Desperately need audio book solution

[Andrew Terekhine]

Astoplayer looks promising, but something I really miss from the iPhone player is the ability to play back audio at a faster speed. It really helps when listening to podcasts and audiobooks.

We've added adjustable fast/slow 2x-.05x playback speed to Astro Player v1.15
Known issues: only mp3 files support; works slow if Astro Player runs in background.

 

[Ding911]

If you upgrade Meridian to Meridian Pro you can add and audiobook folder to your SD card and add the audiobook tab to your main screen. I haven't had any problems this way with resuming a book days after stopping it. I think the upgrade was only $3 but I dont remember for sure. Definitely worth it though if that is important to you.

 

[ice456789]

Andrew, great work as always. I have 1 question and 1 feature request.

How do I use the voice command feature? How do I make the program listen for my command?

And can you chance it so the 'forward' button skips more than 10 seconds? Ideally that value would be user adjustable. Reason being that I listen to recorded radio and commercial breaks are often 3+ minutes long. Hitting that button 36 times is a little cumbersome.

 

[ice456789]

I also want to point out that I sent Andrew a bug that I was having with Astroplayer and navigation running at the same time, and the bug seems to have been fixed within a couple days. How's that for service!

 

[atomicwedgie]

I use Astro Player on a daily basis now.

My only wish is that there was some way to sort the list of added folders. As it is they all appear together (books, music, videos) and they only appear in the order they were added. So my list looks something like this;

Classical
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Family Guy
Techno
Jazz
Memoirs of a Geisha
South Park
Twilight Zone

etc.

A way to group like media or even sort would be (as Peter Griffin would say) "Freakin sweet"

 

[Andrew Terekhine]

How do I use the voice command feature? How do I make the program listen for my command?

Make sure that you set double click action to voice commands in options > hotkeys
Thanks, I added adjustable forward time to the list.

 

[Andrew Terekhine]

I use Astro Player on a daily basis now.

My only wish is that there was some way to sort the list of added folders.

Cool! Glad to hear it Concerning multiple folders and sorting in browser and library views: we have it on the list with the medium priority. I will get back to you when we add it.

 

[Gunghoray]

Andrew,

Thanks for your competent and responsive support of your fans here. I, too, am totally using Astro Player every day instead of the purchased copy of Bookdroid I have. I am experiencing one hiccup consistently, and am not sure if it is my problem or yours.

I use MACSOME to translate all my audible books to mp4 format. Then I copy the mp4 file to the Droid and listen with Astro Player. About every ten to fifteen minutes, I get a very distinct dead spot with no sound. It's often in the middle of a word, so I can tell it didn't skip any of the book, it just injected a one second white space in the recording.

I'll be comparing the mp4 on my mac with the hiccup version on my droid the next time I run into and bookmark the white space. Until then, I thought I'd just ask if you've had this issue before, and if you know of another conversion program that works better.

And of course, my dream would be that you could play audible books without conversion.

 

[Andrew Terekhine]

Thanks for the kind words. I'm not sure about direct Audible support since it's a proprietary format. You can try other converters, I heard about Soundtaxi http://www.soundtaxi.org and Goldwave http://www.goldwave.com.

 

[chassum]

Maybe this has already been addressed in this thread (but I didn't see it
I'm looking for a good text to speech reader for Project Gutenberg ascii files (not mp3). I had a great one for my Zaurus (back in the day...)

 

[ultimamma]

Great app, Andrew! Here's a suggestion:

For those of us that have headphones w/media player controls built in, ie: Klipsch S4i, could you incorporate a feature that would allow us to control your player with those controls? Right now the only product to do so is DroidShuffle and it controls the built in app. I also use it because its the only app that allows me to use the mic that is built into the headphones.

Thanks!

 

[Andrew Terekhine]

Thanks, added your suggestion to the list.

 

[Howard-AmblingBooks]

Ambling BookPlayer

I just found this great forum discussion regarding audiobook players for the Android.

We are the developers of the Ambling BookPlayer for the Android with is available in the Lite, Personal, and Pro editions. You can find more information about this dedicated audiobook player and the functionality provided by each of the editions at Ambling BookPlayer - Bringing books to life

I would be happy to answer any questions, and suggestions are always appreciated.

 

[Andrew Terekhine]

Moving to landscape mode having the button interface move to the side is distracting. Maybe a condensed version of said buttons along the bottom would be an option?

We've added custom/user defined templates into v1.19 Please check out buttons along the bottom and separated track bar in the new layout: ButtonsInRowLandscape.xml

Details: Astro Player • View topic - Accidentally pressing the skip buttons

 

[DarrellM5]

Audible's website finally says they're working on an app for release in 2010.

We are committed to making the Audible experience available on all new mobile audio players. At the moment, the Android media player does not allow playback of our titles. However, we're working with the Android team to deliver an Audible experience for Android customers in 2010. (taken from audible.com)