Most of the audiobooks purchased from online distributors, like iTunes Store and Audible.com, are protected by DRM (Digital Rights Management), which restricts the consumers from doing reasonable things with the audio books they own. Hence you need to convert those audiobook files to a common audio format as MP3, no matter your audiobooks are DRM protected or not. An MP3 file can be played on almost all media players or devices nowadays, so if you convert audio books to MP3 successfully, you will get the real freedom.
Inconvenience after buying audiobooks
There are a lot of inconvenience if you don't find some method to escape from protection technology. For example, you may not be able to use DRMed audiobook files in other portable digital devices, like PSP, Zune, Zen, BlackBerry or other mobile phones, even you're the legal owner of those audio books and those devices.
Tthe maximun 5 authrized computers limitation of iTunes account may make you unable to access your audiobooks in the future once they forget to deauthorize some computers; you're not able to access the audiobook until installing AudibleAir or AudibleManager, or need to log in Audible account every time, even using Audible Ready devices.
Convert function in iTunes
iTunes does support converting imported files. In the main pane, right click on the music, there's an option "Create XXX Version" (XXX stands for MP3 or AAC or other formats you set in Edit > Preference > Import Settings), but this only works for unprotected formats like WAV, WMA, AAC, MP3. If you want to convert audiobooks bought from iTunes Store or Audible.com or other sources, iTunes will remind you "Protected files cannot be converted to other formats".
How to convert audiobook to MP3
Though iTunes cannot convert DRMed audiobooks directly through "Create MP3 Version", it has burning feature integrated. Many consumers know how to burn protected audiobooks in digital format to CD first then use iTunes to rip it later. However, this method wastes CDs and cannot assure the sound quality of converted MP3, since physical intermedia is used. Moreover, burning and ripping take a lot of invaluable time. Any method to solve such problem? TunePat is the answer.
TunePat Audiobook Converter utilizes virtual CD burning technology to simulate the burning and ripping process. With this advanced audio format converting mechanism, TunePat excellently converts audio book to MP3 or AAC, DRM protected WMA music to MP3 or unprotected WMA, as well as converting any other audio files to MP3, AAC, WMA, or WAV format. While converting audio files at fast speed, TunePat encodes MP3, WMA, AAC and WAV files with outstanding sound quality, and allows you to strip off the DRM so you can listen to your legally purchased audiobooks however you'd like.
TunePat Audiobook Converter for Windows PC
