Unabridged Infinity! News Posted by Jonathan Capps on 4th July 2008, 15:06 Just time for a quick update as I sit on the train moving at speed towards London town. The ever official TOS has revealed that we can finally purchase the unabridged version of the first Red Dwarf novel, Infinity: Welcomes Careful Drivers. It lasts eight hours and costs £9 which, as Andrew points out, is pant shittingly good value. The even better news is that it’s not an iTunes exclusive, but is instead being distributed through Audible.com, which is perfect for all us curmudgeons who would rather kill ourselves than install the Windows version of anything from Apple.
> which is perfect for all us curmudgeons who would rather kill ourselves than install the Windows version of anything from Apple. You’re silly.
Sorry to rain on parades, but I have found that Audible, without exception, offer downloads of incredibly poor quality. Everything is unfathomably muffly and lo-fi every time I give them another chance. For ?9 you’d be much better off getting the cassette second hand. iTunes may be a ghastly piece of software and DRM repulsive in the extreme, but at least their files tend to sound half-decent. Gah, I wish pay download stuff would get its bloody act together.
Basically I AM saying I’d love and want unabridged Barrie readings in high quality. Just not Audible. Or iTunes, really.
Tsk. I don’t understand why audio download sites make you download their shitty programmes to “manage” your audio, rather than just giving me links to the files on a website. It’s very simple: I tell you want I want, you ask me for money, I give you money, you give me a link, I download it. WHY is this so difficult? Also, Audible has a list of “compatible players”. My manufacturer (Archos, so hardly obscure) isn’t even listed. JUST GIVE ME A FUCKING MP3, YOU FUCKING CUNTS. I mean, it probably would be alright, but I’m not going to spend money if there’s no guarantee I’ll be able to play the bloody thing. What confuses me is that free podcasts are so easy to get. An RSS feed gives me a link whenever a new podcast is out, I right click it, save it directly to my mp3 player, and then listen on the way home. SIMPLE. What is it about paid audio downloads that suddenly makes this extremely difficult?
Because unless they’re eMusic (who are brilliant), they don’t trust you with non-DRM MP3s. They assume that if you have the file in MP3 format, then you’re immediately going to set up a rival website giving away EVERY SINGLE ALBUM EVER FOR FREE. Or something. Because, of course, when you’ve bought a CD, there’s absolutely NO method of copying and sharing that. So downloads naturally should be the same.
iTunes may be a ghastly piece of software and DRM repulsive in the extreme Because unless they?re eMusic (who are brilliant), they don?t trust you with non-DRM MP3s. As I’ve said before, bear in mind that if they’re iTunes Plus tracks (which the Radio Show tracks are), then the iTunes downloads *are* non-DRM. They’re AAC tracks rather than MP3, but that’s nothing to do with wanting to lock you in (it’s not an Apple format, and it’s no more proprietary than MP3), and everything to do with trying to provide superior audio quality to MP3s at the same bitrates. There’s absolutely no reason why people making other audio players can’t license the use of AAC in the same way they have to licence MP3 – in fact, some of them have.
What are the tags like on AAC? I’m usually wary of non-MP3 formats (and I include WMA in this) because I’m meticulous about the tagging of my entire collection, and ID3 is by far the best way to keep on top of that…
I must admit, I don’t know much about the tags on AAC. I’ll get back to you, because I’m interested in that as well!
