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Author Topic: Best Player for Audiobooks in MP3?  (Read 2094 times)

jgourd

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Best Player for Audiobooks in MP3?
« on: February 14, 2006, 06:54:40 am »

My current player is dying and it is time to get a new one. I have read a ton of reviews, looked at a ton of manufacturer's web sites and still I haven't a clue as to what to get.

The #1 feature I am looking for is a bookmark. I have to be able to set a bookmark when I turn it off. Ipods only bookmark files downloaded from the iTunes store so they are out. Plus I have a 2nd Gen 20 gig iPod already.

This time I want something that really works well for audiobooks.

TIA
Jonathan
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BlueGlow

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Re: Best Player for Audiobooks in MP3?
« Reply #1 on: February 14, 2006, 12:32:05 pm »

iPod Nano

The iPod can now bookmark any MP3 file,  though the feature is called "Remember playback position". Right click the file in iTunes and get info, then you can check Remember Playback Position and Skip When Shuffling and the iPod will bookmark your audio book and it will not include the file in music shuffle.
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jgourd

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Re: Best Player for Audiobooks in MP3?
« Reply #2 on: February 14, 2006, 12:35:36 pm »

Can I use the Nano and enable this feature without iTunes? I have never installed it and probably never will. My old iPod was once of the first to use the MC plugin and has never seen iTunes, ever.
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BlueGlow

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Re: Best Player for Audiobooks in MP3?
« Reply #3 on: February 14, 2006, 12:52:28 pm »

Not yet. (without some kind of hack, anyway)

MC is able to write to these fields and sets them to true when new podcasts are downloaded.

Ugly Hack: Put the files on a web serve, write the audio book urls as enclosures in an rss feed and tell MC that it's a podcast. The files would be downloaded as new podcast episodes and the fields would be set to true.

I expect that MC will offer more support for these fields soon, though.
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alanl

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Re: Best Player for Audiobooks in MP3?
« Reply #4 on: February 15, 2006, 05:34:30 pm »

The Archos GMini can handle this.  You can either set a bookmark from the options menu before turning off, or just hold down the Off key for three seconds and when you switch on again it will default to Resume.  Just hit the Go key and you're away.  HTH.

Alan
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BartMan01

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Re: Best Player for Audiobooks in MP3?
« Reply #5 on: February 15, 2006, 10:19:08 pm »

Not yet. (without some kind of hack, anyway)

Not exactly true - you just have to mis-classify their Genre.  If you give the audio book file a genre of 'podcast' then the bookmark flag will be set.  None of my podcasts are downloaded using MC, but they are getting flagged as bookmarked.

By the way - I am using a regular iPod Photo (60GB).
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jgourd

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Re: Best Player for Audiobooks in MP3?
« Reply #6 on: February 16, 2006, 12:11:59 pm »

I think I have narrowed it down to one unit. The Creative Zen Micro Photo supports 10 bookmarks at a time. It is interesting to note that the bookmark feature is not described anywhere on Creative's website. I only found out about it when I stumbled up a review in one of my RSS feeds.

I really like the idea of an OLED display. I almost bought a Nano. I even sold my 3 year old iPod today to help pay for the Nano. I hope the guy who bought it likes indie music :)

http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=213&subcategory=214&product=14107&nav=2
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BlueGlow

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Re: Best Player for Audiobooks in MP3?
« Reply #7 on: February 16, 2006, 12:44:22 pm »

The Zen Micro has a lot of great features, I had no idea it did bookmarking, good find.
Are the bookmarks automatic like the iPod?
Zen micro firmware wishlist

I like the idea of having 10 bookmarks, but I really like that I don't have to set a bookmark on the iPod. When a file is "bookmarkable" it always remembers the last playback position. I would probably forget to use the feature if I had to think about setting a bookmark every time I switched playlists to listen to music or a different book/podcast.
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