Audiobooks discussion

I transfer my audiobooks on CD to iTunes so I can listen to them on my iPod. I use a Memorex plug and play peripheral CD drive since the computer with my iTunes doesn't have an internal CD drive. While most tracks copy at 4.8 to 5.0x, sometimes, but, and not always, the last 1-3 tracks on the disk slow to worse than a crawl and take about 15 seconds to copy 1 second, or suddenly hangs for a couple of minutes while still claiming it's loading at 5.0x. This doesn't happen on every disk, or even every disk in the same book. Since I only ever copy into iTunes, I don't know if the same thing would happen with Windows Media Player.

Any idea what causes this? and is there a fix?

Shoshanapnw, I had the same problem, sometimes the end of a disk would fail to record altogether. I fixed it like this:
Open itunes
Click on Edit
then Preferences
then the General tab
then the Import Settings button
Check "Use error correction when reading Audio CDs"

While I was there I also changed the setting to "Spoken Podcast" since that is what seems to me to be closest to what an audiobook is. There is a major drawback to doing this: it is much, much slower. It seems to take forever compared to before, but, I do get the whole book, now, so it is worth it to me. I hope it helps.

Thanks, Leeri. I'll give that a try.

I don't have an iPod, so convert discs to WMA using my player's software, ripping all tracks to a single file. I'm jumping in to say that I, too, often experience the dreaded "Everything's fine ... until the final track (or two)." It can sometimes take as long to finish that track, with the system really struggling, as it did to rip the rest of the CD! It must be something in the way the CD's are pressed? When the track doesn't "take" I use an alternate setting (jitter correction), which like your iTunes Podcast mode, takes a lot longer!

The fix Leeri suggested worked well with a good handful of troublesome disks. The book I'm adding now is still running slowly toward the end of the tracks, but it's still much better than before.

John wrote: "I don't have an iPod, so convert discs to WMA using my player's software, ripping all tracks to a single file. "

I had no idea you could rip all the tracks to a single file. One of the things I've disliked about the books I converted to mp3 is the vast numbers of files to deal with. I'll have to fiddle with my software and see if I can figure out how to do it. Thanks for the hint!

Sheri --

I have a Cowon player, so use their jetaudio (www.jetaudio.com) software that rips CD's to WMA (not mp3).

John wrote: "Sheri --

I have a Cowon player, so use their jetaudio (www.jetaudio.com) software that rips CD's to WMA (not mp3)."
I use this software as well, although I don't have the player. It is awsome and free. I find ripping at 32 kbps stereo sounds as good or better than the Audible 3 file format and each disk is under 20 mb.

I've been both lazy and tech ignorant. I've just been ripping CDs using the iTunes player. I will give the Jetaudio a try. Several of my ripped books skip and have audio problems even though I bought the CDs new.

Sheri --

I've had the ripper balk at brand new library books as well. I am almost positive they encode some sort of "anti-ripping factor" into them ... LOL (sort of).