# USB recommendations for audiobooks?



## ProDigit (Aug 31, 2015)

I found that it's not beneficial to buy an audio player, when you can find old LG phones, nearly brand new, for like $45.
I bought an LG Realm.
True, the specs are underwhelming, but the device charges on the car's USB port, has a stereo headphones out, bluetooth, wifi, and GPS; which means the device can act both as navigation, audio player, and more.
What's even better, (once you uninstall the crap firmware), you can plug it directly into your OBD2 port, and have it display car information, or, place it on your dashboard and have it as an HUD (displaying RPM, MPH, and fuel consumption) via one of the many free android apps; all while charging the internal battery from the OBD2 port (keeping your USB plug available).

The reason I went with the LG realm, was that at the time, I was looking for AAC player, dominated by apple, and most devices playing this format started at $99.
My LG Realm doesn't only play MP3 (most common format) and AAC (best CD quality audio per size). It also plays back WMA (best audio book compression format being 32kbits @ 32kHz, or 48kbits @ 44.1 or 48kHz).
Compressing audio of many formats to WMA (which is free on Windows devices), can reduce the size to about 10MB files per hour of audiobooks, while still sounding transparent, and without artifacts in the high frequencies...

If you really want to, you could contact your provider, to add a line to your phone (some companies allow data only for a small amount), and insert the sim card in the phone, to have a fixed car phone too...

And add to all that, the LG realm, like many older android phones, has outstanding battery life (when you disable the networks and GPS, it plays back audio for over 50 hours), AND you can swap microSD cards with books of your liking (in case they won't fit on one card, or in case you have different cards for different categories).

For me, all this was a selling point. Plus, the LG has about 500MB of free memory in it where you can also add tracks on, in case you don't want to use a micro SD card.

Anyway, if the LG Realm, with pricepoint of $45 on amazon, is too much, you can always go for a $35 Trackphone, or, perhaps you're ok with adding a few dollars to find a phone that has better specs than the aging LG


If all these benefits don't cut it for you, and you really want an aging dedicated DAP (Digital Audio Player), without any of the above benefits (though the audio quality isn't that much better from an android phone), you could also look into the brand Cowon. They make good audio players, that last many years, are upgradeable by homebrew operating systems, or the stock system. They have tons of features, like equalizers, bass boost, stereo spectrum, audio improver (improve low bitrate audio) and also have long battery life (ranging on average from 26 to 80 hours of battery per device).


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## dhpnet (Mar 2, 2014)

I have used a bunch of different USB sticks with no problems in my '14 Cruze including generic ones I picked up for free. I think the issues with USB were mostly for earlier model years. If you buy one at a local store then you can always return it if it doesn't work. 

For audio books, I convert them to MP3 and save them to my computer first. There is free software you can download to convert your discs to MP3. You can also use iTunes or Windows Media Player to convert CDs to MP3. Use a higher bit rate so that they sound better. There are also programs that can split long MP3 files into multiple smaller files. I think most programs have an option to split long audio tracks into smaller MP3 files during conversion. 

After conversion, I put them in folders. The main folder has the audio book title. The sub folders are for disk 1, disk 2, etc. That has worked well for me. 

Then, I just copy the folders onto my USB stick. The car will recognize the folders. You can select the exact folder you want and just hit play. You can put many, many audio books on one USB stick this way. It works very well for me. 

The only downside to this method is that there is no way to have the car remember your exact place in an MP3 file if you leave the file and then return later. But, if you split the files into shorter files, then that isn't really a problem. You just have to remember which file you were on last. 

I don't know of any other solutions. This has worked for me and I never bothered to look further.


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## jblackburn (Apr 14, 2012)

FWIW, my AA issues stopped when I went to Android 8.0. It was super buggy on 7.0 (Galaxy S8). There was also an update for the headunit the dealer applied before that that improved matters a little bit, but still lots of issues.

If you can pick up an old iPod or iPhone (you can get them pretty cheap these days), CarPlay or iPod connectivity was flawless on my Gen 2 (aside from CarPlay being super slow on an iPhone 6). We listened to a whole bunch of podcasts on a road trip recently.

I have a Sandisk Cruzer that seemed to work fine in both Cruzes.


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## ChevyGuy (Dec 13, 2014)

dfreybur said:


> There was a thread a few years ago for Gen 1 electronics package. The thread recommended a model of SanDisk MP3 player that's no longer on the market. Can I just go to Best Buy and use the latest model of SanDisk MP3 player?


Are sure it was a SanDisk player and not a SanDisk Cruzer USB drive? I don't know as the car will interface with any player other than a Apple iPod.


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## ProDigit (Aug 31, 2015)

The older system wasn't as good with longer MP3 files. FF or REW often ends up in skipping a track for some reason.
And they only read MP3, no other format.
Not sure what system you have.


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## Blasirl (Mar 31, 2015)

You can try an old website called www.Doom9.org for many dvd/divx/mp3/acc etc. authoring programs.

I use a SanDisk Cruzer and before it was stolen, an iPod. Both worked great.


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## dfreybur (Feb 7, 2018)

dhpnet said:


> For audio books, I convert them to MP3 and save them to my computer first. There is free software you can download to convert your discs to MP3. You can also use iTunes or Windows Media Player to convert CDs to MP3. Use a higher bit rate so that they sound better. There are also programs that can split long MP3 files into multiple smaller files. I think most programs have an option to split long audio tracks into smaller MP3 files during conversion.
> 
> After conversion, I put them in folders. The main folder has the audio book title. The sub folders are for disk 1, disk 2, etc. That has worked well for me.
> 
> Then, I just copy the folders onto my USB stick. The car will recognize the folders. You can select the exact folder you want and just hit play. You can put many, many audio books on one USB stick this way. It works very well for me.


