Audio Books

carefullycautious

Sorry if in wrong place.

I love to listen to audio books and would love to take advantage of the free ones from Librivox.

However, being not very computor savvy I would like to ask what would be the best thing to download them onto with good sound quality.

I would like to listen to them at bedtime so something which is smallish and of good sound quality is a must.

Is there anyone out there who listens to audiobooks in this way and what would you recommend.

Thanks in anticipation

taliesin

These are 'simply' mp3 files that you download to your computer and then either to any of the myriad devices that can play mp3s or onto a medium that your replay device can read. Most modern mobile phones and CD players can play mp3 files.

Some examples:

'Burn' the files onto a CD and play in your CD player.

Copy the files to your iPod or iPhone and play in a docking system, or connect the output to your bedside radio.

Load the mp3 files onto a USB memory stick ('pen drive') and plug it into one of the modern CD players that knows how to read them.

If you already have a device that can play mp3s, perhaps we can suggest how to make it work.

carefullycautious

Thanks for info. It is the device that I am having problems with. I would like recommendations as to the best for sound quality as most ipods are set up for music and not the written word.

Did not know that you could put onto memory stick and then onto a cd player would this work with a small round cd player that you can carry with you?

methinks I need to get up to date with this side of things sorry for questions

taliesin

One of the great things about modern systems is that the parts that carry the music-data (USB stick, memory card, iPod) can be independent of the part that turns it into music (iPod, player) and the part which turns that into a noise loud enough to hear in a room ("hi-fi", "stereo", dock). If you have, say, a smartphone, you can connect its output to, say, an old boombox, and listen without the earbuds.

Unfortunately, we don't know the options available to you so can't make specific suggestions. But we can say that it's much harder to produce a listenable music signal than a speech one, so anything that will make your music sound decent will be fine for listening to spoken word.

You would be unlikely to copy the mp3 files from your computer onto a memory stick and then copy them again to a CD. More likely you would either "burn" a CD in your computer and then play it in your portable player, or plug the memory stick into it via a suitable slot. I'm afraid that again we might need some more specifics as most modern portable CD players can read mp3 files, but older ones (or current cheap ones) can only read "audio discs". It's not a huge deal to get the computer to turn mp3 files into ".wav" files and to get the computer to burn and "audio" disc (that can be read by older players) instead of a "data" disc, but you do need to know that that is what has to be done.

Again, it's hard to know what to suggest for your personal situation simply because there are so many possibilities. But just to suggest something that >might< work for you, take a look at the X-Mini Happy product. It's a tiny speaker which produces remarkably good sound, and accepts the SD cards that are used in most cameras. Most laptops and many desktop computers can read these cards. You would download the mp3 files to your computer and copy them to an SD card, which you then take to the Happy (dreadful product name!) and it plays them for you, wherever you like. The Happy itself can be charged from a USB port on a computer or a separate mains charger.

http://www.which.co.uk/technology/audio/reviews-ns/x-mini-happy-portable-mp3-player-speaker/

carefullycautious

Thank you very much for your detailed reply. I will certainly look into this.