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Converting .aa files to mp3's
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noname5
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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24. June 2007 @ 19:36 |
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Can someone who has soundtaxi describe how they're using it. The only way I can get it to convert is to play the book on wmp and soundtaxi records it in real time. My sound card will do that. It sounds like others are using soundtaxi and converting without playing with wmp.
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knipknup
Newbie
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25. June 2007 @ 06:40 |
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I just add the files and it starts converting automatically.
who dat?
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danjoh99
Newbie
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12. July 2007 @ 19:33 |
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I was finally successful converting .aa files in Goldwave by simply hitting "save as...," as described in the beginning of this thread in 2004. This is now 2007 and Audible has plugged most of the holes. I followed everyone's instructions and got nowhere, until I found the old Windows Media filter. The trick is that you need an old version of the Windows Media Player filter software, which is the key ingredient. The latest versions don't work anymore, regardless of your sound conversion software.
Here's the recipe that worked for me. I'm running Windows XP SP2, I had to uninstall my recent versions and set it up like this:
1. Windows Media Player rolled back to verion 9.
2. Uninstalled Audible Manager, planning to install the 3.5 version posted earlier in this thread. I never did, and didn't need it for converting. If I want to download more from my Audible account, I'll need to reinstall some version of Audible Manager again. Your version of AM might not matter. Same for Audible Download Manager.
3. the key: AudibleMediaPlayerFilter.exe, version 1.0.0.1. Remove later versions. This piece unlocks the .aa format for other software to read. Goldwave and RiverPast will not understand .aa files unless you have this, regardless of your version of Goldwave or Riverpast. If you have a newer version of this filter, Audible has fixed the "vulnerability."
I found it here:
http://blog.davidwaterston.com/2006/08/09/audible-unlimited/
Direct download link to the filter:
http://www.coolutils.com/Downloads/AudibleMediaPlayerFilter.exe
4. Goldwave v5.2 (latest version: the version of your sound converter might not matter)
With all this in place, Start and Stop your .aa file in windows media player to make sure it's at the beginning. If it's not at the beginning, it will confuse Goldwave and it won't work.
Open your .aa file in Goldwave. You have to select "all types" or something like that in the Open dialog box. Goldwave should chew on the .aa for a little while, unpacking it.
Once it's open, choose "save as..." and pick your format of choice. I used MP3 (after installing the lame_enc.dll codec -- google for "LAME MP3" and download the latest version, then put the .dll in the Goldwave folder) but the MP3 came out rather large (after a lot of processing time). Not unreasonable, at 44MB for 80 minutes of audio. I guess you can use a different compression setting. I also saved as WMA, which was much faster, 4MB, but the sound quality was bad. At this point, it's just fiddling to find a good compression setting, the hard work is over.
I hope others find the software versions described above and it works for them. Thanks for the help given in this thread.
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unolord
Member
1 product review
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16. July 2007 @ 18:38 |
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This is an old thread but I recently joined audible.com via twit.com for the freebie book on their trial plan.
My mp3 player (samsung z5) doesn't play .aa files. I used Nero to burn the files to the image drive and then extracted the image to mp3 using Media Monkey Gold. Worked perfectly.
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Convertor
Newbie
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1. August 2007 @ 04:55 |
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Copy aa to mp3 using media player 11, Goldwave 5.2 & Older Audiblemediaplayerfilter.
I 1st installed Goldwave 4.26, tried it, it didn't work, so I tried installing version 5.20 and it still didn't work.
So I read some more of the above "How to's" and found out that I need to install the older version of "AUDIBLEMEDIAPLAYERFILTER"
http://www.coolutils.com/Downloads/AudibleMediaPlayerFilter.exe
So I did, then I started playing the file I wanted to convert in WMP11, stopped it, and set it back to the begining. Then I opened it in Goldwave 5.20 by selecting "ALL FILE TYPES" I was then able to convert it to MP3 with no trouble at all. Thank You danjoh99 for your input.
I did this and it worked perfectly.
The Convertor
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Convertor
Newbie
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1. August 2007 @ 05:07 |
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Alternate Method for .aa to .mp3 Conversion
This is the method I have been using for years.
It's nice because you get short little chapters instead of one long .mp3 file. Use the Audible Manager to burn the .aa to CD's 1hr 17min each then all you have to do is start windows media player in rip mode and put the new CD's you just made in and convert them to nice short .mp3 chapters. It takes a little longer & does use up CD's but they are good for playing in your car if you don't have an indash MP3 player. If you don't want to use up a few CD-R's use CD-RW's. Between this and the one above everyone should be able to convert their .aa files they paid for to MP3 format for their listening enjoyment.
