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Mastering audiobooks - liberating Audible books
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08-03-2016 21:59 - edited 09-03-2016 17:26
I like audiobooks. I've bought many and many from Audible.com but these come wrapped in digital rights managment, meaning that they can only be played on Audible apps. Sometimes that's not possible for me. You can get things from a whole host of places nowadays and everything is a service, the problem with these services is that you, or at least I, tend to amass a huge amount of stuff spread far and wide with consolidation of the things you own pretty much impossible.
I've been trying to get my audiobooks in order. I want them all in one place with standard formats (probably the m4b AAC audiobook format). The biggest hurdle I've faced is getting my Audible books out of Audible jail, I've even resorted to burning them to burning and ripping CDs. I have one book that's 53 hours long so you can imagine how impractical this is. But now, with a little bit of Python, FFMPEG and magic I have my books back! Here's how.
If you download your Audible books from the Audible website they come in the .aax format, Audibles own DRM format. To decrypt them you need a decryption key. If you've bought them you have one (or you wouldn't be able to play them), you just need to know where to find it and what to do with it.
You will need
- Audible books
- The Audible app for Android
- Python (preinstalled Linux and Mac, Windows users get it here)
- FFMPEG (preinstalled on Linux, Mac and Windows users get it here)
- Audible Activator Python script (download the zip from here and extract it)
First the Python script which does all of the grunt work. It retrieves your 8-digit Audible activation key from a registered device, in this case it will be the Audible app on your Android thing.
Sign into the Audible app on the Android thing. Now go to a file explorer and look for the Audible folder, inside that is a file called
AudibleActtivation.sys
This has your magic code in it but not yet in a form usable by anything other than the Audible app. Put that file onto your computer in any way you want; Bluetooth, email it to yourself. Whatever. Find it and right click/copy it.
Find the extracted zip file from earlier, the Audible Activator one. Go into the folder and copy the AudibleActivator.sys file from your Android thing. You should have a folder with some files ending in .py as well as dome other things like a README.md.
Open a command prompt (cmd) or terminal IN THAT FOLDER. Often you can right click and choose open cmd here, otherwise open the command prompt/terminal and navigate with the CD command. If you need help here drop it in the comments.
Now in that window paste the following
./AAS-parser.py AudibleActivation.sys
This runs the above Python script against the file AudibleActivator.sys. Directly below should appear an 8-charater code. it'll look like B16B00B5. Which I copied from the Github page and just realised why the author chose that particular code as an example.
Now find your Audible books, hopefully you've downloaded them from the Audible website and they're sitting in your downloads folder. Once again open a command prompt/terminal window IN THAT FOLDER. Then execute the following, replacing hte pink bits with relevant info
your_code - the code you got earlier
Audible_book - the filename of your downloaded book
output - a file name for the final product, pick any you want
$ ffmpeg -activation_bytes your_code -i Audible_book.aax -vn -c:a copy output.mp4
This calls the ffmpeg program, loads your code, sets the input of the file to be decoded and forces a copy (not convert) into an mp4 file.
As it's not doing any encoding and only copying the exact same audio into a different file format it'll take anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 minutes. My 53 hour book too the full five minutes.
I haven't tested it yet but all of the chapter markers should be intact, the metadata seems to be all there.
Next is CDs, which introduces some waveform editing into the mix so extra fun there ![]()
Re: Mastering audiobooks - liberating Audible books
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on 08-03-2016 22:10
@stephenmiller Interesting stuff my friend, i will have a full look into this.![]()
Thanks for posting![]()
Re: Mastering audiobooks - liberating Audible books
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on 08-03-2016 22:32
premierphotosuk wrote:
@stephenmiller Interesting stuff my friend, i will have a full look into this.
