# Audiblez: Generate audiobooks from e-books [![Installing via pip and running](https://github.com/santinic/audiblez/actions/workflows/pip-install.yaml/badge.svg)](https://github.com/santinic/audiblez/actions/workflows/pip-install.yaml) [![Git clone and run](https://github.com/santinic/audiblez/actions/workflows/git-clone-and-run.yml/badge.svg)](https://github.com/santinic/audiblez/actions/workflows/git-clone-and-run.yml) ![PyPI - Python Version](https://img.shields.io/pypi/pyversions/audiblez) ![PyPI - Version](https://img.shields.io/pypi/v/audiblez) ### v4 Now with Graphical interface, CUDA support, and many languages! ![Audiblez GUI on MacOSX](./imgs/mac.png) Audiblez generates `.m4b` audiobooks from regular `.epub` e-books, using Kokoro's high-quality speech synthesis. [Kokoro-82M](https://huggingface.co/hexgrad/Kokoro-82M) is a recently published text-to-speech model with just 82M params and very natural sounding output. It's released under Apache licence and it was trained on < 100 hours of audio. It currently supports these languages: 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🇪🇸 🇫🇷 🇮🇳 🇮🇹 🇯🇵 🇧🇷 🇨🇳 On a Google Colab's T4 GPU via Cuda, **it takes about 5 minutes to convert "Animal's Farm" by Orwell** (which is about 160,000 characters) to audiobook, at a rate of about 600 characters per second. On my M2 MacBook Pro, on CPU, it takes about 1 hour, at a rate of about 60 characters per second. ## How to install the Command Line tool If you have Python 3 on your computer, you can install it with pip. You also need `espeak-ng` and `ffmpeg` installed on your machine: ```bash sudo apt install ffmpeg espeak-ng # on Ubuntu/Debian 🐧 pip install audiblez ``` ```bash brew install ffmpeg espeak-ng # on Mac 🍏 pip install audiblez ``` Then you can convert an .epub directly with: ``` audiblez book.epub -v af_sky ``` It will first create a bunch of `book_chapter_1.wav`, `book_chapter_2.wav`, etc. files in the same directory, and at the end it will produce a `book.m4b` file with the whole book you can listen with VLC or any audiobook player. It will only produce the `.m4b` file if you have `ffmpeg` installed on your machine. ## How to run the GUI The GUI is a simple graphical interface to use audiblez. You need some extra dependencies to run the GUI: ``` sudo apt install ffmpeg espeak-ng sudo apt install libgtk-3-dev # just for Ubuntu/Debian 🐧, Windows/Mac don't need this pip install audiblez pillow wxpython ``` Then you can run the GUI with: ``` audiblez-ui ``` ## How to run on Windows After many trials, on Windows we recommend to install audiblez in a Python venv: 1. Open a Windows terminal 2. Create anew folder: `mkdir audiblez` 3. Enter the folder: `cd audiblez` 4. Create a venv: `python -m venv venv` 5. Activate the venv: `.\venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1` 6. Install the dependencies: `pip install audiblez pillow wxpython` 7. Now you can run `audiblez` or `audiblez-ui` 8. For Cuda support, you need to install Pytorch accordingly: https://pytorch.org/get-started/locally/ ## Speed By default the audio is generated using a normal speed, but you can make it up to twice slower or faster by specifying a speed argument between 0.5 to 2.0: ``` audiblez book.epub -v af_sky -s 1.5 ``` ## Supported Voices Use `-v` option to specify the voice to use. Available voices are listed here. The first letter is the language code and the second is the gender of the speaker e.g. `im_nicola` is an italian male voice. [For hearing samples of Kokoro-82M voices, go here](https://claudio.uk/posts/audiblez-v4.html) | Language | Voices | |---------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 🇺🇸 American English | `af_alloy`, `af_aoede`, `af_bella`, `af_heart`, `af_jessica`, `af_kore`, `af_nicole`, `af_nova`, `af_river`, `af_sarah`, `af_sky`, `am_adam`, `am_echo`, `am_eric`, `am_fenrir`, `am_liam`, `am_michael`, `am_onyx`, `am_puck`, `am_santa` | | 🇬🇧 British English | `bf_alice`, `bf_emma`, `bf_isabella`, `bf_lily`, `bm_daniel`, `bm_fable`, `bm_george`, `bm_lewis` | | 🇪🇸 Spanish | `ef_dora`, `em_alex`, `em_santa` | | 🇫🇷 French | `ff_siwis` | | 🇮🇳 Hindi | `hf_alpha`, `hf_beta`, `hm_omega`, `hm_psi` | | 🇮🇹 Italian | `if_sara`, `im_nicola` | | 🇯🇵 Japanese | `jf_alpha`, `jf_gongitsune`, `jf_nezumi`, `jf_tebukuro`, `jm_kumo` | | 🇧🇷 Brazilian Portuguese | `pf_dora`, `pm_alex`, `pm_santa` | | 🇨🇳 Mandarin Chinese | `zf_xiaobei`, `zf_xiaoni`, `zf_xiaoxiao`, `zf_xiaoyi`, `zm_yunjian`, `zm_yunxi`, `zm_yunxia`, `zm_yunyang` | For more detaila about voice quality, check this document: [Kokoro-82M voices](https://huggingface.co/hexgrad/Kokoro-82M/blob/main/VOICES.md) ## How to run on GPU By default, audiblez runs on CPU. If you pass the option `--cuda` it will try to use the Cuda device via Torch. Check out this example: [Audiblez running on a Google Colab Notebook with Cuda ](https://colab.research.google.com/drive/164PQLowogprWQpRjKk33e-8IORAvqXKI?usp=sharing]). We don't currently support Apple Silicon, as there is not yet a Kokoro implementation in MLX. As soon as it will be available, we will support it. ## Manually pick chapters to convert Sometimes you want to manually select which chapters/sections in the e-book to read out loud. To do so, you can use `--pick` to interactively choose the chapters to convert (without running the GUI). ## Help page For all the options available, you can check the help page `audiblez --help`: ``` usage: audiblez [-h] [-v VOICE] [-p] [-s SPEED] [-c] [-o FOLDER] epub_file_path positional arguments: epub_file_path Path to the epub file options: -h, --help show this help message and exit -v VOICE, --voice VOICE Choose narrating voice: a, b, e, f, h, i, j, p, z -p, --pick Interactively select which chapters to read in the audiobook -s SPEED, --speed SPEED Set speed from 0.5 to 2.0 -c, --cuda Use GPU via Cuda in Torch if available -o FOLDER, --output FOLDER Output folder for the audiobook and temporary files example: audiblez book.epub -l en-us -v af_sky to use the GUI, run: audiblez-ui ``` ## Author by [Claudio Santini](https://claudio.uk) in 2025, distributed under MIT licence. Related Article: [Audiblez v4: Generate Audiobooks from E-books](https://claudio.uk/posts/audiblez-v4.html)