LibriVox Audio Books

Large library. Most of the recordings sound fine to me, and the organization of the app is impressive for a free download. Really, the only detraction for me is the ads, but they have to make money somehow.. That being said, they are relatively minimal and once you get your book going, its not bad at all. I am a person that will instantly uninstall if the ads are overwhelming and give a 1 star, so that should tell you my thought on the matter. Ill put a book on at work and maybe hear 1-2 ads per 8 hour shift. Will definitely be paying for the premium version, but not because I feel like I need to to enjoy the app. More because Libravox is a breath of fresh air, and I want to support.

I’ve used Librivox for a number of years, through undergrad and grad school, and have found it tremendously helpful as an English major. The voices help liven up the texts and make difficult works much easier to follow. More recently, however, I’ve been disappointed by the addition of advertisements at the end of chapters and such. While they could be much more intrusive, it’s still a disruption to the experience and overall nuisance. Luckily, you can work around them by tapping on the next chapter, but having to do so feels unnecessary. I wish they would have just stuck to having a small visual ad at the bottom of the page. A small matter, which most people probably don’t care about, but enough to make me go to other audio reading providers sometimes. That said, Librivox is still my go-to reader, and it is very helpful overall.

I have used LibriVox for the past three years and am always consistently blown away by the skill of some of these amateur readers. I also have Audible, and with both combined I feel like there is always something interesting and new to experience. LibriVox's best feature is the wide, free use of public domain writings. The search for good readers is rewarding, albeit different than Audible. The difference is that with LibriVox it doesn't cost me a cent. Excellent. The mobile app is very straightforward, and in a way offers even more options than my subscription, in particular the playback speeds.

This review is for the app (LibriVox is one of the best things on the modern internet). Playback and downloading works well. Search algorithm finds what you want most of the time (though having separate entries for different readings of the same book makes things more complicated than they need to be). The only serious problem is ads. Not that they exist. They’re infrequent and generally tasteful. It’s the VOLUME. The ads don’t seem to be scaled to the same volume as the books. Rather, whenever an ad plays there’s a large spike in volume and I’m inevitably startled if I’m wearing headphones. It’s particularly troublesome if you’re listening to a book to help you sleep.

These public domain books are read by readers with vastly varying skills. Most of what I’ve heard is pretty amateurish, but there are some very good contributions. The jewel in crown, of course, is that the service makes so many great books available to audio readers. You just have to do a bit of searching to find a combination of good book/good reader. The app is moderately intuitive and a bit glitchy. Most disconcerting of all, though, is that payment to remove ads does...nothing. The ads are annoying, at best, and there seems no way to really communicate effectively with the apps designer. Ultimately, though, I’m an avid listener of books, and this gives me another tool in my audio book tool box.