Thanks for posting
Thanks ![]()
Noticed some interesting things about Audibles AAX format along the way, It is just an m4b audiobook file wrapped up in DRM at around 62kbps. Nothying that extraordinary there but they're able to fit an enormous amount on a file by halving the sample rate. CDs and music are usually 44.1KHz; if you think about how a TV works, by showing loads of still images really quickly sample rates are the same with every second of audio having 44,100 'slices'. Audible audiobooks have 22,050; or 22.05KHz instead of the CD standard 44.1KHz,
I thought it was interesting anyway ![]()
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on 08-03-2016 23:16
stephenmiller wrote
Thanks
Noticed some interesting things about Audibles AAX format along the way, It is just an m4b audiobook file wrapped up in DRM at around 62kbps. Nothying that extraordinary there but they're able to fit an enormous amount on a file by halving the sample rate. CDs and music are usually 44.1KHz; if you think about how a TV works, by showing loads of still images really quickly sample rates are the same with every second of audio having 44,100 'slices'. Audible audiobooks have 22,050; or 22.05KHz instead of the CD standard 44.1KHz,
I thought it was interesting anyway
@stephenmiller It certainly is, i love to play around with all this stuff ![]()
Here is an interesting article
22.05 kHz (often lazily called "22 kHz") has been a reasonably popular sample rate for low bit rate MP3s such as 64 kbps in years past. Audio quality is significantly affected, with higher frequency content missing. With the general rise in the availability of large file storage space and faster data links, 22k is now of more limited use.
- For speech recording where perceived quality is unimportant, but clarity must be maintained.
| Sample Rate (kHz) | Maximum Frequency (kHz) |
| 8 | 3 | .6 | |
| 11 | .025 | 5 | |
| 22 | .05 | 10 | |
| 32 | 14 | .5 | |
| 44 | 20 | ||
| 48 | 21 | .8 | |
| 64 | 29 | .1 | |
| 88 | .2 | 40 | |
| 96 | 43 | .6 |
For audio work, bandwidth is normally about 20 Hz less than the highest recorded frequency, so for practical purposes they can be treated as the same thing. Hence the terms are used interchangeably here. The term bandwidth may be applied to the frequency content of an audio signal stream, or the frequency ability of audio hardware or software.![]()
Re: Mastering audiobooks - liberating Audible books
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on 09-03-2016 16:35
Re: Mastering audiobooks - liberating Audible books
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on 09-03-2016 16:45
Re: Mastering audiobooks - liberating Audible books
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09-03-2016 17:32 - edited 09-03-2016 17:40
@premierphotosuk Mostly over my head. he reasons behind the 16-bit PCM @ 44.1kHz, t being the limit of human hearing. If you like this stuff you'll love Monty Montgomery. Watch his videos on the xiph blog where he busts out tons of gear and analyses waveforms like a madman!
24/192 Music Downloads ...and why they make no sense
@alisuhail Thanks
This is only a snippet though, I have audiobooks on CD so I've been making the audiobooks from scratch. With FFMPEG and an understanding of how codecs and containers work it's a lot easier than you'd think.
Re: Mastering audiobooks - liberating Audible books
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09-03-2016 18:43 - edited 09-03-2016 18:44
stephenmiller wrote:
@premierphotosuk Mostly over my head. he reasons behind the 16-bit PCM @ 44.1kHz, t being the limit of human hearing. If you like this stuff you'll love Monty Montgomery. Watch his videos on the xiph blog where he busts out tons of gear and analyses waveforms like a madman!
@stephenmiller Brilliant (like a madman over my head)![]()
Cheers Stephen, will have a look at this, o'yes love this stuff keeps the brain active.. I hope![]()
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on 09-03-2016 19:18
Re: Mastering audiobooks - liberating Audible books
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on 11-03-2016 19:40
cass905 wrote:
Audio books are great love them very interesting thread thank you for the share
I love audiobooks too. It's a great way to relax either sitting around or in bed that doesn't involve looking at a screen. Watching TV and films is the new normal but I find looking at a screen for hoursmakes me feel unnaturally tired but aidionooks, although they might seem inferior by book purists, keep make me feel likemy brain is still doing something.


