The New Audible.com: A Mac User's Perspective
Written: Jan 22 '03 (Updated Jan 22 '03)
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Preamble:
As some of you may be aware from my other reviews here at Epinions (or from reading the title of this review), I am a Mac user. I thought I would take a few moments to describe the progression of the service from its earliest days until now. I believe that this will give other Mac users (and even PC users) a better perspective of the Audible.com service so you can figure out on your own if it is worthwhile.
Part, The First: The Past
The Audible.com premise is a fairly simple one: Offer audio content (books, magazines or original content) to computer users for a fraction of the normal price for more traditional audio books. You can listen to anything on Audible.com by downloading it onto your computer (Audible.com doesn’t offer physical audio book purchases). If you own a compatible portable audio device (see Audible’s web site for a list), then you can use special software to transfer that audio content to your portable device so you can listen to it anywhere. (Recently, they added the option to burn a CD of the Audible.com file so you can listen to it on any CD player.) All files are encoded in one of 5 different secure audio formats and this requires
I joined Audible.com soon after the service first launched, but I didn’t sign up for a listener plan until almost a year later even though the service really intrigued me. Why? When Audible.com first launched, you couldn’t even access all parts of the web site with a Mac browser, much less actually download and listen to any of the books or subscriptions (Audible.com’s term for news, magazines or original content that gets updated at some regular interval).
I became a member initially because they offered a lot of free content. It was only after I signed up that I realized that it would not work on my Mac. So I wrote to customer service and asked them about support for the Mac. As anyone who has been a member for a while can attest to, customer service was not Audible.com’s strong suit when they first opened to the public. I think they were just overwhelmed by demand. In any case, more than a month later I received a reply telling me that they were looking into supporting the Mac, but that it would probably take time. They weren’t kidding. ;-)
Flash forward nearly a year: Audible.com finally releases a Mac Audible.com plug-in for RealPlayer. This plugin would allow Mac users to listen to any Audible.com program on their computers, but you could not transfer the files to a portable audio device. 50% was better than nothing. I had a lot of free audio waiting in my Library on the site, so I quickly installed the plug-in and started listening to the audio. I found that it was pretty good. Audible certainly had a large selection to choose from in almost every genre as well as some interesting original content (like Robin Williams@Audible.com where he interviews a lot of interesting people). At the time, Audible.com offered several different monthly plans (which is where Audible.com becomes a great deal for those of us who enjoy audio books) from as little as $9 for a single audio book and one single month subscription. up to about $50 (if I remember that correctly) for up to 5 audio books in a month. I chose the 2 audiobook per month plan for less than $14 a month (including sales tax that Audible.com has to charge in every state that requires it).
I love to read, but I find that I don’t always get enough time read everything that I would like to read. Audible.com offered me a cheap way to listen to books while I was doing other things, so I jumped on the chance to sign up.
With the addition of all of the freebies that Audible.com offered back then, I was able to grow my Library of titles significantly in a few short months.
I really enjoyed listening to the programs, but I found that having to stay within earshot of my computer rather limiting, so I again fired off an e-mail asking about Mac support for downloading Audible content to portable audio players (like my Nomad II, for example). They eventually wrote back to tell me that they were looking into Mac support for that feature as well. Meanwhile, I was stuck with the Real Player plugin under the classic Mac OS.
Flash forward almost another year: At MacWorld Expo New York, Steve Jobs announced a new version of Apple’s own MP3 player, called iTunes. Version 3 offered many enhancements, including the ability to download and listen to Audible.com content. But this wasn’t all! It offered the ability to burn Audible content to a CD (a feature Audible had introduced a few months earlier for the PC) AND it could also download content onto an iPod! Whoohoo!
There was only one small problem with this for me: iTunes 3 was only released for Mac OS X (and I didn’t have a machine that could natively run Mac OS X) and… I didn’t have an iPod! Undaunted by these minor problems, I decided to save up my pennies and solve the problem by throwing money at it (i.e., buy a brand new top-of-the-line Mac and a 20 GB iPod, both reviewed separately by me here at Epinions). ;-) It didn’t help matters that Audible.com essentially discontinued the classic Mac OS RealPlayer plug in. It still works with Audible.com, but they don’t offer it as a download any more, and you have to do a little work to associate the iTunes Audible files with Real Player so that you can play them.
