Audible Audio Conversion

[charactermatter]

I get audio books from audible.com. Does anyone know of a free way to convert them from the .aa format they come in to a linux -friendly format? This is the last thing that I still need to run Windows for, and I would like to get rid of it. Right now they don't support any linux distros, but given the creativity in the communities I am wondering if anyone has a simple conversion tool or method that works. Giving up audible is not an option. I have a commute and have been known to call in sick if I don't have a book to listen to while I drive. .

[Evil_Bert]

Originally Posted by charactermatter

I get audio books from audible.com. Does anyone know of a free way to convert them from the .aa format they come in to a linux -friendly format? This is the last thing that I still need to run Windows for, and I would like to get rid of it. Right now they don't support any linux distros, but given the creativity in the communities I am wondering if anyone has a simple conversion tool or method that works. Giving up audible is not an option. I have a commute and have been known to call in sick if I don't have a book to listen to while I drive. .

This looks promising, but I have never dealt with .aa formats personally:
http://www.filbar.org/weblog/convert...e_files_to_mp3.

Have you tried running your program in Wine, or perhaps a virtual machine such as VirtualBox?

[charactermatter]

I'll give that a try and repost whether it works...maybe tomorrow. Thanks Evil Bert from Sydney for the attention to my "Cry In The Dark."

[JohnVV]

Evil_Bert you do know that that link is to a windows .exe
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/codecs/ dBpowerAMP-codec-DirectShowDecoder.exe
http://download.audible.com/AM50/ ActiveSetupN.exe

from " mplayer -vo help " it looks like it might play .aa ????
---------------------- added later -----------
found a windows vista/xp program to do (Audible ).aa to .mp3
http://www.goldwave.com/release.php
one more win only maybe
http://www.convert-any-media.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audible.com

[Evil_Bert]

Originally Posted by JohnVV

Evil_Bert you do know that that link is to a windows .exe

Yes ...... FFS, I *can* read!!!

Edit:
The "aa" mplayer option you mentioned isn't a file format, it's a video output driver - specifically the AAlib driver that plays video in ASCII-art format (though one wonders why anyone would want to do that).

The link I included does cover GoldWave as well as his method - there's value in the comments, too.

AFAIK, the problem with Audible (.aa files) is they're DRM-encumbered (Apple's FairPlay, apparently) - the player apparently does a web lookup to verify credentials before unlocking the file and only runs on Windows or Mac ..... and you thought iTunes was bad. But if the chap paid for the files, I don't see why he can't try to play them on Linux after conversion ..... or maybe try Wine or a Windows Guest OS in, say, VirtualBox if that doesn't work out.

[charactermatter]

Well if anyone is out there interested in it. I tried three of the " music converter" programs ( on a windows computer) that boasted the ability to convert audible's .aa format and none of them worked. I tried the filber.org instructions but they are a bit old. If you downgrade to an earlier version of the audible manager then it's claimed you can do it. I didn't try that. I did get a reply from audible's tech support that " they are seing a great increase in requests for linux compatible software and they are working with the open source community to see if they can come up with something." Well I hope they are and I hop they do. I want to write a nice clean Fedora installation over the XP system so bad I can taste it, and that's the only thing holding me up. I can't live without the audio books.

[wvn]

try this:

http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/589613

also check for the gstreamer0.80-aa library

good luck

[charactermatter]

That sounds pretty simple. I'll give it a try.

[charactermatter]

Thanks WVN, The instructions on the page you linked worked perfectly.