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Why don't they convert older audiobooks from cassette to MP3 or CD?
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I completely agree with you here! I'd love to be able to listen to the Hornblower series (C.S. Forester), narrated by Ioan Gruffudd, in either CD or MP3 format as I don't have a cassette player (plus the cassettes are really hard to find these days!), but after searching online, the only ones I can find are by a different narrator - the Gruffudd Hornblower ones seem to be obsolete! As you say, the original files must exist somewhere, and with all the analogue to digital converters that are around these days, you'd think they'd only be too happy to convert them and offer them for sale and make more profits!
I think it will happen. We are seeing lots of older books on Amazon. Revenue is revenue.
You may want to try sending a message to Audible and include any specific titles/narrators that interest you. This is no guarantee, but they do seem to want to give the reader what they want.Some older recordings do show up, sadly not the ones I want. I noticed that Flo gibson was the only narrator available for a lot of Trolloppe for a long time--newer ones are now coming on line thank heaven!--and those recordings were definitely originally cassettes.
I wonder if there might be issues related to performance rights for the older recordings? Or maybe the rights are held by a company that is no longer in business?
maybe also try someone like Tantor - they seem to be open to suggestions - either for re-recording or re-releasing...I would love to see the Anne of Green Gables books redone, because all the copies i've tested - you can hear the pages being flipped in the recording - I don't know if they were done from cassette into mp3 or something else
Dee wrote: "I would love to see the Anne of Green Gables books redone, because all the cop..."Have you tried the Librivox recording by Karen Savage? She's a pro, and a truly excellent reader. (And it's free.)
Tracey wrote: "Dee wrote: "I would love to see the Anne of Green Gables books redone, because all the cop..."Have you tried the Librivox recording by Karen Savage? She's a pro, and a truly excellent reader. (A..."
I found Librivox recordings to be delightful.
I hadn't, but i'll check them out - i'm up to Anne of the Island, which looks to be read by Jenny Blythe...so i'll try
A lot of those older audiobooks on tape were abridged for various reasons. These days, unabridged titles on Audio CD and MP3 are more the norm. I think one reason the old cassettes aren't re-released as-is is because the abridged titles might not sell well enough to justify the cost of the transcription. That's only a guess, though, because I'm not a marketing person.
Also, narrator technology and talent has come a long way since audiobooks on cassette. To get around the availability problems you've been talking about, I go ahead and buy the old cassettes, record them to my PC, and transcribe them to MP3 for playback on my little Sansa Clip+ or car CD player. What I've found with these older recordings is that the narrations can be pretty "flat" a lot of the time, as in monotonous and poorly acted, not because of the transcription quality - especially when it comes to gender differences between the characters and the narrators. That's another reason why a cassette re-release on Audio CD or MP3 might not sell very well.
Like anything else, there are hidden gems here and there, and they make the work of transcribing the old cassettes worthwhile as far as I'm concerned. It's just that the majority of the old tapes aren't narrated very well and/or are too severely abridged.
The best solution is still "Do-It-Yourself": find an old cassette that's unabridged and narrated by someone who's still doing narrations on the new titles and whom you like as a reader. It's a pretty rare combo in cassette land.
Then, drag out an old boom-box cassette player with audio-out connectors, run some RCA audio cables from there to your PC's sound card, and record the cassettes to Audio CD or MP3. The software for doing all of that can be found for free in places like download.com (CNet's website, it's safe).
For example, there's a great, free wave-editing program called Audacity that also records audio directly to MP3 files, or to WAV files which can then be converted to MP3 files with the same program. The recording function is pretty simple so you don't have to use the program's more complicated wave-editing functions.
There are other free programs like MP3TagTools which can be used to modify the meta-tags in MP3 files in "batch" mode, so you can do things like enter the book's title, author, and narrator information in many MP3 files all in one operation.
It all takes a little getting used to if you've never done it before, but "practice makes perfect." If I can do it with those old cassettes on tape, the vast majority of our species can also do it, probably in less time!
Happy listening,
Alan Mintaka
Dee wrote: "maybe also try someone like Tantor - they seem to be open to suggestions - either for re-recording or re-releasing...I would love to see the Anne of Green Gables books redone, because all the cop..."
