Libation not downloading best available quality

[gitaiuser20]

Libation when set to "Audio quality to request from Audible: High" and "Download my books in the original audio format (Lossless)" is not getting the best available quality.

For the book Words of radiance by brandon sanderson read by kate reading and Michael kramer, when i attempt to download it i get a file that is 1.28 gb in size, when i set "Audio quality to request from Audible: Normal" i get a file that is around 600-700mb, however on the Audible app on android on high quality setting I'm getting a file that is 2.7ish gb, and has much better quality than the high quality one on audible. i believe this higher quality version is a relatively recent addition that may not have been available when the book first came out a few years ago.

[rmcrackan]

I don't have Words of Radiance, but I do have Way of Kings in my library. Does this give you a similar discrepancy?

[gitaiuser20]

Yes, i just attempted WoK, on android file size is 2539mb, the m4b from Libation is 1.21 GB when "Audio quality to request from Audible: High", and 616 mb when "Audio quality to request from Audible: Normal"

I don’t know if this is helpful knowledge, but i tried using Book Lib Connect which is similar to your software,and i had a similar issue. there is unfortunately no Audible for PC atm to compare with however.

[gitaiuser20]

update: I just tried to do the same with the book Leviathan Wakes by James F. A. Coley, and there is the same issue. The file I got from Libation set to high quality is 522 MB, whereas the file I got from Audible Android is 861 MB, and the one from Audible is much clearer.

I'm thinking Audible recently added a new tier of higher quality (since I'm pretty sure that up until recently the quality libation got was the same as the high that was on audible) and libation is not getting this higher tier

[mkb79]

@gitaiuser20 Can you compare the files downloaded with Libation and the Android app using MediaInfo or another tool which can show you the codec. I’m think you have activated „Spatial Audio“ on the Android Audible app? Then the „huge“ audiobook downloaded with Android can be in Dolby Atmos format.

[gitaiuser20]

i tried turning off spatial audio and redownloaded, I'm getting the same size file.

as for checking them, when i try to look for the audiobook files on my android phone, i found loads of folders with exo files, so not sure what to check tbh

[mkb79]

How do you know that the audiobook downloaded with the Android app are larger? You have to look for files with the extension aax, aaxc or mp4 (if spatial is enabled)!

[gitaiuser20]

when i click download on the app as it is downloading i get the file size.

now that I'm checking again, there are folders with names ending in .mp4, but inside it are more folders and inside them are the exo files.

[mkb79]

As far as I could read about exo files this are chunk files and merged, to the target file, when all parts are downloaded. MP4 hints that these are Spatial audio files with another codec (Dolby Atmos)!

[gitaiuser20]

if this is the dolby atmos format, is there anyway of downloading them using libation?

[mkb79]

It is possible but need some knowledge. You can read here some backgrounds about these topic.

[gitaiuser20]

i have absolutely no experience or coding knowledge unfortunately, but thanks for your responses

[gitaiuser20]

I've been looking around on audible website, and it doesn't seem like the titles i mentioned have dolby atmos, at least it's not mentioned anywhere from what i can find, i wonder what this means

[gitaiuser20]

I've been experimenting some more and checking Audible, according to this Audible page turning off spatial audio on the app means you will not download the Dolby Atmos even if it is available for a book, and turning it on or off doesn't make any difference to file size or quality of the books I've tried (also Audible doesn't say the books i tested have dolby atmos).

Another thing of note, for The Way of Kings, when i set the quality to Standard on my android the file size is still different the Standard one i get from Libation (standard from libation is 616 mb, while from my audible app it's 829 mb.

i think that maybe Audible has been updating the files they had with ones of higher quality and for some reason Libation is not getting those higher quality files.

[Merkapt]

Saw this thread and wanted to test. On the ios app, with or without spatial audio enabled the download was 2.78GB. The corresponding *.aax file downloaded by libation was 1.3GB. Funnily enough my folder with both the aax and the m4b also summed up to 2.78GB. A coincidence I'm sure. :-) There are two different publishers of the audiobook, so the size difference compared to OP might be due to that.

[gitaiuser20]

but why would my Libation be downloading a version from one publisher and my android app from another publisher? and why is there a noticeable difference in quality ? I've been playing the libation version and audible version side by side with multiple books and the audio quality difference is very noticeable

(others I've tried recently are gardens of the moon, leviathan wakes and oathbringer, i think orconomics was also the same, interestingly Rhythm of War (book 4 of the stormlight archive) actually has the same size file and sound quality as that in the android app unlike the earlier books in the series that got the new higher quality. there is definitely something here, it could be that those books have a higher quality but it's in mp4 like another comment suggested (even though they aren't dolby books) so Libation doesn't get that higher quality. it's not just downloading duplicates, especially considering a lot of the bigger size files books don't add up to double the Libation file.