Now, don’t think that I bought $5,000 (total) worth of hardware just so I could listen to Audible content on the road, but believe me, it was the one thing that pushed me over the edge so that I was definitely going to buy as soon as possible. Why not just burn the audio to CD, you ask? I’ll get to that in the next section.
You see, like most people, I have a good bit of “down” time each week while I drive in my car, and I enjoy listening to music while in my car. Getting a iPod allowed me to not only carry my entire 400+ CD collection wherever I went, but I could now listen to all that Audible.com content, too! Not a bad deal, in my book.
Finally, in October, 2002 I received my new computer (and I already had the 20 GB iPod) so I was now ready to really explore Audible.com.
Part, The Second: The Present
Audible.com has evolved a lot since I first signed up, so it almost feels like a new Audible to me.
Now that Audible.com is accepting Mac users as full partners in the service (and word has it that they are even making Mac drivers for their Otis MP3/Audible content player), I feel it is appropriate to take a look at how the service works for us Mac users.
Signing up for an account at Audible is free. This allows you to buy any content that you want. There are no monthly fees, when you want audio content, you just charge it to your credit card and then it appears in your Library where you can download it whenever you want. Audible has TONS of great (recent) audio titles to choose from. Almost any book you could want. Unlike some services, the content will remain in your Library indefinitely, you can come back and redownload it any time. By default, Audible’s prices for audio books do represent a discount over buying the physical tapes or CDs from a place like Amazon.com, but unless you are only interested in a few titles, it is a far better deal to sign up for an Audible Listener membership. The current plans are:
* Audible Listener: $15 a month for a single audio book and a single month subscription (magazine, news, original content).
* Premium Listener: $20 a month for any 2 audio books per month.
You can cancel your membership at any time.
You might notice that the plans have changed since I first signed up (they are slightly more expensive now). In a very kind move, Audible.com has “grandfathered” everyone on the older Audible plans and they continue to charge you only for the plan you initially signed up for. So, for example, I pay less than $14 a month with tax for the plan that is now called “Premium Listener.” Audible.com gets brownie points with me for this. :)
Once you’ve signed up for a plan, your account is credited for whatever plan you signed up for, and your currently available totals are listed at the top of the main home page, so you know what you have left. If you decide that you want more than what your monthly plan allows for, that is no problem. You can charge any extra content to your credit card at Audible’s current prices. However, if you forget to use all of your allotted credits in any given month (which starts from the day you sign up), you can not carry over the unused credit to the next month and you will loose it. So naturally, it is in your best interest to make sure you use all of your credits available for that month. I’ve only forgotten to use one of my credits 2 times in all the time I’ve been a member. Still, this is something you need to watch.
As a Mac user, what do you need to do to be able to access Audible content?
Download and install iTunes 3 for Mac OS X and create an account at Audible.com. iTunes already knows how to handle Audible content.
Under the classic Mac OS? Try to find the old RealPlayer plug-in and install that. (Thankfully, I kept the installer.)
In any case, once you have iTunes installed, just load it up and choose Activate Audible.com account from the Advanced menu and then enter your Audible.com user name and password. Audible.com encrypts all files so that they can only be listened to by the user who originally purchased the content. One of the ways they protect this content is by “registering” the player (iTunes) for a single account. What happens if you move, change computers or have more than one computer? No problem. You can deactivate your account in iTunes under the Advanced menu. This will allow you to install a different account. Also, Audible allows a certain number of players per user’s account (it was 3 the last time I checked), so that I can have 3 different copies of iTunes registered to my account all at one time. If I need more than that, then I need to deactivate one of the old players so you can register another player.
This deregistration process is not possible under the RealPlayer plug-in under the classic Mac OS, so you have to write to Audible.com and they will reset your account’s “counter.” By the way, customer service response times seem to have gotten better now.
Once you are set up, accessing your content (or selecting new content) is easy. Just go to Audible.com and find something you want. If you are part of a monthly plan, add the item to your cart and click Checkout. This will display the real cost of the content for you based on your current plan (which will probably be $0, unless you’ve gone over your allotment). You don’t need to enter any information, Audible.com knows who you are and what credit card to charge the purchase to (if needed) and will complete the process and let you know that the item is now in your Library.
The Audible.com Library is where all of your Audible content is kept. You can review new additions to your Library, sort them, look at old or archived (audio that you’ve listened to that you don’t want to leave in the new or “heard” audio tab and check out your subscriptions.
