Saint Monkey

Audible seems to want to actively block the ability to rip / convert .aa files to MP3 through third party software. The fact that the non ability to use the purchased media however one wants only affects their own paying customers, astounds me. With any digital file there will always be a way to remove DRM encryption, maybe it will take some time but there are people happy to spend their time doing so. These same people are the ones most likely to upload it somewhere for others to use. So, regardless of what they do, it will always get out there on the “free market”, so in effect, they only restrict their own paying customers. More on this in a future post.

Why would I want to rip .aa to MP3?

The simple answer would be because I paid for it and wish to listen to it however I want.
I have no intention of giving it to other people, I just want to listen to them on my chosen player. Plus if I want to listen to them in the car, why cant I put the whole thing on a single CD instead of screwing the environment and spend money on 8 CD’s?
Why cant I make it future proof?
What they close down or I format my computer and can’t get online to enter my username and password?
For me, the most prominent reason why I like to have them in MP3 is because even though I have a media player listed as compatible, and if fact got my trial Audible membership from the box of my media player, the crappy Audible software doesn’t recognise it, hence I can’t play .aa files on my “compatible” MP3 player.

How to:

This is not the only way to do this but it is the only “true rip” method that I know of that currently works. Plus it is legal within the restrictions that Audible give you.

This how to works with Windows XP/Vista. If you know that it works or doesn’t work on a Mac, post a comment below.

You will need:
Audible membership with crappy Audible software.
Nero Burning Rom (or another compatible burning software. I will explain it using Nero 8).
A CD emulator (I use Magic ISO but Alcohol, Daemon Tools or any other should work fine)
WAV to MP3 encoder (there are literally hundreds out there. Google “CD to MP3″. I will use Windows Media Player 11 (WMP))

1. Open Nero Burning Rom. A “New Compilation” box should appear. Select CD on the top left side of the box. Scroll down on the left and select “Audiobook CD”. Click “New”.
On the top toolbar of Nero it will show the selected drive that the CD will burn to, click that and select “Image Recorder”.
Browse for your .aa file in the right navigation bars and drag it across into the right (empty) box. You should then see multiple CDs (CD 01 time CD name etc). Click “Burn”. The dialogue box will come up again, click “burn”.
You will then be asked to “save as”. Navigate to where you would like to save your files and click “save”. Click “Autocreate file names”. Nero will then convert your .aa file to multiple CD images on your hard drive. Close Nero when it’s finished.

2. You will now need to mount your CD image onto a your virtual drive (CD emulator).
There are a number of ways to do this but I will only write about one.
Find the icon of your virtual drive in your system tray (all those pretty little pictures in the bottom right corner of your screen), PowerISO is a little gold CD, right click it, select your drive and click “Mount Image”, navigate to your CD image and select the first one, click “open”.

3. You can now open your CD to MP3 encoder, I will use Windows Media Player 11 (WMP) for this purposes because most people have this.
Open WMP and click “rip”. Select your drive on the left and WMP should automatically start ripping to MP3 (or wma if you have that set in your preferences).
Once the first CD has been ripped, without closing WMP, repeat step 2 for the next CD and WMP should automatically start ripping. Repeat until all CDs are ripped.

4. Step 4 is optional.
Navigate to where WMP put your MP3s “Music” or “My music” by default.
Name your folder “Book Name CD1” etc. Go into the folder and select all MP3 files in the folder. Right click and click “properties” select the “details” tab and in the “artists” field write “Book Name”, in the album field write “Book name CD#”.

Your done.

It seems a little complicated but it is actually very simple. The most time consuming part of the process in step 4 but that is completely optional, although I would recommend at least naming the folders as the time and date system that WMP uses can be a little hard to navigate 6 months down the track.

Cancelling membership by phone while in a different time zone leaves only a few hour window to do so. Remembering to do so in that narrow window can be a problem if you are me. So it takes me a couple days.

I give a call to the second, international number and am given a few options. I press 8 as that’s the only option that is supposed to send me to an operator. Every time I press it, it rings and then cuts out. I try about five times then call the other number, with which I’m connected to a person straight away.

After I give my user details the conversation went something like this:
Note also that the guy I spoke to was very polite and even the entire conversation.

Audible guy: So, what can I do for you today sir?
Me: I want to cancel my membership.
A: Okay sir, am I able to ask why?
M: There are a number of reasons but the first is the DRM crap Audible has with the files.
A: I’m sorry sir, could you say that again?
M: I don’t like the DRM with the files.
A: DRM…? Sir, what this DRM thing?
M: DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. It stops me doing what I want to do with the Audible files.
A: DRM… DRM… I’m sorry sir, could you tell that to me again?
M: Digital Rights Management means I can’t do shit with the files I paid for unless I turn them into MP3 which takes too long and wastes my time.
A: Oh you mean the .aa files?
M: Yeah sort of. Although it’s the DRM that’s in the .aa files, not the files themselves…
A: I think a lot of customers have a problem that the files aren’t in MP3. Our tech guys say that you can’t turn them into MP3. I’m sorry that this is a problem for you sir.
M: Yes you can, it’s just a waste of time.
A: Oh…
M: Why cant I cancel my membership online?
A: You can sir.
M: I couldn’t, it just sent me to a page with these phone numbers.
A: If you click on account details and then click make changes to my membership. At the bottom of the screen you should see cancel membership plan.
M: And when I click that I just get a screen with phone numbers to call to cancel my membership. That’s all, no other options.
A: Oh, they must have changed it…
M: Can I cancel my membership?
A: Yes sir…. but… um… it seems that you have 2 credits on your account and if you cancel now, you’ll lose them.
M: Okay… when did they go on there?
A: Let me see sir… oh, today!
M: Right… just forget it, I’ll have to cancel another time.

The guy was either fucking with me or an idiot. I’m leaning towards the former.

I signed up to Audible 2 months ago because I received a one month free promotional offer with a new Creative MP3 player (I’m just not into ipod restrictions). I got a couple of audio books and when the next months billing came around and was 1. Too lazy to cancel my membership, 2. Thought that I wouldn’t mind a couple more audio books, and 3. Hadn’t yet actually tried to listen to the audio books that I already downloaded.

When I did try to listen to the audio books I found that they didn’t want to transfer to my MP3 player because their Audible Manager is a piece of junk software and the files are DRM protected (which I had already assumed). So, I had to waste my time figuring how to rip the audible files to MP3 and then waste more time actually doing it.

Got to love that DRM…

Although I’m generally happy to pay for things, I want to be able to use them, so I figured it’s a lot easier and far less time consuming to get audio books elsewhere, not to mention, um, cheaper… and I can listen to them however and whichever way I like.

Come this months billing and I try to cancel my membership. But no, can’t do that online. “You are free to put your credit card information online but we wont let you take it off”. What they gave me was this rubbish:

“Need to Cancel Your Audible Membership?

We want to provide you with the best possible customer experience, even if you decide to cancel your membership.

Please contact us toll-free via phone at: 888-396-6348
Outside of the USA and Canada please use 973-820-0400

Hours
• Monday – Friday: 9AM-10PM EST
• Saturday: 10AM-7PM EST

This will allow us to:
• Address technical or usability issues that might be hindering your use of Audible
• Make sure you know about all of the benefits of Audible membership
• Get your feedback, so that we can continuously improve the service

We appreciate your business and thank you for your patience.

Click here to return to My Account”

I’m sorry but that just isn’t good enough. That’s a ridiculous tactic to make it too much of an effort to cancel your membership.
For me, Audible is too much of an effort and wastes too much time to bother being a member.