Excellent AI voices, but the audiobook output still requires substantial editing
The voice quality from ElevenLabs is genuinely impressive. I produced a complete nonfiction audiobook using a male voice, and the narration sounded natural, confident, and substantially better than several other AI voice platforms I’ve tested. However, creating the narration was only part of the job. The exported files still required extensive editing in Audacity before they were ready for professional distribution. I had to adjust the opening and ending silence on every chapter, normalize RMS loudness, correct the mono loudness settings, apply limiting to control peak levels, verify every exported file, and clean up embedded metadata. I also had to create the opener, closer, and retail preview separately. For a platform that promotes audiobook production and direct publishing, it really needs a true audiobook-mastering export preset that automatically meets common distributor requirements. Users should be able to set target RMS, peak ceiling, beginning and ending silence, bitrate, channel format, and chapter metadata once, then apply those settings consistently across the entire book. I’m happy with the final audiobook, and I’ll likely use ElevenLabs again because the voices are among the best I’ve heard. But authors should understand that this is not yet a simple generate-and-publish system. ElevenLabs generated an excellent narration. I still had to do a considerable amount of work to turn it into a professionally mastered audiobook. Voice quality: excellent. Audiobook workflow: promising, but needs better mastering and export tools.