A few tips for audiobook playlists and bookmarking with newer version of the free AIMP audio player. A great player, but the UI is somewhat convoluted for most people — and post-2021 changes made it even more convoluted in key places.

1. Add the playlist files by drag-and-drop, and save the playlist, as you would in any audio player. Saving a playlist is done in AIMP by right-clicking in the sidebar and then “Send to other playlist” | “To New playlist”. Clunky and roundabout, but it works.

2. Many audiobooks then need a pause added between .MP3 tracks, if the tracks are chapterised. Otherwise the end of one chapter gabbles straight into the start of another without any pause. This pause can be manually set in the AIMP settings. Here’s how it’s done…

3000ms = a 3 second pause, added between each .MP3 track.

3. Bookmarking. Since the 2021 changes this is impossible for a newbie to find in the UI, and it’s almost impossible to discover how to do it from the official site/forum. Few users would think to right-click in the waveform itself as it’s playing, but that’s how it’s now done in newer versions of AIMP…

Easy, but only if you know how. The added bookmark will then show up in the list on the Bookmarks tab. Double-clicking the bookmark only starts the track at the beginning. Right-clicking and “Play selected files” starts it at the actual bookmark timestamp.

4. Finally, a security tip. If you already installed libwebp.dll in the AIMP program folder (C:\Program Files\AIMP), so as to get WebP image format support for cover artwork, then Google’s recent massive WebP security car-crash means you’ll need to replace the old .dll with the new safe libwebp.dll 1.3.2.

A new AI-voiced AI Lovecraft: Nyalarthotep on YouTube. One of the better voices, kind of like a somewhat harsh and staccato Gordon Gould (expert reader of Lovecraft for ‘Books for the Blind’, back in the day). But then, what can one expect… it is a robot. But such things might be fixed by downloading and then using a good desktop PC audio player (such as AIMP) to adjust speed, pitch etc.

I found the following to work well with AIMP and proper headphones:

Speed: 0.97

Pitch: -1.66 st

And this graphic equaliser setting…

Then it just needs the maker to do a re-recording of the few seconds where the AI stumbles over Lovecraft’s 18th century diction (TTS voices can usually handle a special in-text markup, which can help correct such things, or you can just ‘tweek du spellhing’). Plus a few spaces, added where the transition between sections is too abrupt.

An amusing review of the amazing Built-in Orderly Organized Knowledge device.

Just the thing for a damp Monday, a new and listenable human reading of “The Loved Dead” by C.M. Eddy Jr. & H.P. Lovecraft.

A new reading of “Sweet Ermengarde or, The Heart of a Country Girl” by H.P. Lovecraft.

New on Librivox, a public-domain audio reading of the brilliant “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”. This being the joint sequel, written with E. Hoffmann Price, to Lovecraft’s “The Silver Key”.

Price supplied the core plot outline, and some of the Necronomicon quotes, Lovecraft then went to work on a massive makeover which left less than 50 words of Price’s original standing. Price’s original can be found in Crypt of Cthulhu #10 (1982, not online, aka ‘Ashes And Others’). There used to be paid digital downloads of the old Crypt issues, but it looks like the store has now gone. This loss appears to have wiped out not just the older issues, but also the 2017-2022 run.

However, Price’s original can be seen in decipherable scans at the Brown Digital Repository.

New and free on Librivox, an audiobook of Robert Bloch’s “Before Egypt” in 95 minutes. Looking at the issue, the author in Amazing Stories for January 1957 was Bloch writing under the pen-name “E. K. Jarvis”.

Those counted as “slim thighs” in 1957.

The unabridged audiobook of “The Shadow Out of Time”.

A quick look at relatively recent ‘In Our Time’ episodes, picking out those of possible interest to Tentaclii readers…

Megaliths, the ancient stones and stone-circles in the landscape of the British Isles and Brittany.

The Death of Stars, how they die but also give life to new planets. The ideas have changed a lot since Lovecraft was a boy.

Polidori’s The Vampyre. The first vampire.

Fritz Lang and his modernist-gothic films.

The Decadents in literature. For many years Lovecraft considered himself to be their late heir.