Linux user who owns an Apple iPod? Tired of having to settle for a MP3 version of your audiobook? Well, look no further! In this article I will show you how to convert those MP3 audiobooks to M4B!
Quicklinks
Introduction
I admit it. I'm an audiobook fanatic. I have to have a audiobook in my ears at all times; when I work, when I exercise, and when I sleep! No exceptions! In this guide I will show you how to rip your audiobook CD, combine the MP3 files, convert the MP3 files to PCM and finally convert the PCM files to M4B. The best part about this? We will do it all from the command line! You may be wondering "Why from the command line!". The answer to that is simple, because we can! Lets get started.
Tools You Will Need
For the purposes of this guide you will need a number of readily available packages installed. In this guide I will assume you are using Ubuntu Linux but all distributions should offer these tools through their package manager.
sudo apt-get install cdparanoia lame mp3wrap mplayer faac
This will make sure you have all the tools we need installed so we can move on to the next section, "Ripping Your Audiobook CD".
Ripping Your Audiobook CD
The first step in creating your iPod compatible M4B file on Linux is to rip your audiobook CD. We will use a handy little Linux command line tool called cdparanoia to accomplish this. Insert your audiobook CD into your optical drive and issue the following command:
sudo cdparanoia -B
This will rip your audiobook CD, into the current directory, splitting each track into it's own WAV file.
Now that we have the tracks ripped to the current directory lets convert them to MP3.
Convert WAV to MP3
In order to convert our WAV files, created by cdparanoia, we will use the LAME mp3 encoder. To begin converting your files from WAV to MP3 you will issue the following command:
lame -b 64 <input file.wav> <output file.mp3>
This will convert your WAV files into MP3 files with a CBR (Constant BitRate) of 64kbps.