If you want to download an Audible program in your Library, just click the “Get It Now” button next to the entry in your Library. This will take you to a screen where you can download that program to your computer in any available format. As I mentioned before, Audible content is encoded into one of 5 different formats (the most common being 2-4). Generally speaking, the higher the number, the larger the file, but the better the content will sound. iTunes supports content in the 2-4 formats which is every audio program I’ve come across so far on Audible. The iPod also supports those formats.
To download the content, select the radio button next to the format you want to download (the size of the file will be displayed underneath the number so you know how big it is) and then click “download.” Audible’s content server is pretty fast, so if you have broadband Internet access you shouldn’t be waiting long.
A note about that… If you don’t have a broadband account, you might want to hold off on getting an Audible account unless you are very patient. Format 4 Audible files get quite large. For example, I recently downloaded a 7-hour segment in Format 4 (which sounds very good indeed!) of a long audio book and it was almost 105 MB. Format 2 files are much smaller, but they don’t sound particularly great and are still many MB in size.
Another point to remember is that audio books (especially unabridged versions (my favorite)) tend to be very long. To help keep the downloads to a somewhat reasonable size, Audible breaks up long audio books into numbered parts so you can download the first 5-7 hours of audio and start listening without having to download the entire book in one sitting.
Once the download is finished, iTunes will open up and start playing the file. Now you can listen to it on your computer, burn it to a CD (using a supported CD-R drive from within iTunes, or transfer the file to your iPod so you can listen to it on the road.
Burning to CD: This option is not permitted by all Audible content, only those with a burning CD icon next to the format list can be burned to CD. Assuming you have a CD-R/RW drive supported by iTunes and that the Audible file you want is allowed to be burned to CD, then the burning process is fairly straightforward.
Just select the file in your iTunes Library and if the file 60 minutes or shorter (Audible content generally only fits 60 minutes on a CD for some reason), just click the big BURN button on the top-right side of the iTunes interface. The file will then be burned to CD (it tends to be a fairly slow process, though, as it needs to be translated on the fly into standard CD audio format). If the Audible program is more than an hour, the process is slightly more involved:
* Select the file you want to burn in iTunes and “get info” on the file
* Navigate to the pane that allows you to set start and end points for the file, type in 00:00:00 to start, and 01:00:00 to end.
* Close the Information panel. Now burn the file to CD. The first hour will be burned and then stop.
* Do another “get info” in the file and set the start time to 01:00:00 and the end time to 02:00:00, burn and then repeat this step as many times with as many CDs as needed.
I personally found that sometimes the CD burn doesn’t work as it should, sometimes ending a burn session before the full hour has been encoded. This doesn’t happen very often, but is a pain when it does. Also, as I mentioned, the process is fairly slow.
The only good thing about this is once you’ve got the CDs, they can be played in any standard CD player.
Transferring the Audible files to an iPod is a LOT easier and faster. Just connect your iPod and if you have the auto-sync feature on, the Audible file will be automatically loaded onto your iPod, where you can listen to it as you would any other audio file.
Both iTunes and the iPod support Audible file bookmarks. Every time you stop listening to an Audible file, a “bookmark” is created so that the next time you go to listen to the file, you will automatically pick up just about 20 seconds or so from where you left off (it replays the last 20 seconds so you can remember what was happening the last time you listened, which is a nice touch).
iTunes and iPod also support “round-tripping” of these bookmarks. The way it is supposed to work is that when you connect your iPod, iTunes checks the status of the bookmark files on your computer and on the iPod and resets BOTH bookmarks to whichever bookmark is later. In practice, I found that this doesn’t always work and I find that I sync my iPod only to have the bookmark on my iPod reset itself to the earlier bookmark in the audible file on my computer. When it works, it’s a nice touch though. I assume this will be fixed eventually.
That’s as complex as it gets. If anyone has any other questions about Audible, feel free to contact me.
Part, The Last: The Final Word
If you are even remotely computer savvy and enjoy listening to audio programs, an Audible Listener plan is a GREAT deal! Mac users welcome!
If you enjoyed this review and would like to sign up, feel free to mention my username:
aric
when you sign up. You’ll get a free audio book (and maybe some free blank CDs) and so will I. My ears will thank you.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
aricpedersen
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Member: Aric Pedersen
Location: New Jersey
Reviews written: 34
Trusted by: 14 members
About Me:
"He's just this guy. You know?" - Currently on sabatical
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