audible.com sucks

[stokessd]

Here's a nice little rant about why I'll never buy anything form audible.

I decided to try audible.com because I wanted to Read "reefer Madness" by Eric Schlosser, and I had a lot of computer coding to do. so I decided to try it as a book on CD type of thing. Amazon.com had the unabridged 8 CD set of $27. Audible has it for like $19 for download. I decided to give the download a shot.

The nasty part about it is that it's a proprietary format which requires a proprietary reader (or itunes on the mac). and you can't convert it to another medium so you can share it. If I bought the $8 paperback I could share it with all my friends; ditto the CD set.

So tonight I decided to work around this issue and record it to CD's (actually to one CD-RW). I told it to record an hour and then I turn right around and rip the stream right back as an AIFF file. It turns out that not only can't I share the original (******ed aa format) files, but it knows that I've already made one CD copy and won't let me make another. I've got it on my drive as AIFF files now, and I'll slice them up nicely, convert them to MP3's (in nice CD sized chunks) and give them to everybody I know.

So for an $8 savings, I don't have media, and it's fighting me at every turn to try to turn it into usable media. And to add insult to injury, they are now spamming the crap out of me.

Never again...
Sheldon

[mlglaw]

Sheldon,

Um, every heard of Goldwave. Before I got my iPod, I had a iRiver iH120 that didn't have .aa decoders. It converts .aa to mp3 no problem. You should try it.

Audible has some great stuff. You should give it another shot.

Good luck,

Michael

[Leslie Horn]

Yeah, if you can hear it out of your speakers/headphones, you can record it to wav, mp3, etc.

The OP was dissing an online vender, when he should be dissing DRM,
as a concept.

You will only see more and more of it. It is mainly implemented to discourage casual copying, not blatant piracy.

Anything can be copied/ripped/sampled...

[moving_electron]

Originally posted by Leslie Horn
[B]Yeah, if you can hear it out of your speakers/headphones, you can record it to wav, mp3, etc.

The app. Total Recorder works quite nicely (if you turn off Direct sound on your app) to capture everything going to your sound card as a .wav, MP3 or lossless compressed file.

You can do this I think by looping back digital out to digital in on your sound card if you have them, but this software solution for <$12 bucks is pretty slick. The system thinks it is a soundcard.

Disadvantage: It captures as you play so it take that lenth of time. Still pretty handy, provides an easy interface to get things from line in or Mic as well.