@jk98 wrote:
Rather than blaming Sandisk, you should blame Audible. I don’t know why they need to use such huge files for audiobooks, and why they can’t break up an Audiobook into a number of files. i don’t use audiobooks, but do download podcasts. Many that I download are already at 32kbps, but those that are at a higher bitrate I convert down to 32kbps before putting them on my player. There is no need for high bitrates for spoken word files. For music a bitrate of 256kbps or 320 kbps is recommended. For voice files though, 32kbps mono is fine.
I’m not defendng Audible, but want to point out a few aspects where audiobooks are likely to differ from podcasts. Audiobooks do frequently have music at either the beginning and end or sometimes as chapter separaters or for chage of perspective such as point of view. There is also the category of “performance” audiobook where sound effects (gunshots, doors slamming, explosions, etc.) are liberally added. More importantly, for those not familair with audiobooks, they are more than merely spoken words. Narrators will vary pitch, tone, pace with a unique “voice” for each character in the story. Other sounds like screaming, groaning, whistling are also rendered. Really good narrators (this is a definite skill) can even inflect their voice to indicate whether the person is thinking or speaking when “he said” is not inserted. I have no idea how all this would be impacted by reduction to 32 kbps mono.
As far as multiple files goes, this was standard in the early years when downloads of even 10’s of MB could take hours (I go back to the days of 1200 baud being fast). I much prefer a single file.