That's been my problem with Anne of Green Gables! The first book at the library was done by a different reader and I really liked it. The other narrators are awful and the sound quality is horrible. BUT at least they are on mp3. Being that these are still such well-liked books, I would think they would redo them now.
Ugh...I was testing out something in this post and when I went to delete it, I clicked the wrong "delete" button and removed the former message 11 in error. I apologize to whomever that post belonged. It was simply an error not due to any content or any other reason.
Audiobook rights are something that audiobook publishers liscense from authors or print publishers. Many of these old unavailable recordings had their contracts to publish run out, publishers are looking at their old sales and don't think it's worth doing, and sometime the publisher no longer is in business or the master recordings were lost.
I am surprised that some of you can still get cassettes at your library. They have been gone for about 3 years in my neck of the woods.
I think we've done away with ours as well by now, too.
Alana wrote: "I would love to see the Anne of Green Gables books redone, because..."Sorry if I've said this before, but - Karen Savage did a beautiful reading of Anne for Librivox. Free, and mp3 (and also available on iTunes)!
I didn't think to check Librivox, since they had a copy at the library. Next time I read them, I'll check that out!
Karen wrote: "I am surprised that some of you can still get cassettes at your library. They have been gone for about 3 years in my neck of the woods."For rare titles on cassette that I absolutely must have, I buy them used on Amazon's marketplace. Otherwise, there is a franchise in my neck of the woods (NH), "Annie's Book Stop", which deals in used marketplace books on a sort of swap basis. You unload your used books on Annie's (the ones they accept, that is) and get 50% off the purchase of the same number of books. The discount varies somewhat depending on the media type, but that's close to the average. They deal mostly in paperbacks but have a large collection of audiobooks, many of them on cassette.
There's a lot of crap of course, but on occasion some real gems show up for the taking. I also find many old vintage Science Fiction paperbacks there (they must have hundreds of those old Ace Double Novels).
There's another place called "Used Book Superstore" in nearby Nashua with an audiobook section that includes cassettes. It's purchase only, no trades (at least not the last time I went). However they have generous discounts.
Other than those two used book outlets, I never see cassettes anywhere else or in the libraries around here. The only other option is that Amazon marketplace for audiobooks I'm willing to pay a little extra for.
Happy Listening,
Alan Mintaka
I have a question, and I think I saw an earlier post that might have answered, but I can't find it now. So I will ask. Many books I get from my library are on CD, which I rip and then transfer to my MP3 player. However, these take up much more memory on the MP3 than the books I download. Is there a program that converts the CD's to a format that takes up less space? I thought I saw some comments in the past about converting CD's to MP3 format. Does that mean they will take less memory/space on my MP3? I am still learning how to use all this technology. Thanks for any help.
What format are you ripping the CD's now? That's found in the file extension: .mp3, .wma, etc.
I am using Windows Media Player to rip and to then sync to my MP3 player. I can't find the file extension info, does this tell you that?
Janice wrote: "...However, these take up much more memory on the MP3 than the books I download. Is there a program that converts the CD's to a format that takes up less space?..."A lot depends on the bit rate your ripping program uses to create the MP3 files. There should be a setting somewhere in your program to adjust this value in order to decrease the size of the output MP3 files.
I've found through trial and error that a bit rate of 128Kb is a good compromise between music quality for my ears (at least 320Kb) and plain speech (64Kb). I know audiobooks should have acceptable quality using the low "plain speech" setting like 64Kb, but my experience is that such a low bit rate sometimes causes other quality problems like excess noise, "echo" effect between the tracks (basically the stereo tracks are slightly out of sync, so it sounds like the narrator is two people talking at the same time). Plus, if there's any music at all included with the narration, a bit rate of 64Kb might make it sound a little flat. Doubling the rate to 128Kb usually keeps that from happening, at least to my old ears.
What program are you using to do the MP3 ripping? That would tell us a lot to help you reduce the output filesize. I use either FreeRipMP3 or AudioGrabber, both of which are excellent freeware for the job. I swap between the two depending on which one gives me better results on a book-by-book basis. Because the software is free, the only investment is a little time to get what I want.
In addition to your ripping program, it would help to know what kind of files you're downloading in order to compare those to the MP3 files your ripper is generating. Are they Audible AA files? If so, any size comparisons with MP3 files will depend on which Audible format you've decided to download, as well as how you then convert it to MP3 (if you even do that).
