Entertainment For Lively Minds
Got myself a villa in Menorca.......
Posted by bigsteviecook on 3 April 2009 - 4:33pm.
....for a couple of weeks in the summer.
I'm busy working out what to fill my mp3 player with musically but I also fancy giving audiobooks a try.
I need advice on audiobooks. Not so much the content as I'm game for almost anything. Moreso what, where and how?
Can they be downloaded from somewhere, or do I buy one and rip it? Has anyone tried this? I've seen them in the library and I thought about trying to rip one but I thought I'd go for advice from you lot first.
Thanks in advance for any help.
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Audiobooks
The iTunes store sells 'em for download as do audible.co.uk
Audio books
i would say depends on whether you want novels or poetry. you can download some poetry for free unless really famous from individual websites. the problem with all audiobooks is the volume of /cds which seem quite chunky and probably downloads good for that. i tunes is good but search under individual authors not general as strangely they dont appear to integrate the searches in all cases.must admit i have been listening to more audio than music so far this year.allthebest.
How much memory do they take
How much memory do they take up? Assuming, of course, they're read at a steady pace, and are roughly the length of a Penguin Classic, for example.
Careful with maps
Off topic Stevie but the maps you get in Menorca are incredibly detailed and show forest trails as roads and a lot of them are private property.Be warned especially in The North of the island between Cala Morell and Fornells.
I've been listening to "Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads ?" not exactly an Audio book but over 3 hours of digital heaven and i did have "A scanner darkly" read by Paul Giamatti. Very good
Direction...
...won't be a problem as I've been in the area twice before. 10 years since our last visit but I know exactly where the villa is. It's on the beach(google maps).
Loved "Likeky Lads" all these years ago but it's not what I'm looking for. Dunno about the other thing? Thanks anyway Paul.
Thanks too to stimpy for the links. Not going for it though. £7.99 for an initial d/l, then approx £16 for a d/l? I'll buy the CD and rip it myself....if I get more info on how to.
How to rip?
Stick the CD in the slot, fire up iTunes, click 'Import CD', get a cup of coffee, job done.
I don't have iTunes.
Windows Media Player won't do what I want.
Say the book is 7 cds. I'd like each cd to be one track rather than the 15-20 that's on each cd so that I have 7 tracks instead of over 100.
I know CDex has a function to do this as I've done something similar years ago but I had problems with CDex and Windows XP so I got rid of it.
Ah.
Not sure even iTunes will combine separate tracks into one single track.
I'm not a Windows user but I suspect Audacity will be able to do what you want, although you may need to append each track one by one to get one long track.
On a Mac it's the work of seconds to automate this with an Apple Script but I don't think there's a Windows equivalent.
Confessions of an audio book addict ...
Bit late but I just wanted to say that I subscribe to audible and pay £7.99 per month. This entitles me to one download a month and you get a freebie when you sign up. As I am incredibly picky about audio books and insist on unabridged readings by people who know what they are doing, my choices tend to be at the expensive end of their range and I feel that I get pretty good value. However, iTunes sometimes have the same thing a little cheaper so it's always worth shopping around.
Naxos are generally excellent quality (David Timson's readings of Sherlock Holmes are wonderful, for example) and you can buy them on CD or download them from their site. http://www.naxosaudiobooks.com/home.htm
Buying audio books on CD is fine and I've ripped most of my existing collection to iTunes but, instead of just two or three files for even the longest book, you get 13 or so tracks on every CD and it's quite fiddly to make sure they are all labelled properly so they play in the right order. They tend not to be on the Gracenote database either.
Felttip Software
do an app called Stitch which does exactly what you (and I) need it to. you point it at a folder of audio files and it seamlessly glues 'em together one after the other, leaving you with a single track for the whole CD
Thanks for your research stimpy!
Last night I downloaded CDex again and this morning got an audiobook to try.
Cdex does indeed allow you to rip the whole thing as 1 track. Convert>Select Track Portion>OK does the trick. I ripped a 10 cd audiobook in about 45 mins at 64kbps stereo(no high quality rip required as it's spoken word)and the whole thing is 316Mb.
Everything seems to be successful but I won't find out till I get to the villa.
Les Miserables..
.. the Penguin edition, read by Joss Ackland. Peerless. Available on CD but not sure about download - either way, it's well worth the cash.
Bob Dylan Chronicles Vol 1 - read by Sean Penn
It's very well done.
I noticed in the library this morning....
....audibooks on mp3 players.
You can loan a pre-recorded mp3 player with an audiobook on it. I assume you have to insert a battery or charge it, then simply fit your own headphones.
ITunes Audiobook Converter
Hello everybody,
If you're ripping audiobook CDs or downloading MP3 files, this program (windows) is your friend:
http://lifehacker.com/software/featured-windows-download/convert-mp3-aud...
It converts your files to M4b format. This means that you can pause a chapter, listen to some tunes and then go back to the same 'bookmarked' point. The usual audio formats won't let you do that, so you'd quickly get annoyed fast-forwarding through stuff you'd already listened to.
HTH