16KB/s is quite a reasonable rate - I assume you meant 16Kb/s.

Yes.

Are the files mono?

Yes. They are taking up about 115 kilobytes of disk space per minute of playtime.

This means that if I had Paul Grzlak's player, I could put just about exactly two years of audiobooks on it!

One more little discrepancy I have discovered... If I pause the player (without powering it down or even timing out of standby) when I restart the player the elapsed time counter will be the same as when I paused -- but the play location in the file will be somewhere else, usually about five minutes ahead of where I paused it.

My only workaround is to only pause or stop the play exactly between files.

tanstaafl.