The Convertor
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olyteddy
Senior Member
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1. August 2007 @ 20:59 |
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Well, I just read all 22 pages (ok, I only 'skimmed' some of it) of this thread and was amazed that there was only one mention of TotalRecorder and no mention of MP3 DirectCut. And that the post that mentions TotalRecorder erroneously states that it only converts in real time. Including MP3 encoding I get about 8X conversion and drop the big file on MP3 DirectCut which neatly chops it into whatever size chunks I want and spits it out as sequentially numbered MP3 chunks. I can easily get at least 30 hours of 'book' in six minute chunks on an MP3 CD for my commute.
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knipknup
Newbie
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2. August 2007 @ 04:02 |
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First, great job getting through all pages... Can you be swell and summarize it for the rest of us. I have read it all once or so, but it has been so long :)
As far as TotalRecorder, how long does it take to convert an 8 hour book and does it require codec hoop jumping?
who dat?
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knipknup
Newbie
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2. August 2007 @ 04:11 |
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Oh yeah, and isn't it a pain having 30 little files on your player that you have to scroll through every six minutes to find the next one in the sequence?
Seems like it would sort them wrong, like...
file.1.mp3
file.11.mp3
file.2.mp3
...
who dat?
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olyteddy
Senior Member
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3. August 2007 @ 20:39 |
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Well, if I remember my gazzinta's from grade school, at 8X, let me see, 8 gazzinta 8 uh, 1 time. So that's one hour to convert. As to 'hoops', it does use LAME to encode the WAV stream generated by Audible Manager. And no, the people who wrote MP3 Direct Cut aren't stupid enough to not include an appropriate number of leading zeros. If six minute chunks ain't to your liking, it can separate them by any time span or even detect silence. I like six minutes because the second significant digit in the file name is the 'hours' place.
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damovee
Newbie
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4. August 2007 @ 05:29 |
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isnt there a way to edit the audio file without converting it. i cant tell u how much i'd pay for a program like that
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sam4949
Newbie
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15. August 2007 @ 05:00 |
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Hi i have been using goldwave to convert aa files to mp3 for some time now and it has work very well but now i have a problem
I have just moved to a new computer and installed all the old software and i now have a problem when i try to play a aa file in windows media or gold wave i loose the last few seconds of any track averything else work ok i just carnt get the last few minutes.
Anybody got any ideas please
Regards
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enialbw
Newbie
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16. August 2007 @ 15:16 |
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I have been monitoring this forum for a couple of years now and tried several of the suggested methods. What has consistently worked best for me is sound SoundTaxi.
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sam4949
Newbie
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17. August 2007 @ 02:32 |
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Thanks for the advice.
I have been using goldwave for quite a while now and i have found it does a brilliant job and has worked very well, untill i moved every thing onto a new computer and now it will not play the last few seconds of ht track.
Also windows media player 9 will not play the last few seconds so i do belive its not goldwave problem.
if this is in both media player 9 and goldwave i would think that soundtaxi will be the same.
Ps it still works ok on my old computer
regards
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gszczesz
Newbie
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25. August 2007 @ 07:06 |
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I followed all the advice...
1) I uninstalled the Audible Software
2) I downloaded the filter pack and installed it. I was missing the MSVCI70.dll, so I had to get that seperatelly off the web.
3) I open Microsoft Media 9 and tried to play the file, but it would not recognize it. Goldwave 5.20 did not recognize it either.
4) I upgraded to Media 11, and tried again, but again it failed.
I downloaded my media recently. Is it possible they upgraded the .aa format so the old filter won't work with it?
I tried one more thing:
- Upgraded to the latest audible software
- Tried playing with media-center, and it worked.
- Installed the old audible filters (without uninstalling anything)
- Media-center stopped recognizing the file.
------
Gregory
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 25. August 2007 @ 07:14
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Yokwe
Newbie
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26. August 2007 @ 16:20 |
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I had success with Goldwave.
Reading some of the previous post I downloaded and installed
Goldwave 5.20
Lame Encoder
Audible Media Player Filter (I needed to download 2 missing DLL's for it)
I open up Goldwave Open new file drop Show All for file types select the AA files. Once Goldwave is done processing it I select Save All and select the type of file output I want. Very simple.
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olyteddy
Senior Member
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26. August 2007 @ 20:25 |
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How quick is Goldwave? (i.e. 2X, 4X, 20X, etc.)
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nighters
Junior Member
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21. September 2007 @ 22:13 |
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Wow my head hurts after working on this for a couple days.
What is the easiest way to convert aa to mp3 as of right now?
Would love to be able to listen to my books at work on my player.
-olyteddy:
Which flavor of totalrecorder do you use for this conversion? (Pro, Standard or Dev?)
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olyteddy
Senior Member
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22. September 2007 @ 11:38 |
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Originally posted by nighters:
...
