Convert Audible files to MP3, AAC or Flac, Tells how to convert any Audible file to a different format Options

[AudibleAddict]

As my car radio only accepts MP3 files (and audio CDs of course), I was annoyed that Audible do not provide any files that a standard HIFI device can play (and MP3 is pretty much standard nowadays). Of course I started with burning the audible files to CDs, but honestly who wants to have tens of CDs laying around in the car?
Therefore I tried to write a small program which takes the burned CDs and converts them to MP3 (or AAC or Flac) files, fully tagged and divided at the chapter points. Further it automatically removes the annoying "Presented by Audible" comments at the beginning and the end (it should work for english and german fileS). Please let me know what you think of it!

Here comes a full documentation of how to convert the audible files (no cracking or hacking involved!):

1. Burn your audible file to (real or virtual) audio CD(s) using ITunes. Best is to deactivate "Gap Between Songs" (set it to "none") - but I don't know whether it really has any impact in this case... Now the DRM is gone and we can work with the CDs.
2. Extract the CDs to an "image" file (whole audio CD in one single file). ITunes will insert a new track roughly every 7 minutes, it doesn't look whether there is a pause at the track junction or not! Also ITunes will repeat roughly 20 seconds of audio when starting a further CD. So this division in tracks is not helpful, that is why we just extract the CDs to CD image files. Use Exact Audio Copy (EAC) for enhanced security - or just any other Audio CD Grabber. Extract the images to uncompressed WAV files and name them xxxxx01.wav, xxxxx02.wav, etc. (xxxxx can be any name).
3. Locate the according Audible file (either .aa or .aax) on your harddisk, e.g. right click the audiobook in ITunes and select "Show in Windows Explorer".
4. Use my tool to create WAV files (untagged) or fully tagged AAC, MP3 or Flac files.

Now the documentation of my tool:

1. Installation
Extract the files to a directory of your choice, it comes with the Flac Encoder preinstalled. If you want to encode to MP3, you need to copy a current version of the LAME MP3 Encoder in that directory (LAME.EXE), and if you want to get a single(!) AAC file (including chapter marks), just drop the Nero AAC Encoder package in that directory (NeroAACEnc.exe and NeroAACTag.exe are necessary). The tool will detect which encoders are in the same directory and create such files - if you have three encoders installed, the tool will create all three encoding schemes! Only if no encoder is found, the tool will produce untagged and uncompressed WAV files.

2. Usage
The tool is a command line tool only, so open a dos box and change the current directory to the path where you installed the EXEs.
Just starting the tool without any parameters will show you all possible options.
If you start the program with only the audible file name (with extension .aa or .aax), it will just show you the title and chapters of the Audible audio book. These information are stored unencrypted in the Audible files, so no hacking of a DRM or whatever is needed - all information can be read in plain text using a hexeditor.
In order to convert the files to the "selected" output formats, use this command line:
AudibleChapters.exe <audible filename> <first WAV image> <target directory>
<audible filename> is the name (and full path) of the Audible file with an extensio nof .aa or .aax
<first WAV image> is the name (and full path) of the first extracted WAV image (which must end with "01.wav"!)
<target directory> is a full specified path, in which a subdirectory will be created (from the name of the audio book)
If the audio book is an .aax file, everything is probably fine. If not, you can do something about it!
I also found a book, which has real chapters (the speaker really tells "Chapter Five"), but the audible chapters where just somewhere inbetween! This is not nice, so I decided to implement also a function for automatically find possible chapter markers (the chapter marks from the Audible file will be ignored completely).
There is a fully automated usage possible when just specifying -d on the command line. You can also specify a rough minimum and maximum length of a chapter in minutes (e.g. -d10:20 will create chapters which will be mostly between 10 and 20 minutes in length). The program will find the best matching positions, but of course can not be perfect without any user interaction. Therefore the -i option provides this user interactivity (used in conjunction with -d). After having searched the file, the tool will play a position within the file (the audio just after the "beep" will be in a new chapter). If the book has real chapters, which can be identified easily, you can decide whether you want to have a chapter mark at the "beep" position. Press "y" for yes and "n" for no. If you want to listen again to that piece of audio, press the "r" key. If you have enough chapters and want to start processing, press "q". Usually if there are no new chapter starts after 10-20 false propositions, there will be no further chapter start...
Any problems with the tool should be shown on the command line, have a look for WARNING and ERROR messages...

The tool can be found here : AudibleChapters

Please share your thoughts!

Regards,

Anonymous Audible Addict

[pacohaas]

Create 1 wave file for each CD-R using iTunes.