The VideoLAN Forums

While trying to figure out why an Audible .aa file (actually part of a German Language Course)would not play on my Sansa Clipp mp3 player, I checked whether Audible Manager had d/l file to the Audible folder on the device. It was there OK, so I tried opening it with VLC 2.2.2 and was rather surprised that it worked. I later discovered that I had downloaded file as Audible Format 3 and should have used Format 4 which is higher quality and twice the size. I thought that the reason VLC worked wqs because the file was present on an authorised Audible device. I switched from Lubuntu 16.04 (64-bit) to Windows 10 and tried VLC 2.2.4 (32-bit) and then re-installed VLC 2.2.2. (64-bit). Neither of these would play the file either from the Sandisk device or the Downloads folder on the C: drive. I copied the .aa files (Format 3 and Format 4) to a memory stick, and on switching back to Lubuntu, I could still play the file on VLC 2.2.2. I've seen several posts on this forum which state that VLC won't play .aa files, so I'm wondering whether some file conversion or "de-scrambling" takes place within Audible Manager.

The .aa file from Audible is encrypted with DRM protection so it can't be opened with VLC.
If you want to play the AA files on VLC, you need to remove the DRM protection from the Audible AA files.
Maybe you can get some help from this google guide: http://www.apple-music-converter.net/tu ... dible.html