Hi Lennart and all,
I just read the FAQ for suttareadings.net. That project is in fact
run by John Bullitt, as well as ATI, and he already has existing
hyperlinks cross referencing audio and text versions of those suttas.
Many thanks to John for the great idea and execution of that project.
He explains in the FAQ the reason there are so few suttas in the
collection is for quality control reasons. The readers are selected by
invitation only, are senior Sangha or teachers, and are reading sutta
passages that they feel are of particular significance. Also from ATI's
links, here Anandajoti has sutta readings from selected suttas he
translated http://www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/Audio/AU-index.htm .
From the reader comments section, Anandajoti mentions that the audio
page is by far the highest traffic part of his website, clearly showing
that there is a strong demand for sutta readings in English and other
modern languages. This is no surprise to anyone paying attention to the
ubiquitous-ness of ipods, iphones, and their equivalent mp3 playing
devices with 8gigs of storage and more. These consumers often have
commutes, jogs, walks, in which they eagerly consume mp3 media. It's
not easy to carry around hardbound versions of [MN], [SN], etc, or PTS
books, but all that and more fits easily in an iphone type device that
they're carrying around with them anyway.
What's amazing to me is that this hasn't been done already - i.e.
crowdsourcing and wiki-fying sutta readings in multi-lingual forms.
While I can appreciate John B's quality control view, there's immense
value in simply having audible literal readings of the many suttas
available - which isn't the case at present, in 2010. Personally, I
could listen to an audio version of Majjhima Nikaya in rapture even if
it was recited by a team of the most heinous and unsavory characters
imaginable. As long as the words are clear, comprehensible sounds, I
receive it as if the speech were emitting from the lips of Gautama
Buddha. Truth is truth, truth is beautiful no matter who says it.
Another approach to quality control is to produce and catalog multiple
versions of the same sutta readings, as many as we can procure through
crowdsourcing. The highest quality readings will tend to bubble up to
the top. Either by page hits, downloads, word of mouth, etc.

-Frank

On 10/12/2010 6:56 AM, Lennart Lopin wrote:
> Dear Frank, Peter& others,
>
> The idea to set this up wiki-style were the contribution can come from
> basically anyone, sounds like a good idea!
>
> This could then become a repository where other central websites like
> AccessToInsight.com or Tipitaka.org or SuttaCentral can then link to or just
> grab the audio files and use them on their own sites...John just linked his
> ATI texts to the corresponding Pali text. He might also be interested in a
> sound version, I guess.
>
> much metta,
>
> Lennart
>
> Ref: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Pali/message/15030
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Pali/message/15030>
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 1:03 PM, frank<fcckuan@...> wrote:
>
>>
>> Thanks to all for the helpful comments on the thread.
>> As part of my own pali learning process, I've been listening to the mp3
>> pali chants of the abhayagiri monks, simultaneously reading the
>> english+pali text, and clumsily reciting the pali along with the monks.
>> This total immersion I believe facilities the learning process
>> (simultaneously listening, reading, saying pali). One drawback as
>> Lennart pointed out is if I ever become proficient at speaking pali and
>> attempt to converse with another, they might wonder why I have a sing
>> song accent.
>>
>> Making mp3's and putting it in the web is ridiculously easy. In less
>> than 20 minutes last night, I downloaded audacity (open source free mp3
>> recording software for pc), used a 5$ cheap microphone (same one I use
>> for skype or googletalk), recorded myself reciting verse 1 of the
>> dhammapada on the laptop, created a googlesite, uploaded the mp3, then
>> using a smartphone pointed the web address to the googlesite I just
>> created, downloaded the mp3 I just created and listened to it on my
>> smartphone over the internet.
>>
>> For my own personal use, besides pali recitations, I'd also like the
>> major suttas to have multilingual verisons such as english, mandarin,
>> etc. Think of it this way. There's about 1.5Billion chinese in the
>> world, there's tens of millions of smartphones that download mp3's off
>> the web in the USA, if not already there will soon be hundreds of
>> millions of mandarin chinese smartphone users. You think a wiki of mp3
>> mandarin pali suttas would be useful? Basically, if you're not sure
>> what I'm talking about, just visualize a multi-lingual version of this
>> excellent site: http://www.suttareadings.net/index.html
>>
>> I created a googlegroups just now, audio_tipitaka@...<audio_tipitaka%40googlegroups.com>
>> .
>> The googlesite mp3 file respository:
>> https://sites.google.com/site/audiotipitaka/file-cabinet
>>
>> I set up permissions so any member of audio_tipitaka@...<audio_tipitaka%40googlegroups.com>
>> has "collaborator" status, to upload, delete, move mp3 files in the
>> file-cabinet.
>>
>> Each gmail account is entitled to a free googlesite with 10Gig max
>> capacity. Max file size is 12Meg, which should be plenty for dhammatalk
>> mp3's.
>>
>> Using Majjhima Nikaya as an example, if I were to recite and record
>> mp3's (in english) one sutta per week, in 3 years I'd have a complete
>> audio version of [MN].
>> If there were 152 volunteers, we could make an audio english version of
>> [MN] in one day.
>>
>> For pali recitations, I'm thinking 5 or 10 minute excerpts from suttas
>> would be excellent. Every iphone I believe has an mp3 recorder, so if
>> you have access to 5-10 minutes of time with a sri lankan or other
>> fluent pali speaker, we could put together quite an excellent wiki of
>> pali audio mp3's.
>>
>> To help on this project, you can subscribe to the googlegroups at this
>> address:
>>
>> http://groups.google.com/group/audio_tipitaka/boxsubscribe
>> google will send a confirmation to your email that you need to respond to
>> (It should be pretty instantaneous). If you don't get the email from google
>> right away, check your spam folder.
>> Type something short in the confirmation to let me know that you're not a
>> spammer and I'll approve the application.
>>
>> -Frank
>>
>>
>>
>