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SlocusST

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 12, 2016
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Hello, I am looking to upgrade my 5.5gen iPod video and was reading about track limitations and I am trying to understand what iTunes defines as a track. I use a lot of audiobooks from audible.com is each book a track?

Thank you
 
I believe that tracks are essentially files, equivalent to songs, so when you skip to the next track you just start playing the next file. Do the audiobooks download as one giant file, or as many smaller ones? Are all the chapters separate?
 
I believe that tracks are essentially files, equivalent to songs, so when you skip to the next track you just start playing the next file. Do the audiobooks download as one giant file, or as many smaller ones? Are all the chapters separate?


They are in 1 or 2 big files per book. But you are able to skip chapters.
 
Then you will see the one/two files listed. But when you go to play it, the chapter menu will show up in the menubar.

I under stand that. I'm more wondering how iTunes views it since there is a limit to the number of tracks the iPod can handle
 
The hard limit seems to be about ~32,000 songs per playlist, including the default one if you don't make one specifically. I don't think you will reach the limit using audiobooks even if every chapter is a "song" (that is a lot of books) and you can keep the rest of the music in playlists if they cannot transfer.

The limit mostly affects the shuffle option, so you should be fine for audiobooks: https://www.rapidrepair.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2508&start=20
 
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I haven't bought any audiobook downloads - mine have all been on CD. On CD, they use the same conventions as music CDs (since they have to be played on audio CD players) - usually, each chapter is a track. I don't see why iTunes or Audible would do it differently for audiobooks - they're designed to be listened to on the same equipment/software people use to listen to music albums.

The audio CD standard includes Index marks as well as Tracks - an album's producer can place up to 100 index marks on a track (say, to mark specific passages in the movement of a symphony or within a scene of an opera). In practice it was rarely done because most CD player manufacturers did not want to provide extra buttons (or digits in the LCD display) for the purpose - why do the work if most people couldn't use it? iTunes seems to be like that. Each track is a separate file, there's no provision for indexes within a file - if one needed to find chapters within a single-track book, how would one do it?

I just checked the ACX (Amazon) audiobook requirements - each chapter must be a separate file (i.e., a track).
 
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