CDA files and Audio Books?

Hi, I’m trying to load an audio book consisting of .cda files into my new Sansa Clip Zip but can’t get the player to recognize that the files are in the Internal Memory/audiobooks folder.  Can you help?  Thanks!  pepper

CDA is a CD version of WAV format. You have to convert, or “rip” the CDs to .mp3 or another readable format. You can’t just directly copy the CDs to the player.

OK, thanks!  I figured out who a ‘rip’ is and MS Media Player transferred my audiobook the music file on the Sansa.  It didn’t look like I would be able to do that with the Rhapsody software that came with the player.  Is there a better tool available.  Thanks again!  pepper

EAC (Exact Audio Copy), Winamp (Pro version), Media Monkey, Foobar2000, CDex, dBpowerAMP (paid version) and a whole gaggle of others.

“Ripping” refers to pulling the PCM (wav) format data from the CD, and transcoding it to a compressed digital format, most commonly mp3 or wma.

Windows Media Player can rip your audiobooks to either format, ready for transfer to the Sansa.  But there is one very important limitation to this process that you will encounter with Audiobooks.  The metadata , or the embedded track information your Sansa uses to catalog the book chapters, is normally pullled automatically from public databases that include such things as album art, artist information, et cetera.  These databases are based primarily on popular audio CDs- audiobooks are less common, so your chapter information may be incorrect.  The result can often be a really jambled experience, with chapters in the wrong order.

Windows Media Player has a built in ID3 tag editor, where you can check this before the book is transferred to the Sansa. Alternately, MP3Tag is available free online, and allows you even better control, including an auto-numbering feature that will ensure that your chapters play in the correct order.

Be sure to set the genre to Audiobook so that your books can be readily located on the device, and they will be kept separate from your music.  Otherwise, if you use “shuffle”, chapter eight of War and Peace might find its way to your music experience.

Rhapsody can also be used to rip any audio CD, just like Windows Media Player.  The Rhapsody software can be used for your music and even videos, whether or not you subscribe to the service.

One last hint.  Audiobooks run for many hours, requiring plenty of memory space.  Select a lower bitrate, like 64 kb/sec, to save space.  For spoken word, the high resolution as used for music is not required.

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