I use "Format 4", "MP3", but I have to take the extra step of burning the AA files to Audio CD format (CDA files) before ripping them to MP3. That's basically because I'm not an iTunes person. The bottom line is that it throws a bit of a monkey wrench into before-after file sizes because those intermediate Audio CD files are so large.
I suspect that what you're doing is burning your library CDs to MP3, but playing the AA files as-is. Is that the case?
Whatever you're doing with AA files, try adjusting the output bit rate in your MP3 ripping program. Experiment with sound quality vs. output size, just to see what happens. Maybe you can reduce the MP3 file size overhead that way.
Janice wrote: "I am using Windows Media Player to rip and to then sync to my MP3 player. I can't find the file extension info, does this tell you that?"Argh! I posted my long response before I saw John's post and your response.
I use Media Player version 12. In that version, the way to fool with the MP3 bit rate (AKA the quality and output file size) is in the "Rip Settings" menu.
If you're also using version 12, try this:
Click on "Rip Settings"
Select "Format"
Select "MP3" (I suspect you've already done this)
Click on "Rip Settings" again
Select "Quality"
The "Quality" popup menu allows you to select different output bit rates for the MP3 files you want to rip from the source. The higher the rate, the larger the output file(s) AND the higher the quality. This is where you'll have to experiment a bit to determine a tradeoff between quality and file size. As I said in my first post, I use 128Kbs, but your results may differ depending on the quality of your source audio, your ears, etc.
Hope this helps more than my previous litany did! BTW if you select "MP3" for the output format as described above, the file extensions John is referring to should turn out to be MP3.
Thanks for covering this one, Al!I use Jet Audio software from Cowon as it allows one to rip a CD to a single file; however, the "free" version doesn't permit .mp3 format, so my ripped books are .wma instead. The average size is about 65 MB/disc, which may seem a bit large, but my main mp3 player has 4GB internal and an 8GB card as well. I don't put those books onto a device until I'm ready to listen; they stay on my hard drive until then.
Thanks John and Al for all the information! I will play around with Windows Media Player settings and see if I can do as you suggest. And my husband just downloaded Jet Audio for me to try as well, so I will try that too. I have an 8GB Sansa Fuze, so should have plenty of room, I just got carried away with how many books I am ripping from library CD's. Most I am storing on flash drives, but I also have quite a few library downloaded books, using Overdrive, that are stored on the MP3 player, so I was getting concerned with how much storage I had remaining. Thanks again, both of you, this is very helpful. So glad to have Goodreads!
Glad you started the discussion, Janice ... I love talking about that stuff!
And it is so helpful; I have learned much more from this audio book group than I ever would have figured out on my own, with my limited technical skills and knowledge. My husband thinks I am a real "techie", thanks to the tips I pick up on here! Thanks again!
Janice wrote: "Thanks John and Al for all the information! I will play around with Windows Media Player settings and see if I can do as you suggest. And my husband just downloaded Jet Audio for me to try as wel..."You may also want to try those other two free ripping programs. The links below are to the Cnet Downloads pages (both free, safe). The second Audiograbber link is for a special version of the free LAME MP3 decoder used by AudioGrabber.
AudioGrabber
AudioGrabber MP3 Plugin
FreeRip
Also, depending on how far you carry this activity in the future, you may want the best free Wave Editor, Audacity. This is a GREAT wave editor, allowing you to clip, splice, amplify, add fade-in/fade-out and other effects to the audio waveforms just like a graphics editor. It's so easy I can do it with no problems, and I'm further from being an audio engineer than the distance from Earth to UDFj-39546284 !!!!
Audacity also records audio and can be used to convert many kinds of audio files. For example, you could import a WAV file then export it as MP3 at different bit rates. This is where it's also useful as an editor, because anything you record (like an old audiobook on cassette, say) might have noise you don't want at the beginning and end of each track. You can clip the noise segments off, then apply fade-in to the start and fade-out to the end to clean the track up nicely.
It basically does a lot of things Jet Audio does, but in the context of an editing window.
In fact it works much like Creative Wave Studio, the commercial wave editor which shipped with many of the old SoundBlaster cards. Here's the Cnet link:
Audacity Wave Editor
Happy Listening,
Alan Mintaka
John wrote: "Thanks for covering this one, Al!...
