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CES '10 - anything new for audiobook listeners on the go?

post #1 of 7
1/6/10 at 10:52am
Thread Starter 
Has anybody been checking the CES 2010 announcements?

Any decent portable mp3/aac/flac players for heavy audio book listeners?

Full tempo control (independent of pitch) and decent pause/resume/bookmark features would be a killer feature.

If anybody has spotted any new interesting contenders for audio book listeners, please drop a line in this thread.
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post #2 of 7
1/6/10 at 11:11am
I would be quite interested in something like this too. What are you currently using anyway? I think audiobook playback offered by iPods is currently unrivalled but I admittedly haven't tried much.
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post #3 of 7
1/6/10 at 4:45pm
Thread Starter 
I'm using Cowon iAudio D2, because of the SD memory card slot. Unfortunately, it raises pitch along with tempo and it has many other issues, I'd rather not go into right now, but let's just say I've been looking for a replacement for the past 2 years

I thought iPods were required that the system recognize the audiobooks based on format and then only allowed tempo control? Has this changed?

Swappable memory cards would be a big plus for me, but with a big enough internal storage space I can give up on memory cards.

But tempo control needs to work without any fiddling and on all audio file types, without cross-conversion.
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post #4 of 7
1/6/10 at 5:45pm
You can sort files into the audiobook section by selecting 'audiobook' as the 'media kind' (right click > get info > options > media kind: audiobook) regardless of format. I'm not too sure about the tempo issue because I've never used the feature if it is indeed available. I can try it and get back to you if you tell me what I'm supposed to look out for.

Otherwise it has fairly good audiobook playback, good implementation of chapters (skip forward or back to next or previous chapter), good bookmarking, and on the iPod Touch it has a good feature where it enables you to skip back 30 seconds just in case you miss something.

ETA: I'm probably being stupid but when you say "Full tempo control (independent of pitch)", do you mean speed up the speaking without making the narrator go squeaky sounding?
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post #5 of 7
1/7/10 at 2:38pm
My Cowon i9 has variable speed (10% steps), pitch correction and pause/resume/bookmark features.
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post #6 of 7
1/8/10 at 7:08am
Thread Starter 
James, thanks for the info. How high in percentage does the speed go (e.g. 150%)?

It's a pity Cowon doesn't have the same feature set in a working memory card slot player.
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post #7 of 7
1/26/10 at 2:13am
If you listen on your iPhone or iPod Touch, you might be interested in an app I released last week called Audio Footnote. It lets you record voice notes while listening to audiobooks or podcasts. Check it out in iTunes. Or watch a video demo here.
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