You find this in on the General tab in iTunes – Preferences.

Here is what I do.
1. Go into iTunes – Preferences
2. Uncheck the box to Automatically retrieve CD track names from Internet
3. Set the Import Settings (I use AAC Encoder, Spoken Podcast)
4. Insert Disk
5. Select all of the tracks (click on one of the tracks, click Edit and choose Select All)
6. Name the Author, Album, Disk Number, and make it Part of a gapless album
7. Click on Advanced and Join CD Tracks (this makes it so that you don’t end up with a bunch of tracks, just the number of CD’s in the audiobook)
8. Click on Import CD
9. Repeat steps 4 through 8 for all of the CD’s
10. Find the tracks in your Music Library and select them all (click on the first one, press and hold shift and click on the last one)
11. Right click and choose get info
12. On the Options tab set the Equalizer Preset to Spoken Word, set Media Kind to Audiobook (This will automatically put the tracks into the Audiobook section of iTunes) and check the box to Remember playback position (so that when you stop and start listening it will put you right back where you stopped)

You can optionally put in any other info you choose, including Artwork.

I have found that this is the quickest way to import your Audiobook. It sounds like a lot but after you do it a couple of times it is really not that bad.

Matt

I get the first (of four) CD’s done, but when I insert the second CD I get a pop-up message saying: ne or more of the songs you have selected to import have already been imported. Do you want to replace existing songs and import them again?

The choices I have to choose from are:
1. Replace Existing
2. Don’t Replace
3. Cancel

1. If I choose Replace Existing, it just imports the information from CD #1 with what is on CD #2.
2. With Don’t Replace, I just get duplicates of everything on CD #1. I now the information is not the same on the discs because if I put them into a regular CD player, I can hear that they are all different.
3. Cancel does not import anything.

Perhaps there is an easy answer to this problem, but I sure have no idea what it is. I have deleted what imported from CD #1 and tried to start over. I have searched for different answers and I am just plain stuck!

I do best with simple step-by-step instructions. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Jenn

My gut is telling me the source of your problem is your computer’s sound card. I’m assuming that you used the same computer for audio book importing, syncing with your iPod, and sound testing with Quicktime and Media Player.

Try and import some other CD into iTunes and see what the quality sounds like. Remember, use the same import settings you used for the original audio book. Any music or other audio book CD will work fine for this test. If the choppy static quality appears on this newly imported CD, we’ve narrowed down the possibility to the sound card or maybe even the import settings themselves.

Try to rule out the import settings by deleting what you just imported. Adjust your import settings to a higher quality (I suggest the 192kbps for MP3s). Now, re-import the same CD and listen to the results. If choppy static quality remains, then the problem is not the import quality setting because 192kbps is pretty high and shouldn’t sound choppy or static. At this point it is most likely your sound card in the computer; however, it could also be the CD source (the audio book itself).

To rule out the source as the problem, try and listen to the audio book CD in a normal CD player. Not the one in your computer. Do you hear static now? If so, the CD source is the problem. Try to clean the CD and try again. If the problem persists, then you can’t do much and just have to suffer with the quality. If, on the other hand, no static was heard the first time you tested, and your previous import attempts had static, then the problem is the sound card in your computer. To fix that, you’ll need to buy a replacement like a SoundBlaster card from Creative.

Hope that helps. If I get time, I might write up a quick how-to resolve choppy static audio quality in iTunes imports. A final answer may not exist, but at least it will include a detailed how to narrow down the source of the poor audio quality performance.

One thing I would suggest is that you can make the files show in the Audiobooks much easier by:
1. Right clicking the file/files and choosing Get Info.
2. Click on the Options tab.
3. Change the Media Kind to Audiobook.

This will change the extension for you and move the file into the Audiobook folder in the Library.

Matt

If you play the audiobook on your computer, does it still sound choppy?

Can you try and play the file with another media player such as Microsoft Media Player, or something like WinAmp? If so, is the audio still choppy?

Let me know the outcome of those questions and I’ll see what else I can suggest to solve the problem.