mp3 to mp3 at same quality, split by chapters with no re-encoding?

[grv688]

I have overdrive audiobooks in mp3 format and embedded non-standard chapter markers that AudioBookConverter reads. The books are comprised of multiple files, but are not split by chapters (each file contains multiple chapters). I would like to essentially concatenate the mp3s then split them based on chapters read from the metadata. I would rather not re-encode lossy mp3 to mp3 again if I can help it. It would also be fine to create one large mp3 with embedded chapters that other players can read or have some accompanying standard chapter file like a cue sheet.

When I test with version 6.2.10, CPU utilization is high enough for long enough that I think the program is re-encoding mp3 to mp3, even though I have chosen the same bitrate, sample rate, number of channels, and codec. I also chose to avoid re-encoding.

Is it actually re-encoding and is that expected behavior? Any way to achieve what I am looking for? I can hear the quality loss and have been looking for a solution that can avoid this but nothing elegant and simple to use has presented itself. This application seems very close to doing what I want, but I must be missing something! Thank you.

[grv688]

I also notice that even though I chose 64kbps in settings, the rendered files are at 128kbps. I must be doing something wrong.

[Dreadstar69]

I had the same problem, but I made the changes to the Preset setting and them closed the program and re-started it. I verified that the setting were still what I changed them to (Constant bitrate, kb/s = 64) and then start a conversion and the bit rate of the resulting file was 64.

I am using version: 6.3.12. I also check this with version 6.3.1 (latest on Steam) with the same results.