I did in fact use the send as music option assuming that the transfer would be faster. It was, but only marginally. Are you saying that no re-encoding is done when that option is checked? I fully understand about the time and pause forcing a recode. I just wanted to make sure that no recode was happening when the music option is checked. I have more than 55,000 old radio broadcasts and close to 10,000 of them are available in broadcast quality .MP3 that is 160KBPS mono. Sending them through the transfer utility adds the indexes which is nice for jumping around but if quality suffers then it's better just to copy them via computer and forget the transfer util. tnx -----Original Message----- From: bookport-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bookport-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of PAMELA RADER Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 1:55 PM To: bookport@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [bookport] Re: file naming conventions Hello: One other factor here is that whenever you convert those files, if you use the Pause or Time compression feature in addition to the conversion, then the files would be further encoded, which would explain your finds, because the quality would change. Before sending the file, you can either check the "Send audio file as music," which would give you a more cleaner MP3 file that is less encoded. Pamela Rader, TECHNICAL SUPPORT American Printing House For The Blind 1839 Frankfort Ave. Louisville, KY 40206 PHONE: 1-800-223-1839, Ext. 307 >>> wb9rsq@xxxxxxxxxx 01/03/07 02:19PM >>> Thanks Pamela, I was wondering the same thing but let me toss another question in there. I have lots of audio short stories and books in .MP3. I sent a few to the BP for testing and then brought copies back to the computer. I added the _DD file type extension to play in Winamp. At that point playing the files worked again but the conversion seemed to damage the .MP3 info, Id2 tag and the bitrate information. Finally I thought that there was a change in audio quality as if the file had been re-encoded rather than just copied. File sizes looked close but switching old to BP copy in an a/b/a/b fashion seemed to prove that some audio quality had been lost. Any thoughts or comments? tnx -----Original Message----- From: bookport-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bookport-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of PAMELA RADER Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 1:10 PM To: bookport@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [bookport] Re: file naming conventions Don: You are correct. For every file you send to the Book Port, there are 3 files that get created. The file that contains the dd extension is the actual Data File, thus, the name DD. The other 2 files are for indexing and keeping your place in the file if you start and stop, the other file is for navigating through paragraphs and such. The Last File file you mentioned is just what it implies--if that file were not present, then the Book Port would have trouble knowing when it's at the end of a folder. Pamela Rader, TECHNICAL SUPPORT American Printing House For The Blind 1839 Frankfort Ave. Louisville, KY 40206 PHONE: 1-800-223-1839, Ext. 307 >>> ka7ojt@xxxxxxxxxxx 01/03/07 01:49PM >>> Hello, Inquiring minds want to know. When examining my Bookport folders, regardless of whether they are audio or text files, I observed that the file names were changed. Additionally, each folder contained a file named lastfile.aa. Each of the files contained an additional extention. Typically, each file was split into three segments, the first of which had a .aa extention; the second, a .dd extention; and the third, a .ix extention. Am I correct in assuming that this has something to do with the indexing mechanism for the Bookport? In the case of the audio files, they were .mp3 files with each having a playing time of just under one hour. When I say each, I mean each audio file had this playing time before it was loaded into the Bookport which incidentally is working extremely well. Thanks in advance for any info. Don Roberts