-olyteddy:
Which flavor of totalrecorder do you use for this conversion? (Pro, Standard or Dev?)
I use the Standard. Go to 'Recording Source and Parameters -> Advanced -> Accelerate recording (silent mode)' and you will basically re-record your book as fast as your computer can encode to MP3. I use Sample rate 22050 Mono CBR 80 Very high quality because that most closely matches the Audible File's parameters.
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nighters
Junior Member
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22. September 2007 @ 15:12 |
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hm i'll have to try that at 22050 and mono and see how it goes. I've been doing it at the same quality as standard music mp3s so far, just because my player can have issues with lower quality files sometimes.
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Delanna
Suspended permanently
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2. October 2007 @ 05:15 |
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spam removed
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 11. October 2007 @ 10:19
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xeerex
Newbie
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5. October 2007 @ 20:36 |
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Hey guys and gals,
Well I'm a new audible.com subscriber due to listening to Leo and the gang on the TWiT podcast. Of course, I want my files to be DRM-less also so a little googling brought me to this incredibly long thread!
I've just successfully converted 2 audiobooks to mp3 format using my own method - I got tired of reading these posts. Here are the quick notes on how I did it. This requires software that is not free but there are trial versions. It does not require the burning/wasting of CD's though.
You need to of course have a legitimate audible.com account to download your content in the first place. My method is NOT intended for sharing your content...just freeing it from the constrains of useless DRM.
If anyone is interested in seeing this done, then I will be glad to create a video tutorial and post a link showing you how. Audible may get pissed and cancel my account, but oh well.
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My Method
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*Use Nero 7 to open AA file from iTunes library - authenticate with audible login/pass
*Convert it to audiobook CD image in Nero
*Open .nrg (Nero image) in UltraISO - convert to Alchohol image format since the audio wont extract from the .nrg image (not sure why and didn't feel like figuring it out)
*Open alchohol image format in UltraISO - extract to wav or mp3
*Import to iTunes and tag - copy artwork from protected AA format to mp3's also!
want to know more? www.smartergeek.com
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 5. October 2007 @ 21:02
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borisd63
Newbie
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9. November 2007 @ 02:15 |
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Thanks Xeerex! That worked perfectly.
Rick Gordon
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bratcher
Senior Member
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9. November 2007 @ 09:40 |
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Originally posted by xeerex:
Hey guys and gals,
Well I'm a new audible.com subscriber due to listening to Leo and the gang on the TWiT podcast. Of course, I want my files to be DRM-less also so a little googling brought me to this incredibly long thread!
What is Twit? This week in what?
Originally posted by xeerex:
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My Method
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*Use Nero 7 to open AA file from iTunes library - authenticate with audible login/pass
*Convert it to audiobook CD image in Nero
*Open .nrg (Nero image) in UltraISO - convert to Alchohol image format since the audio wont extract from the .nrg image (not sure why and didn't feel like figuring it out)
*Open alchohol image format in UltraISO - extract to wav or mp3
*Import to iTunes and tag - copy artwork from protected AA format to mp3's also!
For those that don't have Itunes you can also use Nero to burn Audiblemanager files to .nrg format but I'm not sure how to copy the artwork without using Itunes
You can open the .nrg file with Isobuster just go to file then open image then find the file you want. I'm not sure if the free version of Isobuster does it though.
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linkvoid
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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19. November 2007 @ 17:53 |
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Okay. After several hours, i've gotten it to work.
Since I know how difficult it to find everything to make an Audible (.aa) file into an MP3 or any other format, I've created a kit which contains everything you'll need. It doesn't matter if you have any version of Audible Manager installed, and the version of Windows Media Player that you have foesn't matter either (I used WMP 11).
Here's how to do it:
1. Download the kit here.
2. Extract the files, then install Goldwave (gwave522.exe). Once installed, copy the LAME MP3 Encoder (lame_enc.dll) to "C:\Program Files\GoldWave".
3. Install the audible media player filter (AudibleMediaPlayerFilter.exe). If a message pops up saying that you are missing a dll, do a search for that missing dll and download it, moving it to "Windows\System". (When I installed it, I needed a file called "msvci70.dll", so I've included it in the kit assuming that you will need it too.)
4. Test the media player filter by opening your Audible (.aa) files using Windows Media Player.
5. Open Goldwave and open your Audible (.aa) file. Goldwave will take a few minutes or so to read the file, depending on the size. Once Goldwave has read the file, go to "File > Save As", and pick the format you want to convert to in the drop-down menu. Click Save.
6. Let your .aa file bake at 350 degrees for awhile. Once its finished converting, transfer to your MP3 player (or cd, media player, or whatever) and enjoy your new MP3 (or other format) audiobook!
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