[seanma]

yeah, it definitely sucks to be me... it's less a problem than an unwillingness to listen to anything that's not crystal clear and /or capable of rendering one and every nuance of the narrator's voice.

it's like reading a book with mold-stained pages as opposed to a newly printed one.

i agree to you when u say that the problem varies from book to book. I found Naxos editions to be perfectly listenable even at a low bitrate, maybe because their original encoding is incredibly above average (and they make you pay for it dearly, too!) but for me is an exception.

audiobooks by such top companies as blackstone, penguin, random house, ecc become intolerably butchered when on scribd (both online and with the app) whereas the original recordings are undoubtebly top shelf.

and of course you're patently wrong saying: s far I as I know, most other mp3 audiobook sources.

many sites (even audible i think, that lets you choose from 4 different versions) offer audiobooks at a CD quality bit-rate (samples on downpour.com are at 128 even!) because otherwise you'll be wasting money.

scribd encodes at 32 mainly for portability purposes (a 20h book encoded at 96 occupies about 1 G of space, the same at 32 requires less than 300 M... you clearly see the convenience here...) but for me, at such conditions, it's a no brainer, and a no go.