This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 6:01 pm and is filed under Donaldson, FATAL REVENANT, LORD FOUL'S BANE, Scott Brick Presents projects, Tech stuff, Thomas Covenant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Hope you don’t mind me picking your brain for a minute, but wanted to get your thoughts on something.
The MP3 files for FATAL REVENANT and LORD FOUL’S BANE are about 75 minutes long each. That was intentional – each part fits on one CD.
The question is, do any of you burn these MP3 files onto CD, or do you just keep them digital?
Let me know via e-mail (scott@scottbrickpresents.com) or by leaving a comment on this post. This will help me tailor the files and downloads for how people use them.
Thanks!
Scott
May 7th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
[…] Survey: Do You Burn Audiobook MP3 Files to CD? […]
May 7th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
I keep all my MP3 files digital these days. It’s a major space saver and much more portable than CDs.
May 7th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Nope, I download them from the library directly onto my MP3 player and then after 21 days they “expire” and stop working, at which point I delete and move on to the next one.
However, the library download service (overdrive) does allow burning to CD, so it’s good to have them at 74 minutes.
As well, if you make one humngo file instead of breaking them up, it’s harder tof ind where you left off if something goes wrong and you lose your bookmark.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Use Ipod to listen to files. the way you have them is ok for breaks other wise you’d have to break chapters inside 5 or 6 hour segments like audible does.
May 8th, 2008 at 4:51 am
Like a few others I put them straight onto my mp3 player. Files broken up into 30 minute segments would be ideal for me, but 74 minutes is fine. I’ve had books broken up by chapter, which seems great at first, at least for the short chapters, but then the longer ones are sometimes too long.
Keep up the good work.
Regards
locool
May 8th, 2008 at 5:08 am
Both actually. I dl them to my iPod via iTunes but to safeguard them for later use I burn the MP3 files to DVD. I use to burn them to CD for listening in the car (I have stacks and stacks of them) but now I just use the iPod.
May 8th, 2008 at 8:30 am
I prefer the 74 minute range personally. That way it works well in regular CD Players as well as my MP3 player. It’s a compatibility thing, primarily.
For audio books on CD, I use a freeware app called Bonk Encoder to rip each disk into a single MP3 file at 32 kbps, 22 kHz, 16 bit, Mono.
Some CD’s have up to 99 tracks on them, some less. But I find that having one MP3 file for each CD is more manageable on my MP3 player and also gives me the flexibility to burn each file back to a CD so that I can easily take them on road trips.
May 8th, 2008 at 8:53 am
I listen to audio books while driving. I have a 6 CD changer that allows me to load up to 7 hours (6 CDs) and drive. It does not play MP3 content and thus I must burn the MP3 files to standard CD audio. Dealing with MP3 files that must be broken apart or combined to fill a CD would be a hindrance. My next vehicle will certainly have a MP3 jack for an iPod or other player and I would no longer require the CD changer, but until that time…
May 8th, 2008 at 10:37 am
74 min is good for me, too. Or if it were broken up into chapters that might even be better… it’s easier to go to a specific place in the book if I want to. Although some of the chapters might be more than 74 min long…
I have Runes on CD and each one is broken up into 12 tracks of about 6-7 minutes each, which is fine for CD, but for my iPod I’m going to combine them back into chapters.
btw, if you use iTunes, you can set the “Remember playback position” on the Options tab and it’ll start up where you last stopped… as long as you don’t delete the file from iTunes (then you have to reset that option).
May 8th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
I like the CD size. I do not ever burn it to CD but this is much more manageable than a hundred files or 1 extremely large file.
I use a Zune MP3 player. I have to change all of the files to have current ID3 information or else the files may not play in the order that they should. Zune ignores the file name and plays in order of the track number. Did I happen to mention that your files don’t have track numbers?
It’s not difficult to change once your used to making the changes. To be well optomized for Zune, the more ID3 info the better.
May 9th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Hi Scott… Yes i have a huge audio book collection on cd & Tape but now with mp3 players im glad that i had backed all of them up years ago in Mp3 format because I saved myself a bunch of time having to convert them for MP3 players now days…. the portable CD player is a Dinosaur with the size and need to replace batteries every 6 hours or so and moving parts that break every couple months with continuous use.
