Audio books

[Pat]

Does anybody collect audio books to listen to while on the road or sitting around or walking, hiking, biking...?

I collect unabridged mysteries.

--pat

 

[Steve CDN]

Pat,

I just recently discovered audio books and have listened to three so far.  My oen preference is for non fiction, historical material so I listened to Tom Brokaw's book on WWII heroes, a  book about Henry Flagler's East Florida Railway to Key West called Last Train to Paradise and the current one Simon Winchester's The Map that Changed the World.  I have another in waiting titled Isaac's Storm, the story if teh Galveston hurricane.

find I can listen to them while driving the car on a long trip or while walking but not while driving the coach.  I find there is too much to do and to think about while driving the coach and I cannot concentrate on the book.

What's your favorite activity while listening to mysteries?

 

[Pat]

Steve:

Off road bicycling.  I LOVE to listen to a book out on the trail, which is what I will be doing tomorrow, barring rain.  About once a decade I'll start a jigsaw puzzle, and it's nice to have a book going.  I'll try to remember to start a book if I'm on a long drive - say a couple days and 1600 miles.  If I hiked, I'd listen to a story. 

Libraries have about the same number of fiction as nonfiction audio books, and they tend to collect only unabridged, which I prefer.  Each CD takes maybe 10 minutes to rip to MP3.  A 500 page book averages maybe ten CDs.  Then you can save them and copy to an MP3 player, MP3CD, or, in my case, an iPod.  It's a tedious job, but I think it'll be a while before I finish the 200 or so books that I have copied.  While the CDs are copying, you can read or whatever.  One thing is to be prepared with wet and dry paper towels.  I'm convinced some of the library patrons eat off the CDs.  Half the time they look like they've been run through a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, original recipe.

I also have my entire music CD collection on my iPod, so I can switch to music.  The CDs are long gone.  Everything's backed up on my external hard drive.  I have portable speakers that provide nice sound, or I have an FM thingy that plugs into the iPod and plays on one of the low FM stations on my radio.  I don't have a cassette player in the dashboard of either the RV or the toad, so I can't use Radio Shack's cassette adapter. 


--pat

 

[Steve CDN]

I also discovered that public libraries carry audio books and like you ripped them to mini discs, which I use instead of an MP3 player.  I am in the process of transferring my CD collection to the hard disk of my new workhorse computer and often listen to the music while working on the Forum!

 

[Pat]

Steve:

What software are you using to rip the audio books to MP3?  I think iTunes does it, but it's been a year and I have forgotten. 

--pat

 

[Steve CDN]

Pat,

I have several installed, so depending on what I'm doing I select the one that will do it best for that purpose.  For ripping my CD collection to the hard drive, in a predesignated folder which is recognized by the installed music organizer and music library, I use Creative Mediasource (which supports the Sound Blaster sound card).

Also installed is Nero, Windows Audio Converter and Sony Sonic Stage for use with my Sony Net MD (Minidisc Player).

What are you using, Pat and why is it your preference?

 

[Pat]

Steve:  I bought a MusicMatch license to rip the library books.  Then I got my 40gb iPod last year and found iTunes works. 

I have had a problem, though.  When MusicMatch would rip the tracks, creating filenames for the tracks, somehow the filenames would get alphabetized, unless they were numbered 01, 02, etc. instead of 1,2, and then you'd get to the double digits, and things would go haywire.  OR, I believe it was Easy CD Creator that  sorted the numbered track names alphabetically by spelling of the number word, so they would sort on the written CDs as

four
one
three
two

Problem being, of course, that the book would not be read in order.  In fact, I bought and had an MP3CD player in my RV that is just worthless, because it can't understand some of the track names, so it skips them.  I worked quite a bit to figure out what happened and ended up having to re-sort and recopy about 55 books to MP3CD once.  What a job.  I know there are multiple tracknaming systems.  I think iTunes resolved a lot of that, but by the time I got the iPod, I was about done, so I don't remember.  It's been a year.  I need to get busy and find out if the library has increased their audio book collection.

--pat