Audiobooks on iPods
Found this great tutorial on howto import audio CD audiobooks into iTunes while I was waiting for my drive to get backed-up
Found this great tutorial on howto import audio CD audiobooks into iTunes while I was waiting for my drive to get backed-up
January 28th, 2006 at 1:45 pm
What the heck is that guy talking about? He seems to imply that there are so many tracks on audiobook CDs that it is a pain to deal with. I have been doing something very similar with Windows Media Player for about 2-3 years now and have never found that there were so many tracks on a disk that it was a pain organize and deal with on my iRiver DAP. I don’t recall the maximum number of tracks that I have seen, but it is somewhere in the 20s (which is not a huge amount). Typically it is in the 10-20 range. Which works very well and allows me to skip around very easily if I loose my location (which really doesn’t happen a lot). I cannot believe that he feels the need to join tracks. Also I find that most of the Audio books are available in the automatic lookup services (but they are usually done inconsistently so it does take some hand modifications at times.)
Maybe I’m missing something (like an iPod).
July 6th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
@Kipp: Well, to start with, the most tracks I’ve seen on an audiobook on MP3 CD was 99 tracks; maybe that’s the limit. Also, keep in mind that you end up with the (average) number of tracks times the number of discs; for an audiobook that’s 10 discs long (about average for unabridged books), and 10 tracks per disc (low, in my experience), that’s ~100 tracks also. Not something I want to have to click, thumb, or scroll through when I’m looking to find my next listen. Whether that number amounts to a pain to deal with is, perhaps, subjective.
Personally, I find it a lot easier to manage my audiobooks when they are 1-2 tracks total. There are lots of places where it’s useful to have fewer tracks, for example:
* When looking at lists of audiobooks in your music management software (iTunes in my case, WMP in yours).
* When looking at lists of audiobook tracks on a portable player (an iPod in my case, an iRiver DAP in yours).
* When archiving audiobooks off of my main system (if I won’t be listening to them again soon, and want to free up disk space).
Not having used an iRiver, I can’t say if perhaps it deals better with a lot of tracks than an iPod. But the iPod does have a well-regarded user interface, and is usually considered the gold standard, so I don’t think I would bet on the iRiver.
Here’s another way to think about it, an example from the physical world. There are two main audiobook formats on CDs, standard Audio CDs (where you end up with 10+ CDs for a single book) and MP3 CDs (where it’s very rare to have more than one CD). If you’re listening to an audiobook on the first format, how many times are you going to change the CD in your player? What if it’s your car’s player, and you’re driving? Which is easier to manage?
There’s a reason I prefer audiobooks on MP3 CDs over audiobooks on Audio CDs, and having fewer objects to deal with (one CD vs many) is the biggest.
Cheers!
July 6th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
I still think the time spent joining tracks is way too much work. When I rip, I rip each disk to its own folder (just like music). Then in WMP or winamp (and I suspect ITunes), your disks are managed just like what is done for music. Each album has its own number like: Michael Crichton/Next Disc 01/D01T01.wmp.
I agree that IPods have a vastly superior UI and that is one reason I was somewhat surprised that this effort was desired. Also I think MP3 CDs would be much nicer than the 10+ disks of most books on CD.
July 7th, 2007 at 7:29 am
I’ve tried both approaches and honestly find joining the tracks for each CD into one track to be my favorite. I think it’s mostly that I don’t like clutter and scrolling through tons of tracks to find where I was. It’s much easier for me to remember what disc I was on and rely on my position in the track being remembered rather then have to remember what disc and track I was on last I stopped listening.
July 7th, 2007 at 8:55 am
I guess I tend to listen only to the book after I start it until I finish it. (I don’t switch to music and back to the book.) Therefore, I don’t tend to have to scroll around a bunch because my last location is always stored. That is probably why the many tracks don’t bother me so much. (Oh yeah, I’m lazy as well.)
When I download a book from the library (via overdrive), they generally come in disc sized chunks and I tend to like those a bit better than the multi-tracks/cd.
Sometimes the library’s book downloads come in one single file and I definitely don’t like that. For one thing, the Iriver and Cowon players that I’ve used don’t tend to deal with 1400+ minute tracks very gracefully. Some cannot even play past a certain minute (256, 512,…). Others loose track of where they were and I have to scroll multi 100s of minutes to get to the location that I think I’m at. I wonder how the Ipod deals with single long tracks like this. I would expect well.