MediaMonkey forum

I haven't really found a good desktop player for audiobooks, so it would be VERY nice if MediaMonkey was able to handle audiobooks in a way that lets you actually listen to them on the desktop.

Here are my two must-haves, based on the Android app Smart Audiobook Player, which I use:

• Ability to recognize chapters of an audiobook. I believe that MM should treat an audiobook like an album, with each disc (or chapter) treated as one track. Sometimes audiobooks are in one .m4b file with the chapters tagged inside the file, or multiple standard audio files in their own folder. The regular Next/Previous File seek buttons would work to skip between disc/chapters.
• Ability to skip left and right in the track by small margins of time. This could be accomplished by adding 10-second and 1-minute skip buttons, like in the Smart Audiobook layer app, OR by improving the fine-control ability of scrolling on the seek bar. (Currently, for a 9-hour audiobook, scrolling the mouse wheel on the seek bar moves the track in increments of 5 minutes.) Or both.

I also think that other people would want the ability to change playback speed, though I don't personally need it.

Now, this is obviously a wishlist feature and I don't expect it to have any level of high priority. But it would be very nice to have in the future.

Certainly this could be improved in many areas - like a template unique for audiobooks for a start - and at the moment it is ok for other things like music, but this of us who have a large number of audiobooks this software is laggy and to use and I would not recommend. Alfa Ebooks Manager is much quicker and easier to use as well as being free...

Hi,
Specs for better chapters support is added as https://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=5924

Policy is that when we implement we do it right not half baked solution. I just recently started to listen Audiobooks and it would be nice to have.

a_daley wrote: ↑Mon Nov 09, 2020 4:45 am Certainly this could be improved in many areas - like a template unique for audiobooks for a start - and at the moment it is ok for other things like music, but this of us who have a large number of audiobooks this software is laggy and to use and I would not recommend. Alfa Ebooks Manager is much quicker and easier to use as well as being free...

In addition to my above post Chapters and bookmarks can be easily added to be shown in WAVE Seek Bar and right click Menu in Prev/Next can be populated with Bookmarks/Chapters seeking.

You should try downloading one of the bible audiofiles (because it has over a thousand files and 66 different books)

Install it to a test directory then set Options>Infer Properties from: Filenames + Path. Set Schedule to Manual Media Type to Auto detection according to path & file name - and run it

It puts everything as Type Music with a genre of Blues!!!

Because we can't move folders it takes so much longer fix - the easiest way is to just delete it and do everything manually... (My path on this test was G:\Test\Audiofiles\Christian\Religious Nonfiction\Bible\KJV\) Also similar things happen when ripping childrens audiobooks from CD... It turns into a painful mess that can only be done manually that could take hours to rectify...

Playback speed would be a real benefit because of a number reasons:

1) Reader is reading an audiobook with an accent which may be difficult to comprehend.

2) Also relevant if you are learning another language, hearing the words pronounced slowly to hear the ups and
downs of individual words as one learns to how pronounce them correctly - take Italian or Greek as examples...

3) Reader is reading too fast to comprehend what the content means - especially relevant with mysteries and
allegories.

4) Reader is reading so slowly you lose the overall message which is frustrating.
MM #2273

Has there been any progress on audiobook controls? Specifically bookmarks and playback speed changes?

MediaMonkey 2024 supports both bookmarking and playback speed control.