Audible.com uses a "secret" audio code, (.aa). I've asked them to go Linux friendly but nothing going. Does anyone have a "fix" for the .aa sound system? I'm keeping an old 98 running just for the Audible stories and would like to shut off all windows and microsux units completely. I'm running Debian "Sarge" and SuSE 9.3 on another.

Well, If a company wants to severally limit it's customer base by limitting the kinds of devices it can use for it's products... It's there loss and I would shop elsewhere and let them now that...

KC

Yup, that's true except I've got a lot (LOT) of Audible.com books on tape and don't want to thow them out so I'm stuck at present with a microsux computer. If I could get that one item cleaned up the whole household will be Linux and stay that way.

So, I've still got to find a "fix" for the .aa sound tapes. Come people. Someone knows this one and can help the needy newbie.

Silly question, but they don't work under Wine, do they?

there are some converters. I have had some luck ripping them to mp3 after burning a cd. haven't tried lately since I started playing them on my ipod.

thanks Johnnycab and Digitalboy74

Didn't even think of Wine. I'll work on getting that going and functioning. I've put some on cd in the past but friends always get the cd's and they didn't come back. That might be a long, slow way to do it. Some of the longer stories need as many as 20 cd's to get the whole story in. I suppose a rewritable would be the way to go on that method. Write to it, rip it, and rewrite the next section.

Perhaps Wine is the best bet at present. I'd sure like to find a converter to just plain play the stories. I've got more than a hundred books on tape from them. Ahhh, the joys of a newbie.

I have a way of converting *.aa files to *.mp3 fairly well, but while I used it a lot for a while, I don't anymore. (I, too, have bugged Audible about being Linux friendly.)

There is a shareware program called GoldWave. It uses the Windows sound system somehow to open audio files. If you have the Windows Media Player turned on as an Audible device, that gives you a codec for the *.aa stuff. If you open an *.aa file with GoldWave it reads the file into memory through that codec.

There is a peculiar codec behavior where a little accessory popup come up from Audible that is supposedly a section navigator. I have never seen it do anything you would understand, but you often have to jiggle the system by pushing the selector's buttons to get the codec to finish reading.

After reading the file in you can save it out in your choice of format. MP3 is available for output if you have the LAME MP3 codec installed. GoldWave tells you how to go get it and install it.

I'm sure GoldWave has no idea their program enables this conversion.

I am using GoldWave version 4.26 to do this. I have done it under Windows 98 and XP. GoldWave updated, and the new one wouldn't let the jiggle on the section selector to let the read finish.

Given that things like kaffeine will use the windows codecs, I wonder if there is a way to move the Audible codec over to Linux?

Anyway, for a while I was being religious about converting everything I bought, but I never got a car radio/CD player to like the MP3 I burned onto CDRs. So, I kind of tired of that.

I've got about 5 GB of *.aa files at this point. I use a Creative 40GB mp3 player with the MP3s. Supposedly, it now will take a *.aa codec, but I didn't get it going with a short effort.

I recently got a 4GB Creative MuVo FM (hmm the ad now says 4GB?) I was able to stuff lots and lots of Audible stuff onto it for summer traveling. I also used it with one of those RadioShack FM converters to play into the rental car radio. That worked great. Since the MuVo has the *.aa codec, that's one way to avoid the need to convert.

I too have used the goldwave + plugin to convert .aa to mp3 format. It does make me curious if there's a Linux alternative that might be used. I would greatly like to find something like this, and will continue looking. Its annoying to have to do this sort of conversion with windoze sofware. I have a copy of the goldwave and the plugin that works, so if you need it, shoot me a message on here and I'll send you a link.

thanks edan and Shadowlord42. If you could send the links (sunrevs@yahoo.com) it would be appreciated muchly. We (and as many as we can get to help) need to bug the stuffin's out of Audible.com to get linux going. It is probably only a two day programming project at most for someone familiar with both systems.

will this still work and how? Does this replace the need to have Itunes?

if you are reading this because you want to use audible on linux you should shoot an email over to the audible help desk.

http://audible.custhelp.com/app/ask

let them know you want to pay for books but can't download them on your machine. or something like that in your own way

Or more specific: Ask for more information and explain if/why the answer of audible.com is not helpful for you:
"Will Audible work with Linux?
[...]
Answer ID 3899
Products Non-Device/Non-Software Issue
Categories Software
Date Created 08/14/2009 03:26 PM
Date Updated 08/14/2009 03:41 PM"
[Maybe someone call/has the permission to post the specific URL]

Greetings
pistazienfresser

This may not solve the real issue of Audible not making their files Linux compatible but until that happens I'm happy to report that the Audible manager software does appear to run fine under Wine 1.2.2

I used wine on 12.04 ubuntu and it worked perfect. Thank god for this because I have tried the audible manager before and it did not run on wine.