Audiobooks for the nervous

Open Forum in English
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I have been having real problems with transferring foreign languages audio books to my MP3 player. My husband has been doing it for me, on the ground that it’s too hard for my poor old brain.

Well, my poor old brain has now learned a trick or two, and I thought it might be worth sharing. Thank you Alex for explaining some things to me!

Audio books don’t usually come as mp3s. Even if they say they are they may not be. There is this other file format called MPEG-2 (or mp2) which can look to your computer like mp3s, but if you play it and it sounds like the reader is speaking very fast while sitting in a metal box, it may be mp2.

This is what I do to get files from CD to my mp3 player:

Put the CD in the CD drive.
Open the CD drive with Windows explorer.
Copy the folder with the files you want onto your hard drive somewhere.
CHECK THAT THE TOP FOLDER (or any folders and files under it) ISN’T WRITE-PROTECTED (right-click and go into Properties in WIndows Explorer). Do not copy read-only-files onto your mp3 player or you may not be able to delete them without reformatting your mp3 player. I speak from experience here.
Open the files you have copied to the hard drive in Windows Explorer, drag them over to the iTunes library window, then select all the files, right-click on them and select convert to mp3. This will take a few minutes. If it is successful, the files will now sound like they should.
If you have an mp3 player like mine, it will only play the tracks in the right order if you set the track numbers on the file tags to be consecutive. In iTunes, right-click on each track, select Get Info and change the tags.
You don’t need to copy the files back from iTunes to Windows Explorer when you have finished. They never left Windows Explorer in the first place. Just copy using Windows Explorer from your hard drive to your mp3 player.

If your audio book comes in WAV format, I think the same procedure will convert WAV to mp3.
Some people’s mp3 players can play mp2s as long as they have the .mp3 file extension. I think if you have an Ipod it has the codex built in. My Creative Zen needs the files in mp3 format.

Hope this helps someone!

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Oh, it seems to me that you went too deeply into the matter as though it could be quite counterproductive for the person who wants to manage files with player. Most if not any portable players on the market have user friendly import/export facilities. But yes that could be very useful when for some reason you have two different players and without knowing a little bit underneath how it works could cause serious headaches. I know cause I have both Zen Creative and iPod.

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a bunch of noise ( man with a soft spot for Shakespeare to judge from his profile).

thanks for the advice. I notice you wonder where the grammar is at LingQ.

Two comments

“manage files with “a” player”

"most if not any " should be “most if not all”

No grammar study is going to help you there. Just save words and phrases, keep learning, follow your obviously wide interests, and enjoy. But at the same time accept that you will continue to make the odd mistake that betrays the fact that you are not a native speaker, and so what. WE ALL DO!

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Thank you for correcting me. I didn’t expect that my humble profile can catch such an attention. Judging from my small yet experience of using the service I dare say, that each time I come to LingQ I am able to find something new and useful. As things stands I can’t get enough of it. (Hopefully, skyblueteapot is not angry for us being off topic).

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