I use Jet Audio software from Cowon as it allows one to rip a CD to a single file; however, the "free" version doesn't permit .mp3 format, so my ripped books are ..."
Yes, I use either Jet or Audacity to record old audiobook Cassettes to WAV format, depending on which program works best with which cassette on rainy Tuesdays. I'm sure you know how that goes.
Once the recording is done with either program, I then "clean up" the WAV files with Audacity, replacing starting/ending noise with fades, sometimes amplifying an entire track, and once in a while using Audacity's built-in noise filter effect to try to reduce "hiss" on the old tape recordings. I have mixed success with this one, though. Sometimes a simple high-pass filter is needed, at the expense of the higher frequencies. As I get older, the loss of those becomes much less obvious.
Finally, I convert the WAV files to 128Kbs MP3 files using Audacity, Audiograbber, or FreeRip, once again depending on that "Rainy Tuesdays Rule".
It's hard not to think of rain metaphors where I am at the moment (NH).
Happy Listening,
Alan Mintaka
To get the thread a bit back on track, and following up on your comment, Al -- Flo Gibson has made many of her cassette recordings available for download via Audible. Unfortunately, the one I listened to had very poor sound quality.
Please pardon my post if the original question has been answered.We, www.audiobooksonline.com, have been selling audio books on the Web since 1994 and have experienced the progression of cassettes to compact disc / MP3 CD to digital downloads. We still have many titles on cassette in stock. Occasionally someone will ask about a title that isn't available on any physical media such as cassettes, CDs or MP3 CDs. We often find that the title is available as a digital download.
Someone asked about Pillars of the Earth which is available as a download. Epics such as The Lord of the Rings Trilogy are also available. One classic which is still NOT available as a download is To Kill a Mockingbird but fortunately it is still available on CD.
Digital delivery of audio books has been the fastest growing segment of the industry however just as there is still a market for hardcover and paperback books, there continues to be demand for audio on physical media.
I've hated every cassette to digital conversion I've ever heard. The quality, both file and performance, just don't seem up to today's standards.This ends tape 5, side 2.
We are about to re-release Clive Barker's abridged reading of his own book The Hellbound Heart - and then later this year will do an unabridged edition as well. They provided us with the original mastered recordings though ... many people may be trying to take the sound straight from cassettes.
J. wrote: "I've hated every cassette to digital conversion I've ever heard. The quality, both file and performance, just don't seem up to today's standards.This ends tape 5, side 2."
A lot better than nothing available at all.
John wrote: "A lot bette..."Maybe back then, but I don't think I could force my self to listen to one now.
I've wanted to listen to Sundiver forever, but even the copy on Audible doesn't sound up to par.
Maybe I've just gotten jaded.
I see your point, and disagree.
Cassette masters are converted into CD and MP3 formats with varying degrees of success. In the pre-digital era, many audiobooks were recorded on tape. After a very little while though, the magnetic bits transfer from the back of the tape onto the front surface of the tape that it's spooled against. There is no process to have those magnetic bits migrate back to there proper place though! As a result, in many of the early conversions you can hear what sounds like another conversation going on in the background. In fact, that was an issue with A Morbid Taste of Bones (by Ellis Peters; narrated by Joanna Ward) mentioned earlier. There have been strides in the conversion process, though an audiobook publisher has to weigh whether is more efficient to restore and convert or simply to re-record. If the rights to an audiobook expire relatively soon, it's more likely the audiobook publisher will ride out the license on the cassette rather than re-master or re-record. Though you could make a copy from a copy, it's noticeably inferior in overall sound quality. Just like in the film industry, once the original print is damaged or gone, successive iterations are compromised in quality. Perhaps with advances in digital technology this will become a non-issue, but we're not there yet.
Narrative styles have changed too in favor of interpretations that are less neutral and have a little bit more color to them. A perfect example of the would be A is for Alibi (by Sue Grafton; narrated by Mary Peiffer) which is very different than T is for Trespass (narrated by Judy Kaye.) Casting has gotten better over time too. Gone are the days when a book written by a female author was automatically assigned to a female narrator (e.g. Nadia May narrating the Hercule Poirot mystery, Affair at Styles; Or an English Classic given to an American reader (or vice versa)...
