Re: [ARSCLIST] Preservation media WAS: Cataloguing still :-)

[steven c <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lou Judson" <loujudson@xxxxxxx>
> I engineered hundreds of audiobooks in the analog and cassette days 
> (thousands if not millions of razor-blade edits of mouth noises and 
> breaths - I can claim to be a Master Editor from sheer expereince 
> alone, when I need to brag) and the cassette releases were always so 
> embarrasing to hear. I tried to keep at least a DAT copy of the master 
> whenever there was one I wanted to listen to again.
> 
> Lately I have been producing audiobooks for local authors, sort of like 
> the "vanity press" days, and would dearly love to know how to code 
> chapters in longer works and make them downloadable as a unit but still 
> play tracks. Anyone have hints on how to find that out? I have two or 
> three projects in the works that would benefit hugely from that! I 
> thought it was Audible that developed that method; at least that was 
> the first place I saw it, but their audio quality was abominable and I 
> discontinued using them after one purchase. I would guess iTunes took 
> the technology from them, as there has been quite a bit of crossover 
> between them... Anyone know about that?
> 
This should be verified by someone with more knowledge and experience
than I have...but I believe that either Audacity (a downloadable
freeware program) or the "paid" version of RealAudio will allow users
to select segments of large audio files (at least in the formats they
can access) and save them as smaller individual files?!

> I have one project about to see release where the author just decided 
> to do MP3s instead of physical CDs, and she can just barely wrap her 
> mind around it - she actually asked me in a session, "what is an ipod, 
> anyway?" and I felt like quoting the line in my sig here, but didn't, 
> as I wanted to educate her...
> 
Now...what I would like to know is the opposite...that is, how does
one combine individual .mp3 files into a single large one? This
may be possible in Audacity (I haven't combed through the instructions
yet...). Do .mp3 files have headers which provide file-specific
information to the devices used to play them...or are they like
ASCII/text files in that all that is necessary to combine them
is just the addition of the bytes?

Steven C. Barr