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haertig · 09-19-2018, 10:30 AM

Does anyone have any personal experience and opinions regarding audiobook storage format?

What I mean is, storing/handling in multiple smaller MP3 files vs. joining them all together into a single large MP3 file. All of my current audiobooks are each a sequence of MP3 files, the number of files varies with the length of the audiobook.

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I know how to losslessly split and combine MP3 files without degrading quality (as would happen if you used something like Audacity that mandates re-encoding the output file). So quality loss is not an issue.

In my limited audiobook experience, I would expect an audiobook to fit into a single MP3 file somewhere in the neighborhood of 300-500Mb but certainly there will be variation of that size. That's a convenient size for handling, except maybe not in email (which I wouldn't be using).

Another benefit of splitting/combining individual files would be for audiobooks that are a collection of short stories. Often times you will find a story uses up exactly one file. Other times a story may span two or more files. And sometimes a story will stop mid-file and then a new story starts right after that in the same file. I would like to slice-n-dice this so that each story, no matter how long of short it is, occupies one and only one file. This would be much easier to handle and navigate.

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Any thoughts on the appropriateness, or problems with, the single MP3 file storage approach for audiobooks? I don't want to go to the effort of reconfiguring my existing audiobooks only to find I've created more problems for myself in doing so.

Thanks in advance!

p.s. - For those wondering how you can slice/dice MP3 files losslessly, you have to use a simple editor, not a complex editor like Audacity. You want to avoid decoding and re-encoding the MP3 files during the editing process. Examples of simple editors are "mp3splt" (yes, the "i" is missing on purpose) and "mp3wrap". These I use in the Linux environment, I don't know if they are available for Windows or Mac. But other operating systems should have equivalent programs available.

09-19-2018, 10:30 AM	#1
haertig Wizard Posts: 1,897 Karma: 31522252 Join Date: Sep 2017 Device: PW3, Fire HD8 Gen7, Moto G7, Sansa Clip v2, Ruizu X26	Question: Audiobook storage format Does anyone have any personal experience and opinions regarding audiobook storage format? What I mean is, storing/handling in multiple smaller MP3 files vs. joining them all together into a single large MP3 file. All of my current audiobooks are each a sequence of MP3 files, the number of files varies with the length of the audiobook. --- I know how to losslessly split and combine MP3 files without degrading quality (as would happen if you used something like Audacity that mandates re-encoding the output file). So quality loss is not an issue. In my limited audiobook experience, I would expect an audiobook to fit into a single MP3 file somewhere in the neighborhood of 300-500Mb but certainly there will be variation of that size. That's a convenient size for handling, except maybe not in email (which I wouldn't be using). Another benefit of splitting/combining individual files would be for audiobooks that are a collection of short stories. Often times you will find a story uses up exactly one file. Other times a story may span two or more files. And sometimes a story will stop mid-file and then a new story starts right after that in the same file. I would like to slice-n-dice this so that each story, no matter how long of short it is, occupies one and only one file. This would be much easier to handle and navigate. --- Any thoughts on the appropriateness, or problems with, the single MP3 file storage approach for audiobooks? I don't want to go to the effort of reconfiguring my existing audiobooks only to find I've created more problems for myself in doing so. Thanks in advance! p.s. - For those wondering how you can slice/dice MP3 files losslessly, you have to use a simple editor, not a complex editor like Audacity. You want to avoid decoding and re-encoding the MP3 files during the editing process. Examples of simple editors are "mp3splt" (yes, the "i" is missing on purpose) and "mp3wrap". These I use in the Linux environment, I don't know if they are available for Windows or Mac. But other operating systems should have equivalent programs available.