I'm more with J. on this one. Overall standards of quality in production and narration have improved significantly since the days of cassette masters. I will rarely listen to a recording pre-2000 and am more likely to favor recordings done more recently given a choice.
Narrative styles have changed too in favor of interpretations that are less neutral and have a little bit more color to them. A perfect example of the would be A is for Alibi (by Sue Grafton; narrated by Mary Peiffer) which is very different than T is for Trespass (narrated by Judy Kaye.) Casting has gotten better over time too. Gone are the days when a book written by a female author was automatically assigned to a female narrator (e.g. Nadia May narrating the Hercule Poirot mystery, Affair at Styles; Or an English Classic given to an American reader (or vice versa)...
I'm more with J. on this one. Overall standards of quality in production and narration have improved significantly since the days of cassette masters. I will rarely listen to a recording pre-2000 and am more likely to favor recordings done more recently given a choice.
J. wrote: "I've hated every cassette to digital conversion I've ever heard. The quality, both file and performance, just don't seem up to today's standards.This ends tape 5, side 2."
I use the freeware Audacity Wave Editor to cut all of that stuff out. I cut other obvious glitches like "cracks" and "pops" between tapes. They're very easy to locate in the wave editor.
Audacity also has effects filters, such as fadein/fadeout, amplify, and noise reduction which can be used to clean up badly recorded tapes. The audio pros can even use Audacity's high- and low-pass filters to improve the quality of the playback. The other filters work well enough for me.
There's a download link for Audacity in one of my earlier posts in this thread.
To make all of that happen, I first capture the cassette recording to WAV files using an old cassette player with Line Out jacks. Then I "clean" the WAV files with Audacity (including cutting those "End of Tape" announcements), and use the same program to export the results to MP3 files.
If you're talking about cassette recordings that have already been transcibed to CD, you can easily rip those CDs to MP3 format using other freeware that I link in my earlier posts. Then you can edit those files in Audacity, clean them to your liking, and burn them back to MP3 CDs. Sure, it's make-work. But once you practice it enough, you can get pretty good results.
As Big John has said, it's "a lot better than nothing at all".
As far as Audible quality goes, are you sure you're downloading in the highest "Preferred Audio Format" you can use? It's a setting at the top of your library listing. Mine is currently set to "4" and I've had no problems with the audio quality from Audible.
The usual rambling,
Alan Mintaka
... a note to Alan from the peanut gallery here - keep "rambling"!!! i'm learning alot and busily downloading programs, all very useful stuff! :)
It's great to learn about all these programs, I used to love mixing audio tapes on my tape deck years ago. This sounds like fun, will have to give it a go soon. Thanks!
Ann wrote: "... a note to Alan from the peanut gallery here - keep "rambling"!!! i'm learning alot and busily downloading programs, all very useful stuff! :)"Hear, hear!! (sincerely meant, and I also enjoyed the pun...)
Al -- Audible has offered some cassette content of not-so-hot quality in the past.
John wrote: "Al -- Audible has offered some cassette content of not-so-hot quality in the past."Hey Big John,
I didn't know about that - but then again I usually don't research titles to see what the original media was.
Still, I would have burned those particular AA files to virtual audio CDs anyway, then ripped them to MP3 files per my descriptions in many forum threads.
If at that point I discovered lousy audio quality (as a result of bad cassette trascription or anything else), I'd open the MP3 files in Audacity and try the same tricks to "clean" the audio. It's not a miracle method by any means, but for narrations it works well enough.
It's always worth that shot just to see what can be done.
I doubt that it would get decent results with music. You'd probably have to be a pro audio engineer to clean that content up. But we're talking audiobooks, with which even an amateur like me can do some fiddling.
BTW how did you know that some Audible content was transcribed from cassette? Did they announce this anywhere in the product descriptions?
Happy Listening,
Alan Mintaka
Al,You can tell by the fact that the copyright of the audio production was more than 20 years ago! Early stuff from Books on Tape, Audiobook Contractors Inc. (Flo Gibson's outfit), etc. The Nero Wolfe series I'm going through now was all recorded on tape in the mid 90's. Audible doesn't offer all of the titles, so I'm wondering whether that's a quality issue perhaps? (I do have access to those as CD's).
The ones I'm thinking of have some hiss, but the sound level is uneven, sometimes you need to turn up the mp3 player volume, then it cuts back in later at regular strength. That kinda thing.