Except cutting long MP3 into short MP3 that's what I did. When I synced to stick in Windows Media Manager there were directories on the stick by my Cruze just displayed them as a list. Should I do something other than sync? That's why I am looking at MP3 players to get my Cruze to understand books/discs/albums.

I will look at slicing long MP3 into short MP3. That's a good addition. Commercial audiobooks always have short tracks. Public domain ones have whatever the volunteer reader delivers.



> The only downside to this method is that there is no way to have the car remember your exact place in an MP3 file if you leave the file and then return later. But, if you split the files into shorter files, then that isn't really a problem. You just have to remember which file you were on last.


Not as good as Audible.Com but that should work for me. Thanks!


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## ChevyGuy (Dec 13, 2014)

dfreybur said:


> Not as good as Audible.Com but that should work for me. Thanks!


Question: What about Bluetooth from your phone? That way, you pick up where you left off when you last used the phone - in car or out.


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## dhpnet (Mar 2, 2014)

dfreybur said:


> Except cutting long MP3 into short MP3 that's what I did. When I synced to stick in Windows Media Manager there were directories on the stick by my Cruze just displayed them as a list. Should I do something other than sync? That's why I am looking at MP3 players to get my Cruze to understand books/discs/albums.


I haven't tried the radio in the Gen 2 Cruze. I am sure someone here can comment on doing this in a Gen 2. In my Gen 1 Cruze, I hit the menu button when I am listening to a USB stick, then scroll down to search by folders, and it displays all of the folders on my drive. Then, I select a folder and it shows everything inside that folder. If there are sub folders then I can select those. Then just select the file I want. It will continue playing through all of the files in that folder and then start over. After I listen to all of the files in a folder then I have to manually select a different folder. 

It has all of the capabilities of a standard MP3 player. You can search by folder, genre, title, artist, etc. 

I would imagine that you can do the same thing on a Gen 2 Cruze.


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## dfreybur (Feb 7, 2018)

ChevyGuy said:


> Question: What about Bluetooth from your phone? That way, you pick up where you left off when you last used the phone - in car or out.


There's an Android application that manages MP3 folders the way Audible.Com does for streams? That would be nice.

Looks like I'll go with an iPod for the moment. We've got a Nano that appears to work at least as well as a USB stick.


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## ChevyGuy (Dec 13, 2014)

dfreybur said:


> There's an Android application that manages MP3 folders the way Audible.Com does for streams? That would be nice.


I'm making an assumption here, but I'd hope that any kind of "books on tape" service would have some way of picking up where you left off. And I'd hope that it's supported on a smartphone.

The Gen1 had no way of quickly advancing though a MP3 file. If you had a song with a very long intro, you either suffered or skipped to the next song. If the Gen2 is like that, that's going to be an issue sooner or later.


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## dhpnet (Mar 2, 2014)

ChevyGuy said:


> I'm making an assumption here, but I'd hope that any kind of "books on tape" service would have some way of picking up where you left off. And I'd hope that it's supported on a smartphone.
> 
> The Gen1 had no way of quickly advancing though a MP3 file. If you had a song with a very long intro, you either suffered or skipped to the next song. If the Gen2 is like that, that's going to be an issue sooner or later.


On my car, if I hold the forward button down it fast forwards through the MP3 file. I hear it skipping forward in the speakers.


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## ProDigit (Aug 31, 2015)

Does the Gen 2 console play anything else than MP3?
MP3 is so....1996!
At least OGG, or AAC... Or WMA or MP4? It would be an improvement over that aging compression protocol.


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## ChevyGuy (Dec 13, 2014)

ProDigit said:


> Does the Gen 2 console play anything else than MP3?
> MP3 is so....1996!
> At least OGG, or AAC... Or WMA or MP4? It would be an improvement over that aging compression protocol.


I've been playing MP4. 

The best way to find out is to try it.


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## dfreybur (Feb 7, 2018)

My latest - I have switched to a USB stick. The after market CD player sucked at dealing with USB bus resets.

The good - When I drop discs and books on the stick it manages them with folders. Go into a folder, click on a file, it starts playing that file.
The good - It remembers where I am in the current file in the current folder even if I unplug the stick.
The mediocre - It only remembers the play-point of one file in one folder. Not as good as Audible.Com but it is good enough for my purposes.
The bad - The USB still sucks rocks. All the bleeping time my start my car and the USB bus does not find the stick. At least I can pull it out, push it in and not lose my place.

The confusing - Windows Media Manager does not work. If I sync a list of discs/books to the device it merges folders and turns them all into a list. Crazy. I learned to treat it as a removable disk device. Move audio files to it folders and all. That does not. Totally not obvious and definitely not documented anywhere that I could find. But once I tried it and it worked, I'm okay.

I still have a stack of books on audio I bought at the store or had shipped. I'll rip them to MP3 and work through them slow but sure. I also have probably 3 years worth of audio files downloaded from librivox.org public domain site. I'm good for audio during my commute for a very long time even if I never use Audible.Com again.

On weekend rides with my wife I do use Audible.Com. We're going through Origin by Dan Brown.


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