I dont burn cds anymore. no reason to unless its a music cd for a home stereo or something and even those are being replaced by mp3 players, so for other than storage i think the cd is about dead or soon to be, by the way..Great prices on the audio books.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
I normally bring audiobooks from CDs (both standard and MP3) into iTunes via Audiobook Builder, where I try to merge chapter tracks together. So, my preferred arrangement of tracks is one track per chapter.
Failing that, the next best arrangement I’ve found is tracks every 10 minutes and every chapter (that is, chapters always start a new track, even if that means the prior chapter’s final track isn’t 10 minutes).
75 minutes per track, I suppose that’s of use to someone who needs to burn CDs. But I’m going to be listening on my iPod. FWIW, Audible sells their tracks in 5-8 hour chunks, and seems to do OK. But they use their proprietary format, and can embed chapter marks within those large tracks. For plain MP3 format, I think maybe the long tracks wouldn’t be a good option…
May 9th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Yes, absolutely I burn them. I have become a real fan of listening to audio books as I bike…usually get a disc in each day. I cannot think of anything I have looked so forward to as being on the beautiful trail on a sunny, 85 degree day with a nice warm breeze…biking along listering to Lord Foul’s Bane for the second time!
I also great appreciate the ease with which it is set up to record them to CD. I would buy packaged copies, simply because I know Scott would not settle for anything but the original cover on each CD and the box itself. For that, I would pay extra. I have no dispute with this though, it is a dream come true (is Illearth War out yet?).
Jason
May 11th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Nope. I haven’t used a CD player since the iPod was introduced, except for loading things to my iPod
Nevertheless, I have no particular problem with breaking the files into CD sized chunks.
I like it when the file-breaks happen at chapter breaks. Otherwise it can be harder to find your way back, if you accidentally go and lose your place. A one-file-per-chapter approach isn’t necessary, though it can be nice. But sometimes it leads to a ton of files, and that’s not necessarily a win. But there are programs that’ll let you insert chapter markers inside your files. I’m just downloading “Lord Foul’s Bane” as I type this, so forgive me if I just recommended something you’ve already done
Cheers. And thanks for bringing a classic to audio.
May 14th, 2008 at 11:25 am
I conver to M4b format to allow bookmarking on the ipod. Length is not that important. I have combined a number of chapters in othr books to larger files for the ipod just to make it easier for me.
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Scott,
I just keep them digital. However, like others, I would think more than the 74 minutes could get rather cumbersome to deal with.
Be well,
Bob
May 27th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
I have to admit, I’m still using CDs, so the 74 minute format is very good for me on the long commute.
May 29th, 2008 at 6:10 am
I use an MP3 player exclusively for my audio book listening. I like having the option to burn CDs if needed but rarely do it. Truth to tell, not having the option to purchase an audio book in digital format is generally a deal breaker for me. Digital audio books are less expensive to buy and are available to me instantly via download.
May 31st, 2008 at 4:09 am
Aloha,, Regarding mp3 which I read on Saturday. I think we might disagree on this, but I still appreciate your comment on Survey: Do You Burn Audiobook MP3 Files to CD?.
May 31st, 2008 at 8:02 am
I only store them and listen to them digitally. I’d prefer one big file with chapter segments for the iPod.
When I imported to iTunes, I had to add the metadata to get it working right. I’d appreciate it if that could be done in advance.
Thanks for your great work Scott!
June 10th, 2008 at 7:02 am
The question is somewhat ambiguous. I think you’re asking if people burn the audio from the .mp3 file onto a standard audio CD that will play in regular CD players. I haven’t done that in some time, but what I *have* done is burned the mp3 files onto a CD-ROM. Many CD players now will play MP3 files directly, which allows you to put 700MB of MP3 files on one disc. I do the latter more often than the former.
With that said, I see some folks are asking for one giant file with chapter marks. I’d definitely like to see it go the other way and have one small file per chapter. A couple of the mp3 players in my family don’t have bookmarking capabilities, so if you have a big file (even a 75 minute one), you have to hold the fast forward button until you get to the spot you left off. So I actually prefer a pile of mp3 files that are split on chapter breaks. Another advantage is that if you have a really ancient mp3 player like a 128 MB or 256 MB one, you can still use it with the small files.