Ask HN: Is there a Calibre equivalent for Audio books? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is there a Calibre equivalent for Audio books?

36 pointsgtsnexp27 comments

Hi All, I'm looking for a way to self-host and organise my collection of audio books. Any thoughts/suggestions?

I use m4b-tool[1], tone[2] and audiobookshelf[3] together with an LG G5 H850 smartphone[8] with Bang & Olufsen Hifi-Plus Module for Audio Only and I am pretty happy with this config. For Music I use Navidrome[5] and Substreamer App[7]. Maybe I'll try out Jellyfin[4] or maybe Plex[6], but I really don't wanna go closed source.

I also thought about writing something self hosted in C# to have ONE solution for audiobooks, podcasts and music and started a small private project, but this will take a while until it is ready to release something...

You may ask: Why an LG G5 H850? Well, its relatively small and cheap (about 50 - 80 bucks used) it has an audio Jack, USB-C, you can change the battery, it can hold up to 2TB microSD storage, has an HiFi Plus module for audio enthusiasts and a descent screen. Besides that it can run lineage os...

Note: I'm the author of the first two projects :-)

[1]: https://github.com/sandreas/m4b-tool

[2]: https://github.com/sandreas/tone

[3]: https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf

[4]: https://jellyfin.org/

[5]: https://www.navidrome.org/

[6]: https://www.plex.tv

[7]: https://substreamerapp.com/

[8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_G5

Just wanted to say thank you for m4b-tool.

You're welcome, glad you like it.

Cool that phone is a nice find. I also find having a separate audiobook phone nice (smaller, better battery life,no notifications when I'm 'reading'). But I went for the Samsung Galaxy S3 mini. It's really underpowered but super tiny so can fit in a pocket with my other phone, has a great battery life, and expandable sd card. I haven't paid for a 2tb sd card but a 512 gb works fine and is almost full now

The Android app 'smart audiobook player' is a godsend, really thoughtful app. And you can use an equalizer to reduce high pitch tones which I find easier to listen to

Took me a while :-) I first bought a Nokia 1.3. Also has Audiojack, interchangable battery and is pretty "smallish" (still 6", but there is NO phone that is the size like an iPhone SE). Unfortunately, the Nokia 1.3 has Android GO and is so underpowered, that it did not work for me.

Samsung has also some nice small phones, I also thought about the S3 mini, but the LG G5 was nearly the perfect fit... could have been a bit smaller though.

https://openaudible.org could be considered somewhat Calibre-like. If it's more about self-hosting, media servers like https://jellyfin.org may be more interesting (although I wouldn't call those similar to Calibre).

I found their confusing information about being open source quite irritating

I use them for downloading my Audible books. Then I decrypt them with ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -activation_bytes XXXX -i audiobook.aax audiobook.mp3

It also supports decrypting but you have to pay for that.

Prologue - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/prologue/id1459223267?ls=1 for iOS works with plex and is my go to tool for the past 2 years

This needs to be reiterated. Prologue is so good I will buy a book on Audible and take the extra steps to pull it on to Plex so I can use Prologue.

I have recently found Audiobookshelf which is pretty impressive. It still lacks some features (like Upload progress bar) and polish but is totally usable.

https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf

This isn't what you wanted, but I've been using the Podcast Republic app as a way to organize and listen to my (usually free) audiobooks. It's android only, so only on-device and not on PC. Its audiobook support is a bit obscure, it relies on creating what they call a "virtual podcast" based on the filesystem. But once you find it it's pretty simple and fits into their UI, and you can tag / catalog your audiobooks as much as you want.

I also like its listening UI. It remembers where I last stopped and starts playing a configurable number of seconds before, remembers playback speed per book/podcast, remembers audio settings per book/podcast, has a car mode. I like it much better than Audible's UI.

Like I said its organizing UI is also nice, although I use it less, I don't collect audiobooks on my mobile, due to the limited internal capacity.

I’ve been using Plex to host audiobooks works well enough

https://github.com/seanap/Plex-Audiobook-Guide

There's audiobookshelf.

https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf

Having a trivial, reliable way to strip audiobooks of their DRM might tempt me to get Audible.

Maybe it's better if i stay away from DRM.

I've had success with a tool called inAudible, but that's been years ago now and I've no idea whether it still works.

I do quite like https://libro.fm as a DRM-free audiobook store. They provide zipfile downloads, and also profit-share with a lot of local bookstores if you have one you'd like to support.

https://audible-converter.ml/

Spits out the command to use ffmpeg locally or can transcode with a wasm compiled version. Note you need to use mp4 to preserve chapters, flac output doesn't seem to include them

The problem with a bunch of these systems is that they don't specify quality, and FFMPEG appears to default to 64kbps when a quality is not specified.

My one-line bash script works well: https://github.com/captn3m0/Scripts/blob/master/audible-stri...

thank you I've been playing around with this idea today. Is there a reason that you use M4a instead of converting to something like mp3? Does m4a preserve the chapters or something? Also why do you use m4a instead of m4b?

* m4a because it doesn't need a re-encode.

* it does preserve chapters and metadata, but audible doesn't do a good job of using them, except for chapter timestamps and even they are dicey often

using m4a and splitting into separate files has some advantages

* I can download and share single chapters, helpful for sending single chapters to friends. This is also way better for large books over slow internet connections.

* songs are indexed better in my media server (Emby, Navidrome)

m4b feels better for archival (1 file = 1 book), but I've found splitting into several files a better option for actual listening.

Do you have another script for separating out the chapters?

I have 3, listed here: https://github.com/captn3m0/scripts

* split-audio-by-chapters (Based on metadata inside the AAX file)

* split-by-audible (If audible doesn't provide splits in the m4a, but chapters are marked in the web/mobile player - you can copy the chapter listing and use this). See source for format.

* split-by-silence (In some cases audible doesn't provide any chapters at all, and this is my last-ditch effort).

Amazing. Thank you!

Maybe I will burn in hell for this, but I think iTunes does quite a good job with organizing audiobooks.

You at least have company on your journey... I also use iTunes as "backup" alternative for offline organisation (non-selfhosted) with a good old iPod classic, modified to carry 768GB of storage on a 2200mah battery.

This is the best device I ever had in terms of Audio Quality, storage per size and user interface.

I just stick them in Jellyfin.

It's not particularly well optimised for audiobooks, but it is nice having all my media in the same place (it also has my movies and music).

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