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I have an audiobook that I've downloaded via their download manager, and it's loaded into their cutesy little audio program that they force you to use. I can play the book just fine using their proprietary software, and while it's annoying when using my PC, it's utterly UNBEARABLE when I try to listen to it on my Blackberry. The program is INSANELY slow, it literally takes around 30 seconds to switch between tracks, so if I've forgotten where I am in the book it takes me around 15 minutes to finally get to where I was at.

I've looked everywhere on how to transcode the book to .MP3, but evidently with their current format it's either extremely convoluted (and I have no desire to dick around with installing some older version of the codec, getting a different transcoding app, and then wrestling with getting it to actually work).

Since I'm able to burn a copy of the book to an audio CD, I figure the best way to go about this is to just make the CDs and then rip them off of those to .MP3.

In order to avoid wasting two hours, not to mention 14 CD-R's, I was wondering if there's a way to "burn" to an .ISO instead of an actual CD-R.

I currently have SlySoft's Virtual CloneDrive installed, so I can mount .ISO's easily enough, but now I want to actually create an ISO via the CD burning process.

Just in case I've not explained myself very well, here is an overview of what I intend to do:

  1. "Burn" a set of Audio CD .ISOs from the audiobook (hopefully I can do this using Windows Media Player, otherwise I'll be forced to use the audiobook app)

  2. Mount an .ISO in Virtual CloneDrive

  3. Rip the audio tracks on the mounted .ISO to .MP3s

  4. Repeat steps 2-3 until the entire book is in .MP3 format

  5. Copy .MP3s to my Blackberry so that I'm not driven insane every time I want to listen to the book in the car, and be able to use Winamp when listening on my computer

EDIT: I'd suppose a rather concise way to put it is that I need something that will emulate a CD-R drive, so that you can select it as the output drive in whatever app your burning the audio CD from. (I'd suppose that when you "insert a blank CD-R" the app would then ask you what file to save to)

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Sounds like you're trying to bypass DRM. It might help if you told us the name of the audiobook software. –  brianbaligad Feb 28 '11 at 4:23
what are you using to convert the funny format cd to audio cd? shame it seems you don't have a dvd-r, may save you 14 cds! –  barlop Feb 28 '11 at 4:23

6 Answers 6

up vote 3 down vote accepted

It's not free (30-day trial, though), but FWIW this program appears to be one of the few that might be able top do what you're looking for: http://www.virtualcd-online.com/vcd/apps/overview/features.cfm?lg=0

(the "Burning" tab on that page states "Burn virtual CDs and ISO images")

Not sure if it would work for your particular circumstances or not.

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Perfect, thank you! –  Sootah May 29 '11 at 22:49

Ultra ISO will do that for you, one of its feature is to "Create/Edit Audio CD Image" , I have used it to create many Audio CD Images, which I then mount and listen to.(Thats called listening with style!)

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You can extract the contents of any ISO file using one of these programs


7-ZIP unpack only

Paid, full iso programs

Magic ISO




After extraction they may be in Wave format and would need to be converted to .mp3


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That's not at all what I need. I have to actually create the ISO before I can use it. I'm already able to manipulate the ISO's themselves just fine, it's a matter of actually creating it without having to first burn an actual CD. I cannot just convert the files to .MP3 because of the extreme DRM. –  Sootah Feb 28 '11 at 3:13
Effectively I want to burn to a virtual CD drive. –  Sootah Feb 28 '11 at 3:15
Some versions of roxio or nero will do this too. –  Jody Feb 28 '11 at 3:16
They will do it for data, I'm not so sure that they will do that for audio. –  MaQleod Feb 28 '11 at 4:02
@ Sootah, "Since I'm able to burn a copy of the book to an audio CD", can you explain how you are able to do this? –  Moab Feb 28 '11 at 16:27

Magic ISO Maker will let you create an audio ISO, edit the ISO and eventually burn it to disc if you desire to.

Pretty sure that will let you mount it too, but if not there is Alcohol 52% or Daemon Tools to do that. They create a virtual drive that CDeX will be able to target.

CDeX will Rip the audio tracks to MP3 after.

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Here's a different route to your problem. I suppose it should solve it. How about playing it in whatever proprietary software it uses, and recording what comes out the speakers(windows lets you do that). Open volume control, go to options..properties..recording... choose stereo mix and mono mix ok, then tick one of those.

now open a program like start..run..sndrec32 or something more flashy, and press record and play the cd.

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If you want to preserve any sort of audio quality, this is not a very good method. –  MaQleod Feb 28 '11 at 4:27
@MaQleod could you explain technically why that is? I have just tried it on some music and the quality seems very good to me. Perhaps you misunderstood. It records it before it comes out the speakers. There is no mic outside the speakers recording what is coming out of them. –  barlop Feb 28 '11 at 9:11
It is still dependent on the capability and quality of your audio hardware much more than a digital-to-digital-to-digital conversion like burning and ripping an ISO. –  music2myear Mar 19 at 21:50

The only one I am aware of: Original CD Emulator it's commercial software though.

What about using CD-RWs, it will still take time to write to the disc, but you won't be wasting any.

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