recommendations CD audiobooks onto external drive

[cSalmon]

So I've gone through and read a bunch of previous posts, watched YouTube videos and am still confused. Looking for recommendations or insights for the easiest/best way to import CD audiobooks onto an external drive for storage and then transfer files to play on an iPhone?

Internal drive is much too small to hold collection. I understand that iBooks now places the files: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books. what I don't understand is the best procedure to import the audiobook(CD) so the metadata is logged in so a forty CD book is not forty separate files?

I am open to using a third party app, recommendations for an app that can manage audiobooks onto an external drive and then an iOS version so I can transfer files to an iPhone?

Any recommendations or insights will be very helpful as I'm lost how best to manage a large audiobook library.

thanks

 

[ChrisA]

You can always move a folder to any place using a symbolic link. This works even if the app does not have a built-in way to move the library. Google will explain symbolic links. They are a feature macOS inherited from UNIX

I could keep my audio books on an external drive but I use iCloud so that my phone will have access to the entire collection.

As for getting the audio file format correct. I've had to use 3rd party software. "Audiobook Binder" works well. This app is a "must have"

‎Audiobook Binder

‎Audiobook Binder is a simple tool for converting your audiobooks from mp3 format to iPod-compatible m4b. Features: - Author/title information in m4b audiobook - Cover artwork - Tuneable audio encoding properties: mono/stereo, sample rate - Automatically adds m4b files to iTunes media library...

apps.apple.com

I pay Apple $1 per month for enough extra space on iCloud. This solves the space problem completely

 

[ovbacon]

Well clearly the best thing is to use something like Audible or the library (I use both) where you will only have one book (or a few) at a time on your device and you do not need anything else. If you are getting audiobooks from elsewhere where there isn't an integrated app you can simply treat is like "music" and have different chapters of a book be treated like songs and you can have music on an external drive.

The Audiobook binder from the previous response has not worked for me on larger audiobooks and I have not been able to find any decent audiobook converter/binder that can deal with a large book.

Treating a audiobook as a music album, in for instance mp3, works great. But I do get almost all of my audiobooks through the library or via Audible and only get it from elsewhere in the rare occasion (and I would suggest to buy books as much as possible so the authors get paid and keep writing).

 

[arw]

What revolutionized my local audiobook experience was (after creating an m4a file from the source media):
- Mp3tag with a source script to automatically grab the following data from Audible etc: Author, Description, Category, Genre, Narrator, Publisher, Series
- Prologue for iPhone/iPad to access the audiobooks from a personal Plex instance. The in-app-purchase unlocks downloading audiobooks for offline listening.

Btw, I found Fission to be the only application to losslessly add chapters from a cue file to an m4a file.
Mp3tag can also add the audiobook-flag tag so that m4a doesn‘t need to be renamed to m4b anymore.

Unlike other tools, the above is not capable of auto-detecting chapters but assumes the CD/digital download contains the necessary data if desired.

 

[ovbacon]

O... and of course the library is free. I use Libby for the library: https://apps.apple.com/nz/app/libby-by-overdrive/id1076402606