Computer experts please

[Man at B&Q]

" Although this method is time consuming it does work well".

If you take the time to read up the thread, you'll see the OP already has a time consuming metod that works.

MBQ

[Roger Mills]

onto CDs, up

So what was the format of the file which you downloaded before transferring onto CD, and how did you create the CDs?

As others have said, chances are that you could find some CD emulation software which would open the downloaded files, and treat them as virtual CDs. You could then rip the audio tracks to .MP3 files and copy them onto a thumb drive.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Ah a 'brand' not 'audio'

why am I not surprised that anything done to for or by Apple is expensive, time consuming, and restricted to the way apple want you do do it?

Other than that I had to

Ok

Transfer them onto CDs, up to 7 per book,

How was that done?

They must have existed in MP3 form at some stage to do that.

and

Understood

OK I now understand the problem. Audible is copyright protected bollox and you need software that will rip the .aa files

What you use will depend on what platform you have Mac, PC ,or linux.

That will extract essentially MP3 file out of the .aa files and you can dump those on your thumbdrives.

This seems a good summary

CAN choose I think with a Mac to burn a 'virtual CD' which may also work - you are still 'burning the CD' BUT its not real costs nothing and is just a disk files so its blindingly fast.

so for a mac, use this

simply burn a virtual CD and rip that.

TBH i've spent half an hour looking at the alternatives and they all require odd and rare and semi legal bits of software beacause audible hammer anyone who does the job directly.

So do it the way you know already, but using a virtual CD to save money and time.

And be quick cos after 15 days you have to pay for virtual CD

If you are on another platform than OSX google "burn virtual CD" - there are tools for all

And don't upgrade the audible software because they have removed the ability to burn CDS with it..

[The Natural Philosopher]

If you google a bit it becomes clear that audible is the .aa format and its proprietary DRM encoded and can only be read by Audible software.

However older versions of audible software DID allow you to burn a CD and I think CURRENT versions of audible software will export to I-tunes. And I tunes will let you burn to CD.

Once you have a CD - virtual or real - you can then rip it with the standard 'f*ck you, DRM' freeware to get MP3

Using audacity to record the whole book is bollocks, because its quicker to burn and rip a virtual CD.

The problem seems to be that whilst ripping AA files is not intrinsically hard, it is illegal and anyone offering this facility has been 'ceased and desisted' by audible

BUT the loophole of going via CD still exists.

And virtual CDs exist for Mac and windows platforms.

So IF I had a bookshelf of audible books that's what I would do. Burn virtual CDs.

And rip em.

[Andy Burns]

Never heard of it m'lud.

[dennis]

Well you download the book, run the software. I don't see where time consuming comes in.

[Weatherlawyer]

I just tried Fedora for the first time. It seems exactly like Ubuntu used to look. And there is a third party repository that will let you decide what is right and wrong rather than the OS producer.

I have no idea about copying files. But it seems to me that the onus is on the user not the manufacturer to be honest with what happens on the equipment a person owns.

For that reason alone I think I will be migrating.

I have all sorts of tools that can get me into anyone's house if I want to. The days of the jemmy, black mask and striped tee shirt are long gone.

But it doesn't mean I am a burglar. Why do computer programme suppliers insist on pointing out that copyright is this and that before explaining how to copy files. FFS; someone write and tell them: "OK we can take it as read."

Now then... You were saying?

[The Natural Philosopher]

well you could argue that forever

"In my youth I did frequent The tavern, and had great argument But came out in not one whit wiser, than wherein I went."

From what to what?

The model is that its a licence they are supplying and their code contains the license cracker.

They are not 'just files'

[John Rumm]

Yup, that's true - also IIRC .iso can only cope with a single track...

It handles audio without any problem, but you will need an image file format such as a .ccd produced by CloneCD for it to mount.

Indeed.

[Bill]

In message , The Natural Philosopher writes

I Googled "Audible File Format" which threw up a link "How to Convert Audible .AA File Format to .MP3 ... - Bharat Karavadra".

Following that link triggered an AVG Threat detection about a "Phoenix Exploit" virus.

