Audible.com

Audible (English for audible) is a leading provider of commercial audio book downloads. Both the Audible GmbH as well as the U.S. Audible Inc. are subsidiaries of Amazon.com Inc..

• 3.1 Distribution and classification of files
• 3.2 sound quality and compression

Corporate history and structure

The company Audible Inc. was founded in 1995 by the U.S. best-selling author Donald Katz. Audible is a pioneer of audio book downloads, and inventor of the first digital audio player ( a precursor of the MP3 player ), which is in the Smithsonian Museum. Since then, Audible has become the world's most extensive download platform for audio books and other audio content such as spoken newspaper and journal articles.

The German company, the Audible GmbH was founded in 2004 as a joint venture of the Audible Inc., as well as the publishing groups Holtzbrinck Ventures GmbH and Random House GmbH. In 2006, the publishing group Luebbe GmbH bought also as a shareholder of Audible GmbH. The Audible Inc. in 2008 from the Amazon.com Inc. ( NASDAQ: AMZN ) at a price of 300 million U.S. bought $. 2009 Amazon bought the shares of the other partners of the German joint venture on.

In addition to Germany Audible operated via Internet platforms and markets in the U.S., the UK and France. In addition to the online presence equips Audible worldwide as an exclusive partner to the iTunes Store with spoken audio content. Since September 2010, the company audiobook enthusiasts informed on a company's own audiobooks Blog About the subject audiobooks and gives an insight behind the scenes of their own companies. Audible use Facebook and twitter as a marketing channel.

Distribution

Audible functions mainly as a distribution platform for the audio book publishers. Some audio books Audible also produces itself, especially unabridged audiobook productions that Audible customers exclusively available and not available as an audio book CD are. Among the productions include unabridged audiobook versions as well as extensive audio book series by bestselling authors such as John Katzenbach, Preston / Child, Stephen King, Richard Morgan.

In the Audible customer can purchase audiobooks in both single purchase and by subscription. When purchased alone, the prices are about 30% below the prices of the CD version.

Product

In December 2013 there were about 130,000 titles in German, English, Spanish and French from more than 1000 publishers available - including a large selection of unabridged audiobooks. Some 24,000 titles of which are German audiobooks.

Rights and opportunities

Audio tracks will be downloaded over the Internet to your computer, from where it then with the proprietary software Audible, iTunes or Windows Media Player 10/11/12 to mobile playback devices ( eg MP3 players, smart phones, PDAs, navigation systems, etc. ) can be transferred, provided that they support the Audible file format. Audible uses its own data format that is used for digital rights management ( DRM) technology. For portable devices that detect the Audible format, the term Audible Ready has naturalized. Over 500 MP3 Player from the major manufacturers, including all Apple iPods, iPhones, iPads, Android and Windows Phone devices and most Philips MP3 players are compatible with the Audible file format.

The customer can use per computer running Windows or Mac OS X operating system up to three mobile players. The audio tracks are also playable on the PC or Mac, can be burned on CD and played back on CD players. Linux is not supported and it is found no support in prospect for the future. For smartphone users is an iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows Phone app.

The files can always be downloaded again from the personal online library of the Audible website. This eliminates the need for a personal backup (in case of the offered by Audible audiobook Subscriptions well over the period of the subscription addition ). It can be used up to three computers per user account side by side.

Compared with other DRM systems, which is classified as a relatively liberal Audible. However, there may be problems with portable players, if the customer also uses other DRM systems simultaneously. In the event the company goes bankrupt set so that the server does not go ahead - - As the DRM format to activate the audio books needs to contact a server from Audible / Amazon, the customer can no longer use the DRM audiobooks thereafter.

The Audible format ( .aa / .aax )

The Audible file format was designed for spoken audio content (audio books, audio magazines, etc. ) was developed. Strictly speaking, there is not a separate compression format, but an MP3 in audible - proprietary. Aa- DRM container.

Distribution and classification of files

The Audible format consists of usually one file per title, with long audiobooks individual ' parts ', each with 5 to 10 hours in length. These files are each divided into chapters, between which the user can scroll. The distribution and classification of files based ideally on the classification of the printed book, not the Cds / CD track structure, but is still found in some older titles. However, the chapters are just numbers, not designated with headings. A table of contents of the chapter is not yet included, where appropriate, the user can be based on the directory of the printed book.

When burning audio CDs, which on the iTunes program is only possible to the substantive chapter division is completely ignored: If the user manually specifies the start and end date of your burning range, the selected file (or several ) simply cut into parts that correspond to exactly one CD length. The CDs are subdivided into approximately equally long chapter of a maximum of 8 minutes ( for example, Chapter 9 à 8:00 minutes, 10 chapter 7:57; latest CD at a remaining time of 40:01 in the five chapters à 6:41 and one to 6:36 ). Each file can in principle also be burned only once on CDs, to a certain tolerance. Also burning on long CDs is not supported technically by the program that is specifically excluded for Audible files of mp3 CDs.

The Audible file format supports additional features such as automatically set bookmarks.

Sound quality and compression

Overall, the audiobooks on audible.de are available in four quality levels. The audio data is highly compressed, the best quality level (6; aax ) has a bit rate of 128 kbit / s and a sampling frequency of 44,100 Hz; Stereo. The quality level (5,. Aax ) has been offered since 2009. This is with 64 kBit/44.100 Hz in stereo sound in significantly improved compared with format (4), which is supplied only in mono. But Format 4 is sufficient for the spoken word.

The audio format aax the download files are about twice as large as in Format 4 and aax about four times as large compared to level 4 level 3 requires the least disk space and is recommended only for older players.

All audio formats offer the same properties ( chapter, bookmarks, etc. ), such as also the multimedia data format. mp4 it provides. A direct conversion of the Audible files to other data formats such as MP3 files is not supported by the provider. Therefore, the downloaded audiobooks can be initially used exclusively on such devices that dominate the aax format.

Criticism

In criticism Audible is particularly difficult for users of a Linux operating system frequently, there still is available for download and playback of. Aax files no suitable software available. The same applies generally to users of free software as Audible does not even permitted in addition to the use of the file format to download the files using free software. In addition, some users reject digital rights management, as it is used in aax. , Categorically.