Play Nice with Audible.com?

I'm using 9.0.180 with the 9.30 iPod plug-in, and now the 2.0.1 iPod Firmware.

Currently I can not use Audible Manager and MC9 to upload audiobooks and music, respectively. Attempting to upload audiobooks using Audible Manager makes the iPod completely unreadable to MC9 (requiring a rebuilding of the database from the iPod). Attempting to upload music from MC9 (after rebuilding the database) erases the audiobooks.

I can manually import Audible.com .aa files into MC9, and play them inside MC9. However, after coding their Genre and syncing them with the iPod, they refuse to play (selecting them does nothing).

Otherwise, I really like MC9, but this is a deal breaker for me.

Rob

Just to add my experiences with this, I tried an Audible book tonight expecting to have problems, but to my very pleasent surprise everything worked fine.

I found that I needed Audible Manager installed just to get the file on the system in the right format. I had read that using AM could corrupt the MC database, so I didn't want AM automatically uploading the file to the iPod. Therefore, I first made sure my iPod was disconnected when I used AM to download an aa file. it told me that the iPod was disconnected, but I just ignored the message. I then highlighted the file in AM, right clicked and "copied" it, then pasted it to my "iPod Music" folder in Windows Explorer -- I used the Author's name for the "Artist" folder and the book name for the "Album" folder.

I closed AM, made sure it was COMPLETELY unloaded by "exiting" the program from the system tray icon, and opened MC9. I navigated to the file that I had just pasted via Explorer, highlighted it, and imported it into the MC library. I changed the tags (using the name of the book for the album field and "book" for the genre) and synched the iPod. It worked just fine, including the fact that it remembers my current position even after playing other songs -- i.e. I can listen to music, then return to the book and it remembers where I left off. The book I downloaded came in two parts, which appear as "songs" from within the "album" that is the book's title. Everything makes intuitive sense, and using "books" for the genre makes it quite easy to browse the iPod for any Audible material.

Based on all the reading I had done, I fully expected this to have serious problems and perhaps not even work at all. Luckily, this was not the case, and MC worked just fine for adding the book to the iPod. I don't know if other books are somehow "different" from this one, but so far it seems that MC9 can be used with Audible books. You just need a few extra steps to get it to work, including making sure that the Audible Manager is NOT allowed to ever talk to the iPod itself -- i.e. use AM just to get the file on the system, then shut it down completely and use MC for the rest.

In response to Rob's post above (reporting that the file doesn't play once it's in the iPod) did you make sure that AM never had a chance to talk to the iPod? From what I've read, the problem seems to be with Audible Manager and MC not getting along and corrupting each other's databases, not with the aa file itself, which worked fine for me when synched with MC.

Larry

I totally agree that it shouldn't be that complicated. I had just read about a bunch of issues such that I didn't expect it to work at ALL, so I was somewhat pleased that even though I had to go through a couple extra steps, it did work in the end, and in all fairness the extra steps weren't all "that" complex.

The only downside to this was the fact that I apparently HAD to use Audible Manager just to get the correct file format on my system. Without AM, the download from Audible was a .pl file, which I guess is then converted by AM to an .aa file since when you use AM to download the file, you end up with an .aa file.

If you know of a way that I could end up with an .aa file without using AM please let me know since this would simplify things. If this was possible, it would be completely possible for the makers of MC to automate the process of importing the Audible file directly by automatically creating the correct folders, updating the tags, etc. Obviously the best solution would be for MC to be compatible with Audible Manager, but if this is just not possible at this point, it certainly WOULD be possible for MC to make the process much easier and automatic.

On a related note, what advantages does MC gain by using it's own proprietary format for the iPod rather than working the same way Ephpod or XPlay does?

Thanks,

Larry