My Garmin Zumo 660 is by far the most important motorcycling device besides the bike itself. Besides just telling me where I am, I use its MP3 player extensively.
I wear a set of Sony in-the-ear earbuds while I ride. They have a modest amount of passive noise damping while also giving me some entertainment for the road.
In particular, I've been listening to audiobooks almost exclusively for the past few years. Generally, I'll listen to books I've already read, so I'm just reliving them as opposed to having to concentrate on them to keep the storyline.
I've only been listening to mp3-based audiobooks, ripped off my audioCDs. But I just tried out Audible audiobooks last night for some new content, and I'm kinda excited, despite the soul-crushing DRM crap.
Listening to long MP3 audiobooks on the Zumo can be a challenge. I have two grievances; sometimes the volume or quality of the rip isn't great, and fast forwarding or rewinding can be a real PITA.
The Zumo has overloaded ff/next track and rw/previous track buttons. A brief tap changes track, a longer press seeks within the track. But if you're listening to an hour-long or 8-hour-long MP3 audiobook file, seeking can be very fast, skipping minutes per second. If you only want to go back 30 seconds, you're usually SOL. And if you try to be quick about it, you end up not holding the rw button long enough and jump to the previous track, losing your position! Grr.
The Audible player included on the Zumo is meant specifically for audiobooks. Seeking is by second, not percentage of the total size. You can place bookmarks. And I've read that it remembers where you left off in that file if you switch to another (a feature I haven't tried yet). All in all, I'm looking forward to trying them out more.
Now if only I could find a tool to convert .mp3's into Audible .aa files, I'd be a seriously happy camper.
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