I just listened to all the Nero Wolfe my library has (15 or so)! I guess I was so intrigued by the descriptions of Archie's judgements of women and Nero Wolfe's eccentricities that I didn't notice any poor sound quality. (Well, the plot, too.) I read all these as paper books years ago; I wonder if my brain filled in the blanks?
John wrote: "...The ones I'm thinking of have some hiss, but the sound level is uneven, sometimes you need to turn up the mp3 player volume, then it cuts back in later at regular strength. That kinda thing. ..."Hey Big John,
Thanks for the pointers on identifying media. I never thought to just assume that a really old publication date meant "books on tape". D'oh! (sound of hand slapping a recessed Neanderthal forehead)
As far as hiss and uneven sound levels go, Audacity can fix those too. Hiss is removed by the Noise Removal filter. Uneven sound levels are corrected using the Normalization filter.
The only hitch with the Normalization filter is that you have to load the entire audiobook into Audacity so that the normalization can take all tracks into account. If you have a lot of MP3 or WAV tracks, this can take some time.
What I do in a case like that is use MP3 Splitter-Joiner Pro to combine all the MP3 files into one humungous monolithic file, then load that into Audacity. It's not freeware but it does the job well and I consider it worth the price.
Once that's done, the Normalization filter works great - takes all the guesswork out of equalizing the sound level throughout the book.
Guess I can't say enough about Audacity. For freeware, it's the best wave editor going - even compared to the high-priced brands from Creative and Sony.
Happy Listening,
Alan Mintaka
John wrote: "The Nero Wolfe series I'm going through now was all recorded on tape in the mid 90's. Audible doesn't offer all of the titles, so I'm wondering whether that's a quality issue perhaps? (I do have access to those as CD's)...."
Hey Big John,
In my last message I forgot to point out that some obscure non-Audible files can be found online in places like Blackstone AudioBooks, Audiobookstand, and Recorded Books LLC.
For example, here are search hits for Nero Wolfe titles at two of the aforementioned websites (for a change, I didn't find jack at Blackstone). I confess that I didn't check to see if any of them were also available on Audible - there are a lot of titles, especially in the Recorded Books LLC store.
Recorded Books LLC - Nero Wolfe Titles
Audiobookstand - Nero Wolfe Titles
Happy listening,
Alan Mintaka
Ann wrote: "... a note to Alan from the peanut gallery here - keep "rambling"!!! i'm learning alot and busily downloading programs, all very useful stuff! :)"Karen wrote: "It's great to learn about all these programs, I used to love mixing audio tapes on my tape deck years ago. This sounds like fun, will have to give it a go soon. Thanks!"
Hj wrote: "Hear, hear!! (sincerely meant, and I also enjoyed the pun...) ..."
Thanks to all for the kind words. Please keep in mind that all of these freeware goodies are not directly related to each other, so it takes some practice to get the output of one program to work as input to another - especially when it comes to messing with MP3 tags in MP3TagTools and other similar programs.
But for straightforward wave editing and other audio projects, nothing beats Audacity in that category. Not only can you edit and mix audio with it - you can also record audio from the various inputs on your sound card.
In fact I haven't even explored all of the things you can do with this program. My use of it is very focused on audiobook narrations. If you're an audio enthusiast like Karen who has experience mixing audio tapes, you'll probably find other useful tools. For example, you can import multiple audio files as separate tracks in the same project - there's your mixing formula.
Happy Listening,
Alan Mintaka
Thanks Alan, I'm learning a lot from you as well.
J. wrote: "Thanks Alan, I'm learning a lot from you as well.""I soive to live. Woo, woo, woo."
-(paraphrase) Jerome Lester "Jerry" Horwitz, aka "Curley Howard"
Happy listening,
Alan Mintaka
I realize CDs could be expensive, but what about MP3s? I mean the recorded tracks exist somewhere, correct? It shouldn't be that difficult to transfer and it seems like easy money to me.
This came up for me when I was trying to find a James Michener book on audiobook. I sometimes like a grand sweeping story a la Pillars of the Earth and I figured Michener would be good for that (I remember reading Hawaii and Centennial in book form), but my library only had cassette versions, and I didn't see anything on Amazon either.
What gives?