Update: I Installed newest AudibleManager and AudibleDownloadManager AudibleManager now works with Nero7 which is downloadable over the audible website. 30days trial, but they say the basic burning will also function after that period. I already had Nero7 Premium so I thought "Cool, I can use Nero Image Recorder and Nero Image!" But unfortunately this did not work, don't know why. So next I tried VirtualCD and have a guess, cool application, it works! And it works very convenient. You can put in a virtual "blank" CD and then Nero burns with 78x speed to this CD recorder! After finishing just start Nero CD-Ripping-Tool which is also part of the Nero-Package and rip (unfortunately 52x is max.speed in this). Then delete the CD an put in a new "blank" virtual CD. Disadvantage of this process: The direct conversion (e.g. with River Past converter) is surely more elegant and also still faster. But there's also an advantage of this way: Audible Manager generates single tracks for audio CD burning.
Update: I went ahead and attempted the Goldwave route with success. So since this works I will go ahead and continue to use Goldwave to convert my .aa files with ques to .wav then to .mp3. I am still unsure why the PR Audio Converter method did not work for me, but oh well, Goldwave definitely does. Thanks to all who have posted a solution. Cheers!
This sounds awesome! I am working on trying this. Though, a couple questions first: What version of virtual-cd are you using, 7, 8 or older? Are you confirming that Nero7 has to be used or could any CD burning software work? Thanks.
I use VirtualCD 8 (which is the newest version I think). Current version AudibleManager wants to use Nero. Older versions of AudibleManager did use some plugins, Roxio or other stuff I don't know. I think You must burn out of AudibleManager and the trick is just to serve him an emulated CD burning device (e.g. VirtualCD) For burning out of AudibleManager (AM) You can look up to audible website and their How-To's. I think if You can burn ordinary audio CDs you can also "burn" to VirtualCD. It's just another device. Maybe one should be careful with future updates of AM, because Nero Image Recorder did not work already, seems like AM did recognize. Perhaps they also add VirtualCD and other appz in the future?
On windoze I use a program called DbPoweramp music converter... rips cd's straight to mp3 and converts every file format known to man with the right codecs. being a linux babe I use audio-convert. Now I have the GUI installed it's one click and away. The codecs are hard to find.
I am in the same boat as shjanes. Except that nothing works for me. I have installed MP11, Latest Audible for MP, I can listen to the books using MP but when I bring them into Goldwave under Batch Processing Goldwave chokes. It says that it is an unsupported file. Goldwave V. 5.10
I think that's the problem You also have with Goldwave. I did not try the Goldwave solution but this seems probable, doesn't it?
Has anyone found out how to make Goldwave stop clipping the end of a file and putting on the begining? This is my only problem with Goldwave. And NO, deleting the playlist ap. doesn't work.
Before I was able to make Goldwave worked, I used Total Recorder. This program only grabs in real time but It is what I did for 1/2 my collection before finding the Goldwave approach. Total Recorder is a virtual sound card. (Think it did actually have an accelerated rate or times 6). Anyway it grabs the decrypted signal on its way to the speakers and saves in the format of your choice. Sort of like putting a microphone next to the speakers, but without the obvious quality loss. TR is cheap shareware. Like $12. The better versions will split at the size your want. I used to go for 10 minute segments and then include a 5 second overlap from the previous segment.
