Say I have an Audible.com file that I want to make into an MP3. It's just spoken word, so a low bitrate is not noticed and saves space. What is your opinion on what bitrate is as low as you can go without sacrificing compatibility with older MP3 devices?

Greetings!

Unless audible has changed, their files are encoded with some protection or other non-MP1 layer 3 format. You will need to convert them in order to get them to play on the empeg. You can use the Total Recorder software to capture from your soundcard, or you can use the audio editor GoldWave that can open the .AA files from audible directly and save them to a more friendly format.

In either case, unless you can download direct to public MP3 format (you couldn't as of a few months ago with my last download from there), you will need to cross-convert. Go for the best quality you can from Audible, and then scale down on your machine to the quality you prefer.

Note: I know that Doug (tanstaafl) has been having trouble with very low bitrate files - perhaps he has found the breakpoint...

Audible allows you to burn most stuff to CD. I simply made 96kbps MP3s using EAC and LAME.

I have a friend that had trouble playing really low files with Winamp 1.92 (I think). He uses it because it can run as an executable without installing....obviously a very paranoid individual. All books I got from audible are free downloads, so giving him a copy as MP3 doesn't sound wrong to me.

He uses dialup, so keeping the bitrate small is ideal. We just have to find the smallest file size that is still compatible with version 1.x Winamp, his DVD player, and Intel PocketConcert.

Greetings!

Have you had any trouble with the CDs you burned from Audible? Every test one I have done has what sounds like track sync problems with the last few tracks on the disk. Thus my quest for finding a way that didn't involve creating coasters...

I don't think you start running into trouble with MP3 cross platform until you get below the 96kbps range. I strongly recommend CBR in this case, again for compatability only. I assume you are already converting to mono as well.

The CDs I've made have all been good. I have a Lite-On 16x IDE burner at home and 12x at work. Both have made good CDs.

Some MP3s have been joint stereo and some mono. For my personal use, I could care less about a 96kbps vs 16kbps. The only problem is when I have to send an MP3 to someone living in the dark ages with Winamp 1 and 56k.

PS- 16kbps files definitely do not work.

16kbps files definitely do not work.

MPEG-1 layer 3 defines bitrates from 32kbits/s to 320kbits/s. Any bitrate below 32kbits/s has to be encoded as MPEG-2 (or Fraunhofer's "MPEG 2.5").

Perhaps "sufficiently old" decoders only grok MPEG-1, not MPEG-2 (the data formats are the same, just the frame headers are different). http://www.iis.fhg.de/amm/techinf/faq.html

So in summary, try not going below 32kbits/s (or, for similar reasons, 16kHz sampling).

Peter

Winamp 1.92 (I think). He uses it because it can run as an executable without installing....obviously a very paranoid individual.

Obviously an individual who appreciates well-behaved Windows programs. If he were paranoid, he'd be building everything from bootsector onwards from source tarballs -- not that that is necessarily enough to be sure...

Peter

Can't you just use any sound recording program? Heck, the "sound recorder" that comes with windows should be enough, shouldn't it? Yeah it's slower than burning CDs since it's real time, but it would work, wouldn't it? You just have to select the correct input in the volume controls.

Peter's given you the theoretical value - but it's going to be time-consuming to test that for compatibility with a wide range of devices. Practically speaking, 56kbps CBR was the early 'standard' in the dark ages of limited bandwidth and storage, so it should be a safe bet compatibility-wise.

Obviously an individual who appreciates well-behaved Windows programs.

His main gripe with new versions of Winamp is that the installer puts an AOL shortcut on the desktop. Hence, he only uses the version that runs as a single executable. Paranoid.

...installer puts an AOL shortcut...

It didn't do this when I installed Winamp 3 last week.

Greetings!

Certainly it would work, but I usually wind up getting a few books at a time. When I did this last, I burned them to CD and ended up with about 45 CDRs worth. I would prefer not doing that in real time...

If there is an existing install of winamp on your machine, you can uncheck the shortcut during install. If there is no current version, you have no choice. At least that's how it's handled in 2.80.

How about using FreeAmp/zinf?

Good idea. A free MP3 app that's not owned by AOL and is not bloated like Sonique. That probably solves the computer use.

However, I will have to make bigger MP3s anyway so they will also work with the Intel player and the DVD player.

Yeah, I've done the Audible->TotalRecorder->MP3 trick recently, and it worked.

The only problem is that the one thing that would make it useful to me, the "acceleration" feature, didn't work for me with their player client. So I was only able to do the file-conversion in realtime. Now THAT is a pain.