Rip, convert, and stream your audiobook collection to any device, with Nick Peers
When it comes to media, your PC has everything covered, right? There’s Kodi, Plex, or Emby for starters, managing your music, movies, and TV with aplomb. Except there’s something missing…
Everyone loves a good story, and audiobooks (along with radio-style dramatisations) provide an easy way to devour books when focused on other tasks, whether driving long distances or tweaking your PC’s hardware. The obvious place to go for an audiobook fix is Audible, but it ties you into a proprietary ecosystem that requires you to purchase your books outright via one-off fees or a recurring subscription.
Furthermore, you’re indebted to Audible’s own apps and servers for accessing your books. That’s fine if you’re a fan of paying for streaming services, but the likes of Plex, along with audio-only services such as Logitech Media Server, enable you to stay in complete control of your media, so why shouldn’t that be the case with audiobooks? There’s no reason. You can incorporate your audiobook collection into existing streaming services, but none of them quite hits the mark. Which is where we come in.
In this exhaustive guide, we’ll start by bringing all your audiobooks – whether CD, free downloads, or purchased through Audible – under one roof. You’ll rip CDs exactly the way you want your books divided up, then tag your files consistently (complete with high-quality embedded artwork) to make browsing, managing, and listening to audiobooks a pleasure.
Once your media is in place, we’ll reveal how to set up a dedicated audiobook server on your PC or NAS, enabling you to stream your audiobooks to any device in your home – or further afield if you want access on the go over the Internet. There’s even offline access through your mobile phone should you wish to be able to listen to your books in the most remote spots.
We’ve spent months tweaking, experimenting and tearing our hair out so you don’t have to. It’s time to give your audiobook collection the prominence it deserves, so turn the page to put our carefully crafted research to good use.
Your first step is to bring all your audiobooks under one digital roof. Start by creating a single folder – ‘Audiobooks’ – somewhere accessible, such as inside your Music folder. Inside here you’ll store your audiobooks using the following folder structure: Collection\Author\Book. In other words, each book has its own folder, inside which your audiobook can be housed in multiple files (such as individual chapters, episodes, or parts), to aid navigation and playback.
As an aside, the Collection folder level is optional, designed to work with your audiobook server’s support for multiple users, so you can restrict access to books on a per-user level. More on that later.
Next, you want to migrate all your audiobooks into this folder st