After a hard drive problem I went to download the Win98/ME version of AM and it's gone, they now say "Win98 and ME are not supported". I like unabridged books and trying to burn them to CD and then rip them is just not an option. What is REALLY stupid about this is that I can buy the stupid books on CD and rip them to MP3's, and that's perfectly OK, but Audible doesn't want us to do the same thing. If I can't find a reasonable way to do this I'll just tell Audible to stuff it. Jeff DeWitt
I have been working on a project to convert my 225+ unabridged books to a friendlier file format for quite some time. The product that I have settled on to convert the files is dBpowerAMP Music Converter™ ("dMC"): http://www.dbpoweramp.com/ They also run a forum which has a number of threads that deal with problems converting *.aa files and what codecs and settings to use. I suggest a quick review of the following threads: http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?p=44575#post44575 http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?t=11714&page=2 I test converted a book back in June, but since then I had to update Audible Manager v5 in order to download any more files. The new version prevented dMC from using Audible's codec. This is similar to problems noted in this thread. What was necessary was to change back to AudibleManager v.4, but I had difficulty in finding a source to download it. I found it from a dMC forum thread; download it here: http://download.audible.com/AMself/audible.exe I suggest archiving this file because there is no telling how much longer it will be available. Also, please note that, when uninstalling AudibleManager v5, you SHOULD DEACTIVATE any players, including your desktop player first. You may or may not have to download and install "Audible Download Manager for Windows Media Player 11" from: http://download.audible.com/AM50/AudibleDM_WMPSetup.exe I believe I had to do this to enable Windows MediaPlayer v11 to play the Audible files as part of getting dMC to be able to access the Audible codec. However, another user claims he had to unistall this file in order to get dMC to work, so good luck. One final cautionary note, the Audible "system" keeps track of where you are in the playback of your file, or at least what "section" you are in, and when you go to transcode your Audible book, it may start in the middle someplace because that is where the "marker" has placed you, and the Audible "system" evidently thinks you are playing the book on your desktop when you are using dMC to transcode the file. Now, I have to uninstall AudibleManager v4 and install v5 to download any book from my library, and then reverse the process to transcode to another process. Also, you may be pleased to note that dMC has a utility codec available to split your resulting file into whatever sizes (by time) that you select. The overall process for a 10 hr book once you are set up and able to perform the conversion is under 30 minutes. I used a two-step process to transcode to WAV and then to WMA, resulting in a good quality audio file of about 90MB for a 10 hr book. Good luck!
Why? I uninstalled v5 and reinstalled v4 (from thecAudible .com) site and can download any book from their .uk.co site without problem and then convert with dBpowerAMP.
I can't tell you why, except that I am unable to download using v.4. I was using v.4 and had upgraded to MediaPlayer (MP) v.11 and sometime afterwards tried to download a book and received an error message suggesting that I needed to delete my temp folders. I can not promise you that MP caused the problem, but nothing I could think of doing worked. I was on hold for Audible's tech support and was searching their online knowledge base, or whatever they call their previously answered questions, and found an item on point that indicated the only way to correct the error message was by updating to AudibleManager v5, which I do not like as much. Why ask why? If you are OK, be happy!
Curiosity!! I do remember difficulty with WMP11 and reverting to WMP10 but forgotten quite why. Now use WMP11 but I don't play my audible files on the computer. I suppose the day will come when v4 will be incompatible. Of course, one can always play them in real-time and capture them using Replay AV or some such software.
dhartson has it! I tried using the same process as dhartson (Had to buy DBPowerAmp because my trial is long since over) but so far I have all of my books in MP3. Audible V4 DBPowerAmp 11.5 w/ the Direct Show addon. Found that the only way it would work to convert was to use 32k CBR @ 22050 Hz if I tried VBR or any other setting on CBR it would pitch a fit. WW
I use the latest Audible v 5.1 (i downloaded it and did a webinstall so I am sure it is the latest version), WMP 11.0, and Goldwave 5.17. I have no problems downloading or converting.
Can you please elaborate. What is the setup required, what is the procedure steps to successfully transcode, how long does it take to convert a book...?
I was gonna suggest that dad2007 back up a page or two and read a little, but it only took a little longer to do it for him.
Thanks for that but jadoglio's post says that he uses 5.1 not 4.0 which is why I asked for details. I wish to stay with 5.1 if it is possible so Jadoglio, if you could please respond?
I know this isn't the right place to post this but I can't find the information anywhere and I figured with so many audible.com users someone might know. Has anyone figured out what geographic area you have to be in to be able to download the lord of the rings series from audible? thanks for your help.
