Audiobook woes.

January 15, 2011 6:59 PM

Why won't my Sansa Clip play my Audible Audiobook files?

Hi all,

I have a Sansa clip and some brand new audiobooks I'm trying to listen to. When I connect the clip to my computer (macbook), I can see that the files are in the music folder, but when I try to play the files on the mp3 player, everything comes up as "unknown"... unknown title, length of 00:00:00.

Both Audible and Sandisk sites say that it should be about to play the .aa files, but it's not working.

Is there a way to get the files to play without having to convert them to mp3? If not, what is the easiest way to convert .aa files to mp3?

posted by mikeweeney to Technology (9 answers total)

Response by poster: Still googling around, found this forum, where a person got this response from Audible:

"I understand that you cannot get the books to play on your Sansa Clip +. Unfortunately, while the Clip + is Audible ready, the Audible content would not be able to transfer to the Clip + using a Mac. The Mac is not configure with the plugin to transfer content to devices other than iPods and Palm devices. The technicians are working with Apple to hopefully create an application to make the transfer possible with different mp3 device, but no word has been made yet when and if it will be possible."

Not a good sign...
posted by mikeweeney at 7:08 PM on January 15, 2011

I did a quick scan of the Sansa Clip Wikipedia article. It says there's an Audible folder for Audible files. Have you put the files there instead of the music folder? I know certain devices can be very picky about what folders you put media into (transferring files the the PS3, for example).
posted by gc at 7:12 PM on January 15, 2011

On post, nevermind.
posted by gc at 7:13 PM on January 15, 2011

Response by poster: Yeah, I tried putting them in the audible folder, with the same results.
posted by mikeweeney at 7:16 PM on January 15, 2011

I had luck using Parallels or VM Fusion (I forget which one worked, but it was a few releases ago so perhaps they both work today) to run Windows Media Player to transfer DRM content to a Creative audio player.

The audible files are probably similar. At the time that you transfer them, the software on the computer also transfers a license/key that permits them to play on that device. (if you were to copy the files off they'd not play on a different device).
posted by devbrain at 8:55 PM on January 15, 2011

Doesn't Audible have a Mac version of the Audible Manager ? That is what I used on my PC to download audio books to my Clip.

Note : The Audible Manager is a different program than the Audible Download Manager - it copies the books directly to the player instead of opening iTunes or Windows Media Player.
posted by rfs at 9:46 PM on January 15, 2011

Best answer: Yes, I just got a clip and had to activate through either the Audible Download Manager (which I already had installed) or the Audible Manager. Can't remember which, but you have to specifically activate the device- it's a menu option. Since doing that, I can just drag and drop the files to the clip (into the audible file, although I'm not sure if that matters), without using the Manager at all (which is kind of clunky). I have a PC, but it sounds like you may just not have activated it properly.
posted by acanthous at 5:54 AM on January 16, 2011

Response by poster: Thanks for the help everyone! I'm going to my parent's house today and I'm going to install the audible manager software on their pc and redownload the files. From what I've seen around online, once I activate the clip through a pc, I should be able to use it with my mac just fine.
posted by mikeweeney at 7:30 AM on January 16, 2011

Response by poster: And it works now!
posted by mikeweeney at 3:38 AM on January 17, 2011