Ubuntu
amarok package

Playing audiobooks from audible.co.uk

Asked by madwoollything

I'm a Windows user at present and have an audible.co.uk subscription for audio books in the aa or aac format.

I have an evaluation copy of Ubuntu and have loaded up Amarok as I've read somewhere that it is possible to play back these files in Amarok. Unfortunately as Ubuntu is Gnome based, the help files in amarok do not run (requires KDE?)

Is this possible?
I'm somewhat tied to Apple and Windows XP at present!

Thanks

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Ubuntu amarok Edit question
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Markus Thielmann
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Revision history for this message
Lynoure Braakman (lynoure) said : 		#1

I have not yet found anything about playing them, but according to http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/Media_Device:IPod you can transfer them to you Ipod at least.

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madwoollything (ianbradby) said : 		#2

Thanks .... this is useful and I will try it.

Does anyone know of any plans to allow these files to play in Amarok?
If I lose my place on my Ipod Shuffle, it can be very useful to use (iTunes) to reset the place in the audiobook.

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Best Markus Thielmann (thielmann) said : 		#3

Thanks for your question.

The problem doesn't rely on the file format itself. The problem exists with the bundled DRM features. There are no plans for Ubuntu to include DRM features in the next future. Eventually Apple is going to provide a Linux Version of iTunes, but to be honest: I don't see that happen. It's quite easy: DRM is bad for the customer.

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madwoollything (ianbradby) said : 		#4

Thanks Markus Thielmann, that solved my question.

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Philip Lowman (philip-yhbt) said : 		#5

I vaguely recall reading somewhere online that GoldWave 5.19 supports conversion from Audible (.aa) to WAV although that it is very buggy and crashes often.

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bricin (paul-bricin) said : 		#6

I too use Audible and am now stuck with audiobooks I cannot listen to. There was an application (on Windows), something like PlaysSure or another takeoff on Microsoft's PlaysForSure. I had reasonable success converting several audiobooks.

That said... please leave feedback with Audible. Maybe they will do something to add support.

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pythonholum (pythonholum) said : 		#7

I too want a linux audible player, what i would suggest to do is to wright a customer complaint / tech support to adible requesting them to wright and linux client, the way i figure if they do not see a demand for a linux player they will not wright one, and they will not see a demand for one unless we tell them that we want one.

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Olafur Arason (olafura) said : 		#8

There is a <a href="http://callanaudible.org/">petition for Amazon to remove DRM from Audible.com</a>. Please sign it, they will deliver it on 31 July 2009.