Is there a Calibre for audiobooks?
February 6, 2022 7:57 PM Subscribe
I have been increasingly getting into purchasing and listening to audiobooks. I am one of those people who insists on buying my ebooks from whatever store I feel like and then ripping off the DRM and storing them locally, and I am frustrated by two things: the Kobo app (where I buy most things) sucks for me when playing my audiobooks, and as I now own audiobooks on at least three services I would love to have them all in one place. Does anything exist that would let me do this? I prefer to avoid Audible if possible.
I have a high tolerance for slight kludginess and a deep affection for places that let me kick some money towards local bookstores. I ran into Libro.fm on the audiobook thread currently on the Blue, and I see they do DRM-free downloads which is awesome! Love that! What I want here is three things:
1) some kind of organizational platform or service where I can store and organize my audiobooks in a way where I can find my shit later, no matter where I bought them. I do have a Google drive account from a university that was unwise enough to grant users unlimited storage, so I can make my own cloud storage if necessary, but it would be great to be able to browse through my shit.
2) tips and tricks on de-DRMing the audiobooks I've already bought so I can keep my collection in one place and I'm not so vulnerable to various platforms' whims. I have a high tolerance to googling, work reasons to make friends with ffmpeg, and a lot of stubbornness here, but if there's a toolkit somewhere please let me know!
3) app recs for apps capable of playing my audiobooks whether or not the books were purchased through the specific store of the app. Is there something like Marvin for audiobooks? Kobo drives me up the wall because my phone doesn't seem to recognize the audiobook as a media stream so I can't easily pull up a playing book and pause it if, say, my spouse suddenly starts talking to me while I'm listening. I really really really would love that functionality.
I have a high tolerance for slight kludginess and a deep affection for places that let me kick some money towards local bookstores. I ran into Libro.fm on the audiobook thread currently on the Blue, and I see they do DRM-free downloads which is awesome! Love that! What I want here is three things:
1) some kind of organizational platform or service where I can store and organize my audiobooks in a way where I can find my shit later, no matter where I bought them. I do have a Google drive account from a university that was unwise enough to grant users unlimited storage, so I can make my own cloud storage if necessary, but it would be great to be able to browse through my shit.
2) tips and tricks on de-DRMing the audiobooks I've already bought so I can keep my collection in one place and I'm not so vulnerable to various platforms' whims. I have a high tolerance to googling, work reasons to make friends with ffmpeg, and a lot of stubbornness here, but if there's a toolkit somewhere please let me know!
3) app recs for apps capable of playing my audiobooks whether or not the books were purchased through the specific store of the app. Is there something like Marvin for audiobooks? Kobo drives me up the wall because my phone doesn't seem to recognize the audiobook as a media stream so I can't easily pull up a playing book and pause it if, say, my spouse suddenly starts talking to me while I'm listening. I really really really would love that functionality.
What kind of phones or computers are you using? Mac, Windows, iPhone, Android
Alfa ebooks manager (windows only) handles the organization part for both ebooks and audiobooks. I have one library for each one. I have a ton of tagging cleanup for both types of files after importing them. I like it more than Calibre becasue it respects your file system and doesn't make copies.
For the app, I like Bookmobile (iOS) for playing back audiobooks, though it is not perfect and does jump around when I forget to pause before turning off the car. I am using Plex now and the audio player Prologue and I have found it superior, but the whole Plex installation and ongoing maintenance might be a lot for some people. Prologue has tagging issue as well, but to a lesser degree. It's not the software's fault the files aren't correctly tagged, but making those corrections, especially to multiple files at one time, needs to be easier. I haven't checked if updating in on affects the other.
posted by soelo at 6:40 AM on February 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
Alfa ebooks manager (windows only) handles the organization part for both ebooks and audiobooks. I have one library for each one. I have a ton of tagging cleanup for both types of files after importing them. I like it more than Calibre becasue it respects your file system and doesn't make copies.
For the app, I like Bookmobile (iOS) for playing back audiobooks, though it is not perfect and does jump around when I forget to pause before turning off the car. I am using Plex now and the audio player Prologue and I have found it superior, but the whole Plex installation and ongoing maintenance might be a lot for some people. Prologue has tagging issue as well, but to a lesser degree. It's not the software's fault the files aren't correctly tagged, but making those corrections, especially to multiple files at one time, needs to be easier. I haven't checked if updating in on affects the other.
posted by soelo at 6:40 AM on February 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
One last option for playback is Documents by Readdle. They really push the ebook/pdf part, but it handles audio files perfectly. It will interface with cloud storage nicely, too. You have to download the files, I believe, it won't stream them like Prologue.
posted by soelo at 6:43 AM on February 7, 2022
posted by soelo at 6:43 AM on February 7, 2022
I've never used it but Readarr may be worth investigation; it's sort of Sonarr / Radarr but for books. The marquee feature is "download books from unlicensed sources" but if it's anything like the TV and movie apps, part of what makes that work is a database of e-book content and good library management.
posted by Nelson at 7:38 AM on February 7, 2022
posted by Nelson at 7:38 AM on February 7, 2022
Response by poster: What kind of phones or computers are you using?
Android phone, sometimes iPad, I regularly use two Windows PCs and I frequently use Linux/Windows Subsystem Linux for coding.
posted by sciatrix at 10:46 AM on February 7, 2022
Android phone, sometimes iPad, I regularly use two Windows PCs and I frequently use Linux/Windows Subsystem Linux for coding.
posted by sciatrix at 10:46 AM on February 7, 2022
I use Smart AudioBook app on my Android phone. It plays every audio format I've thrown at it, though I've never hit it with any DRM-laden audio. I don't know if it's the best; it's just the first that worked for me. Create an audiobook folder on your SD card (assuming your phone has one; otherwise in your phone's drive), and put individual books into folders within that main folder. You have to manually refresh the library, but that takes a second.
It has a large but handy widget. It tends to lodge itself into your notification drawer, but there's an X in the upper left that you can use to dismiss it. It does bookmarks, sleep mode, playout-speed adjustment, its own equalizer, and even a little notes file where you can store the names and descriptions of characters.
posted by Sunburnt at 11:57 AM on February 7, 2022
It has a large but handy widget. It tends to lodge itself into your notification drawer, but there's an X in the upper left that you can use to dismiss it. It does bookmarks, sleep mode, playout-speed adjustment, its own equalizer, and even a little notes file where you can store the names and descriptions of characters.
posted by Sunburnt at 11:57 AM on February 7, 2022
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posted by drawsablank at 6:31 AM on February 7, 2022 [11 favorites]