I haven't got any .aa files to test with, but in the past I have used the free "Super" converter to convert files from Apple formats to wav or mp3. The converters in this were pretty poor and caused distortion. The version of iTunes that I have does have an option to convert to wave format, and this produces good results.

It would be interesting to know whether this i-Tunes converter does handle .aa files. If it does, might that not be an easier path than working with Virtual CD software?

[Steve Firth]

if you are looking for file format conversion at high speed and in decent quality get hold of ffmpeg. Its available for Windows as well as for proper computers.

If you want to edit and convert, but at a slower speed than ffmpeg get hold of Audacity.

[Bill]

In message , Steve Firth writes

See my other posting about audio quality when using "Super". My understanding is that "Super" from eRightsoft is a wrapper around ffmpeg and other free conversion tools. It has the most garbled and confusing download site, so most people probably give up on it, but I tried using it to convert some Apple format audio files, and it did cause serious distortion.

I was just looking again at the iTunes to wave converter, and found my test tone files still in the playlist.

I would test first if using ffmpeg for audio.

[Steve Firth]

super is an abomination, best avoided. There is no problem with ffmpeg audio quality, it's used for conversion in professional studios, for audio, video and much more (such as adding subtitles).

It isn't easy to use (at first) since it's entirely command line driven, and the defaults for all conversions are set to silly values. However if set to something sensible for MP3 such as a bit rate of >192kbps preferably

320kbps the results are better than most of the rather limited GUI applications.

[Bill]

In message , Steve Firth writes

This got me testing again, but first to answer 2 points, yes Super is an abomination and you have to fight hard to stop it installing junk after you have navigated their appalling website. But a wrapper for ffmpeg is useful for casual use. Is there a better one?

I'm not sure use in professional studios necessarily means much beyond that the users may include people who know what they are doing and what features to avoid.

I took one of my sets of test files converted to m4a format, which I think is basically aac format. The tests included a number of LF tones plus a sweep from 20Hz to 20kHz. I seem to have lost or destroyed my set of m4a files that I previously used to test for intermodulation effects

I ran it through iTunes, ffmpeg and Super (both freshly downloaded), converting to wave and, in the latter 2 cases, to mp3 as well.

The iTunes conversion to wave was excellent. The full frequency range was converted and the output sounded like the input.

Super produces a loss in level, but otherwise appeared identical to ffmpeg. I ought to investigate this. Ffmpeg retained the same levels in and out and sounded fine, but there was a steep filter at 16kHz, with significant phase effects at around the filter frequency. Of course, at my age, I can't hear any problem with this, but it might be worth investigating further. Maybe this is an effect that could be removed by looking more deeply into the defaults. I think the filter is in the m4a codec.

So, I have to admit that ffmpeg is probably OK and better than I previously thought. It doesn't seem as good as iTunes for Apple file conversions, but I find iTunes annoying for anything technical. It renames files and puts them where I can't easily find them.

[Steve Firth]

I don't know, or TBH care. I write my own scripts for conversion and those are easier to use than super.

features to avoid.

It means ffmpeg is a reliable, robust and accurate conversion tool.

I'm really not sure why you used different file formats for output. It makes comparisons invalid. You should have selected mp3 for iTunes output.

And I'm sure that if you had converted files to wav in ffmpeg you would have had the same result.

Investigate it as far as dropping super into the Trash.

Which is fairly diagnostic of where you are going wrong. Because mp3 is a lossy format if you create CBR files passages of silence or continuous tones (as in test files) are given equal weight and in a file recorded at a low CBR something has to give. In general it is better to cut higher frequencies because you can't hear them. The solution is to record using VBR which compresses silence to a greater extent and permits more headroom. Using VBR at the highest quality setting (-V 0) Williams remove the effect. Using AAC or WAV or a lossless output will also fix the problem.

m4a codec.

It can't be. If it were your input files would show the effect since they were m4a.

It's not ffmpeg. It's an inherent feature of the output codec you selected and of the way you configured it.

You can't tell from your experiment. You didn't compare like with like.

You need to look at how you are configuring both iTunes and ffmpeg. Both seem wrong.

ITunes neatly stores everything I rip in a hierarchy of folders by artist name, album, track. Very easy to find. If I rip an iTunes track to something else it goes into the same folder as the original. Again, easy.