Seeking legal audiobooks from sources other than Audible
November 1, 2004 3:58 AM Subscribe
Where is a good place to download audio books?
I've tried Audible, and they have a good selection of books, but in a non-user friendly format. For example, last night I bought a book of 50 poems, and it is is all on one 3 hour file, with about 3 bookmarks within that file. That's obviously pretty useless for dipping into.
I've also tried audiobooksforfree and whilst the books there are split into chapters sensibly, the quality of the narration was questionable and the range of books is limited to out of copyright titles.
The best user experience by far has been from audio books I've downloaded via Suprnova, but there I'm obviously limited to the limited range of books that people have ripped and torrented.
So any suggestions as to where I can get decent, user friendly audio books?
Cheers
I've tried Audible, and they have a good selection of books, but in a non-user friendly format. For example, last night I bought a book of 50 poems, and it is is all on one 3 hour file, with about 3 bookmarks within that file. That's obviously pretty useless for dipping into.
I've also tried audiobooksforfree and whilst the books there are split into chapters sensibly, the quality of the narration was questionable and the range of books is limited to out of copyright titles.
The best user experience by far has been from audio books I've downloaded via Suprnova, but there I'm obviously limited to the limited range of books that people have ripped and torrented.
So any suggestions as to where I can get decent, user friendly audio books?
Cheers
I susbscribe to the Audible PremiumListener service. For $21 per month I can download any two books I want. Great for people who are only interested in unabridged books, which can run in the $50-$70 range retail. And the selection is excellent -- not quite all-encompasing, but pretty darn good.
I guess the bookmark thing is a negative, but I burn to CD and listen in the car, and it inserts "tracks" every 7 minutes or so, so it's not that big of a deal to navigate if necessary.
posted by pardonyou? at 6:21 AM on November 1, 2004
I guess the bookmark thing is a negative, but I burn to CD and listen in the car, and it inserts "tracks" every 7 minutes or so, so it's not that big of a deal to navigate if necessary.
posted by pardonyou? at 6:21 AM on November 1, 2004
If you want to get legal copies of books, your best bet is to buy them on CD and rip them yourself.
The bookmarking thing is neatly solved by Rockbox, an open source firmware for the Archos players. You can bookmark anywhere in the middle of an MP3, save it to disk, manage several bookmarks, etc. Great for audiobooks. I think the iPod has a similar feature for Audible books.
posted by Nelson at 8:09 AM on November 1, 2004
The bookmarking thing is neatly solved by Rockbox, an open source firmware for the Archos players. You can bookmark anywhere in the middle of an MP3, save it to disk, manage several bookmarks, etc. Great for audiobooks. I think the iPod has a similar feature for Audible books.
posted by Nelson at 8:09 AM on November 1, 2004
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by blueshammer at 6:16 AM on November 1, 2004