

What you can always do, however, is playing a longer playlist without downloading, as long as you are connected to the internet.

BTW, your playlist doesn’t always have to be in order of the canon, but you can have any order you want. Just separate the Sutta IDs with a comma when typing them into the search box, like “SN21.8,Ud3.2,AN8.9”—which are the three Suttas with Venerable Nanda (and it definitely works better when typing the IDs without spaces). You can also find some explanations here under “Search by Sutta”. To access the “About Voice” explanation pages, click the “i” icon in the top right corner of Voice.

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Thank you for using Voice. We are always glad to hear from our users.

As Anagarika Sabbamitta mentions, Voice does have a download option. I use Voice downloads to hear, for example, DN34 with Pali/English. You can download up to 90 minutes of audio, which I simply upload to Dropbox for offline listening. You can also download multiple suttas by simply searching for a comma-separated list of sutta identifiers.

For online listening, I highly recommend Voice’s sister project, EBT-Site. EBT-Sites are designed for online as well as interactive listening. With one tap on the talking head, you can hear a segment. With a double tap, it will play to the end. And while it is playing you can tap any segment to skip ahead/behind or whatever you wish. EBT-Sites will auto-scroll so that you can read while you listen. This is quite a powerful experience since you will be experiencing the Dhamma with two sense fields–ear and eye. EBT-Sites can also be cloned for your own personal use for taking notes or writing Dhamma essays, etc.

:pray:

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Thank you karl_lew, I will check all this out, I’ll get more proficient at Voice eventually. :pray::pray::pray::man_bald:

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Thanks for all the info sabbamita. I’ll check all this out and get skilled in this soon. Yes, 180 or even 90 minutes is great. I’ve always used At Voice Reader and pulled PDF’s or EPUBs, but it was always just compilations of Nikayas, so I’m looking forward to going through the entire Samyutta and Anguttara with audio :pray::pray::pray::man_bald:

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WOW! That is really cool :grinning:, I didn’t know you could do all this with voice!

Thank you @sabbamitta and @karl_lew :anjal:

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Glad you like it. Probably, the instructions on the “About Voice” pages could do with some update—there hasn’t obviously been anybody who found the time to do it … :thinking: :see_no_evil:

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When I search for AN1.1-627 the results only show 5 of them, up to An1.51.

Is there a way for the voice to not include the Pali words?

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Hi, hit the cog settings on the top right, hit ‘search results’, then pick 10, 25, or 50. Then hit ‘translation’ and uncheck 'show pali text’s- I think that will help :slightly_smiling_face::pray:🧘‍♂:man_bald:

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Which browser does it work in? I tried brave, Chrome, Edge, Safari, all doesn’t give me the ability to change the settings.

Edit:

Ok, got it, need to click store settings on web browser cookies. Thanks.

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Great, you’ve found it all out! :+1: :+1:

It’s true that without storing the settings in cookies they get lost. Cookies in Voice don’t serve any other purpose but storing your settings.

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Wow! It’s improved so much! Congratulations!

Feature request: Show Pali, but don’t read it. Perhaps can be accomplished with a null Pāḷi narrator?

And when I copy a segment, can I get it this format (or something like it?):

> (segment)
~ https://a.permalink.to/the/sutta#segment

That would be most helpful for this forum and anywhere else that uses markdown :slight_smile:

Thanks!

Something like this works on EBT-Site:

  • Click the “copy” button in a highlighted segment

  • Click “OK” in the window that pops up

  • Paste on D&D (after typing “>”)

SN56.11:11.1
Imasmiñca pana veyyākaraṇasmiṁ bhaññamāne āyasmato koṇḍaññassa virajaṁ vītamalaṁ dhammacakkhuṁ udapādi:
And while this discourse was being spoken, the stainless, immaculate vision of the Dhamma arose in Venerable Koṇḍañña:

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Ah! Have to turn on segment IDs in settings to get the link. Got it. Thanks!

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Make sure that your settings show everything you want to see in your post (Pali and/or translation), and most importantly, that the IDs are shown! Otherwise no link … :woman_shrugging:

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