The Mysterious Affair At Styles by Agatha Christie is available FREE, for the month of May 2010, over on Simply Audiobooks. But, if you’re not absolutely riveted by the prospect of getting a copy for FREE, I suggest you stop reading this post NOW.
This FREE audiobook is not particularly awesome, in fact it’s pretty terrible. It has all the problems I complained about Simply Audiobook’s FREE audiobook two years ago and it has some sound quality issues too. To get the audiobook you’ll need to do the following:
First up, you’ll need to give your name and email address to Simply Audiobooks HERE.
Second, while the narrator seems fine, there are numerous headaches involved in making it a universally playable audiobook. Chief among these problems is that the download comes in the ridiculously lame WMD file format. WMD supposedly stands for Windows Media Download. The file is, of course, completely unplayable on any portable media player that I’ve ever owned. It will, however, play in a current version of Windows Media Player 11, on one of my PCs. That doesn’t mean it will play in whatever version with whatever codecs your WMP will have. Once it does get playing, you’ll be saddened to hear that Stan Winiarski’s narration is partially obscured by lots of hiss and click-pops – it almsot sounds like the audiobook was recorded on a wax cylinder. If you’re still with me, you’ll definitely want get this file more workable – in which case you will need to do the following:
1. Download and install a free piece of software called Free WMA to MP3 Converter 1.16
2. Download and install a free piece of software called 7-Zip 4.65 |
3. Create a new folder and put a copy of the WMD file in there.
4. Right clicking on that file should, if you’ve installed 7-Zip, allow you to “Extract files…”, do that.
5. After processing, your folder should be filled with 18 WMA files (that’s the audiobook) and some other junk which you can dispense with.
6. Run those 18 WMA files through Free WMA to MP3 Converter and you should now have 18 MP3 files – and you can delete the WMAs.
At this point you can pretty much takeover, I assume. Myself, I like to run most multi-MP3 audiobooks through iPod Audio Book Converter, that way I can make one big M4B file that is bookmarkable in iTunes.
Good luck!
The Mysterious Affair At Styles
By Agatha Christie; Read by Stan Winiarski
1 WMD File – Approx. 4 Hours 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Simply Audiobooks Publishing
Published: 2008
Agatha Christie’s first novel introduces the legendary Hercule Poirot, his friend Captain Arthur Hastings, and the Chief Inspector Japp. Match wits with the master detective to unravel the complexity of clues and point a fateful finger at the real murderer, from among a stunning, cunning cast of candidates. *Only Available in the US and Canada
Posted by Jesse Willis