New audio format for audio cds?

vee · Post by **vee** » January 12th, 2006, 6:21 am

Of course ideally we would want to use the WAV or AIFF files. But that may n ot be practical for the vast majority of the files unless we ask all volunteers to send the raw files instead of MP3s. I think maybe we should focus on converting the MP3s since that will end up being more similar to our overall workflow.

Thanks for the offer though, someone else might still take you up on that.

ChipDoc · Post by **ChipDoc** » January 12th, 2006, 6:28 am

I do these all in WAV and then convert them to MP3, so I'd be happy to ship the original files if it'd be helpful. It's not as if I ever throw anything away...

raynr · Post by **raynr** » January 12th, 2006, 8:10 am

It seems there is interest about it. I will try to create Audio-CDs during the weekend from the princess.

Ideally you would use the original WAV files, but I will stick to the mp3. I don't think anyone will notice a quality loss due to the conversion to mp3. Well, mp3 is created in the way that noone hears the difference, and we don't have a professionally recorded symphony-concert, but spoken word.

vee · Post by **vee** » January 12th, 2006, 12:55 pm

I was going to go ahead and just do Call of the Wild for now since it's short. I'll try Frankenstein next.

I went to lulu to look into their CD publishing. Right now they only have the ability to self publish one CD at a time. So if we have material which spans multiple disks, each one would need to be ordered separately. If that's the case it would be that much more important to have chapters start at the beginning of a disk, and since they would be purchased separately the disclaimer would need to be at the beginning of each as well. Kindof makes it more difficult to sell through Lulu.

I don't know if anyone would really want to be the clearing house for shipping the CDs out, could be kindof a bear. I know we can create the ISO's for people to download, but it doesn't meet the need of those who don't have sufficient internet access to download the content anyway.

Lulu also doesn't accept ISO for audioCD (at least that's how I understand it) but does for data CDs. If we were to submit an ISO to them would they print it correctly as an audioCD? Not sure. I'll see if I can get in touch with them. Otherwise you upload all your files and then arrange them on the CD as tracks. They don't add the 2 second pause between tracks so if we wanted to make regular 10 minute cuts in the chapter we could and it wouldn't have the awkward 2second pause.

kayray · Post by **kayray** » January 12th, 2006, 1:02 pm

vee wrote:I was going to go ahead and just do Call of the Wild for now since it's short. I'll try Frankenstein next.

Vee -- chap. 4 of Call of the Wild is temporarily unavailable for download, since I took it down to fix a problem and archive.org has not let me upload the fixed version yet. "Server Full" for TWO DAYS.
Kara

vee · Post by **vee** » January 12th, 2006, 1:14 pm

I was using the ones that I got from the podcast. Was there a problem with 4 ? Well I can just get started on Frankenstein. Lots of CDs for this one

kayray · Post by **kayray** » January 12th, 2006, 1:25 pm

vee wrote:I was using the ones that I got from the podcast. Was there a problem with 4 ? Well I can just get started on Frankenstein. Lots of CDs for this one :)

it was just a problem with the ID3 tag chapter name (marked as 3 instead of 4). So you're cool if you've already got it :)

raynr · Post by **raynr** » January 12th, 2006, 2:15 pm

vee wrote:Kindof makes it more difficult to sell through Lulu.

There is no way we could deliver anything through Lulu. It's not the technique, but the price: we don't want to make money, therefore let it be the smallest price: $5.50 per CD. That means you would have to pay $38.50 if "A little princess" fitted on 7 CD. You can get "A little princess" on audible.com for $20.97 and a real audiobook for $13.59 on amazon.com. I'm sure they aren't so beautiful read like the version Kara did, but I doubt that anyone would buy them from lulu.

The reason for ISO is that if you made them available for download, you can easily burn a CD for yourself. And - I don't remember who it was - already sent an Audiobook to someone in Australia. If someone would be willing to do that (and has a fast internet connection) he could simply grab the ISOs, burn and send them.

vee · Post by **vee** » January 12th, 2006, 9:46 pm

Call of the Wild ISO's

CD1 753 MB Chapters 1-3
CD2 503 MB Chapters 4-5
CD3 503 MB Chapters 6-7
tracklist

I just realized that I forgot to put the reader's names in the tracklist. I'll fix that tomorrow and just overwrite the file. I also had to fiddle with the volume level since they were all so different. It kindof brings up the noise floor a bit so it's a little more noticeable on some of them.

They are really huge. The first and last CDs aren't technically exactly redbook standard since they are a little longer than 74 minutes (by like 40 seconds). For those who have the patience to download this many files, is this too inconvenient? Is the format ok? I tried to put breaks every 7 minutes or so, trying to find a logical pause. Maybe they should be just a hard 5 minute split or should I try to find scene breaks to split instead?

Any and all comments appreciated.

harvpa · Post by **harvpa** » January 12th, 2006, 11:07 pm

So what method did you use to create the isos?

Yesterday, I started playing with some recordings I've done, but didn't get too far.

Tried again today, and figured out a bit, but haven't figured out all the steps to create an automated process.

vee · Post by **vee** » January 13th, 2006, 8:57 am

Well this is far from automated.

First using Sound Forge I opened each file to to normalize and place region markers in each chapter to break it up. The region makers allow me to keep the file together but still break it up later in CD Architect, which I use to master the CDs. I place the standard 2 second break between chapters, but leave the track breaks.

Once I burned a set I used Nero to create the image. Unfortunately Nero creates a NGR file, which I convert to an ISO using NGR to ISO. CD Architect also automatically generates the track info.

raynr · Post by **raynr** » January 13th, 2006, 9:10 am

vee wrote:Once I burned a set I used Nero to create the image. Unfortunately Nero creates a NGR file, which I convert to an ISO using NGR to ISO. CD Architect also automatically generates the track info.

I have a NRG image from Nero too, but I wasn't able to convert it to ISO. I used some programs, but the ISO was broken somehow afterwards. I burnt a CD with the NRG image (therefore it was correct), but the ISO image didn't work. Which program did you use?

vee · Post by **vee** » January 13th, 2006, 9:38 am

I think that Magic ISO is the commercial way of doing it. But I just downloaded this utility that someone wrote and it seems to work fine for me. You just need to have winrar to decompress it. I've made a lot of ISO's with this one and haven't had a problem.

To make this work automatically we'd have to find a way to make the logical splits (maybe that will always have to be done manually) and then to have something which will automatically take these split files, break them up into CD size chunks, and then make the ISO. Call of the Wild took me about 2 hours from start to finish to get done. Maybe with newer files that have been run through the validator I won't need to worry about normilizing the volume levels it won't take quite as long.

Stephan · Post by **Stephan** » January 13th, 2006, 9:49 am

Just wanted to throw in, that Call of the Wild appears to be the most attractive torrent from all the books that are up. Its got the most downloads/leechers. Good choice.

kri · Post by **kri** » February 9th, 2006, 6:27 pm

I notice that CafePress does audio CDs now. All someone would have to do (should they do this) would be to send a master CD that CafePress would use to duplicate and create the CDs. It's 4.99 for a CD with a paper sleeve.