Digital Audio Players

How to Download an Audio Book From Your Hard Disk to Your Non-iPod Digital Audio Player

Introduction - Digital Audio Players

This article describes how to download an audio book file to most common brands of digital audio players eg, Digital River, Creative, Sandisk etc. It is not applicable to Apple's iPod or some other digital audio players that require proprietary download software provided with the devices.

Downloading Media for Your Digital Audio Players

Once you have downloaded your audio book to a hard disk or other storage device you must open the first file of the audio from your computer if digital rights management(DRM) licensing is in effect. DRM processes usually place a file on your hard disk drive with licensing information indicating that you are the rightful owner of the content you have downloaded. This means you can then access the audio files without any problems.

When you click on the audio file to open it, a dialogue box appears asking you for your username and password. After entering them, you can continue to work with the digital files either by listening to them on your computer or copying them to your digital audio players.

Most common digital audio players have the capacity to handle DRM licensed files.

Don't use your Internet Explorer program to copy files from your hard disk to your digital audio players. It will copy them, but you will not be able to play them because Internet Explorer isn't capable of handling the DRM licensing process. Instead, use Windows Media Player (WMP or whatever software was provided by the manufacturer of your digital audio player).

If you use Windows Media Player (make sure you have the latest version), you simply load WMP, locate your audio files so they are listed in the Title window, highlight the files and drag them to the right into the Sync List column. When you see the message "Ready to Synchronise" appear in the screen to the right of your digital audio file names in the Sync List, click the Start Synch button at the bottom of the screen. This will start the transfer of your files to your digital audio players.

As soon as the files have been transferred, you can unplug your digital media players and listen to the files anywhere you wish.

I recommend you zip (compress the audio files) remaining on your hard disk drive and copy them to a CD as backup copies. That way you won't unnecessarily add to the clutter on your hard disk and if a disaster occurs, you'll still have the audio files you paid for.

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