.ape


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chiisai_hana

-nipah!
Retired
All right, so I got the Shuffle -On The Stage!- opening single CD off of BT, and when I opened it, all the sound files are .ape and when I open them, it opens notebook and gives me gibberish. What type of files are these, and how to I play them? Is there a way to convert them to mp3?
 
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~wow , sounds scary to me
 
Thanks ben. More programs to install
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Well, I've used it to 'decompress' now and it worked fine. Files were .wav when they come out. It sounds like it's something more Mac oriented, but I could be wrong (I was trying to read up on it before I downloaded, but that may be old info)
 
QUOTE (ben-sama @ Jan 31 2006, 01:48 PM)... kind of like winzip. sounds goofy. Sounds VERY goofy. Especially this


QUOTE (www.monkeysaudio.com)Unlike traditional methods such as mp3, ogg, or lqt that permanently discard quality to save space, Monkey’s Audio only makes perfect, bit-for-bit copies of your music. Music compression and digitilazation is pure math. By digitizing a signal, you are have to decide of a cut-off point for the upper harmonics. Otherwise, to be able to garanty that any sound will sound "perfect" you would need an infinite amount of bits to represent it. You will never have that because the ADC of the recorder (what your mic is plugged into) is a hardware component with a finitite amount of bits.

Besides, I dare anyone to tell the difference between a high quality mp3 and a audio CD. By the way, audio CD's also use loose compression. The word loose simply means you drop some higher frequency. If you choose that limit carefully, it will be higher than what most humans can hear anyway.


QUOTE It sounds like it's something more Mac oriented, Not at all. Its an encoding "standard" like mp3 or ACC. It simply defines the way you digitally store a sound that is, by definition analog.
It has nothing to do with a platform. It's not more MAC or PC or what ever.
 
QUOTE (chiisai_hana @ Jan 31 2006, 09:00 PM) Thanks ben. More programs to install
rolleyes.gif
Well, I've used it to 'decompress' now and it worked fine. Files were .wav when they come out. It sounds like it's something more Mac oriented, but I could be wrong (I was trying to read up on it before I downloaded, but that may be old info)
How did you manage to decompress the .ape file into separate .wav files?
When i decompress the .ape file i get all the songs in 1 huge .wav file :/
 
When I opened the .rar file, I extracted them all seperately and then decompressed them, and they all came out as single files just as I put them in. I'm glad they didn't come out as one huge file for me though
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I'm not really sure how to work the program, but that's what I did, and that's how the files came out.
 
QUOTE (chiisai_hana @ Jan 31 2006, 10:38 PM) When I opened the .rar file, I extracted them all seperately and then decompressed them, and they all came out as single files just as I put them in. I'm glad they didn't come out as one huge file for me though
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I'm not really sure how to work the program, but that's what I did, and that's how the files came out.
So all your songs were in separate .ape files?
Mine came in one big .ape file :/
 
@chiisai_hana
I moved your latest post in it's on thread. Makes answering questions easier.
http://boards.fansub.tv/index.php?showtopi...indpost&p=42890

--
For the records, here was the original post
QUOTE (chiisai_hana @ Jan 31 2006, 05:23 PM)Yeah, they were seperate files within the rar I downloaded.

I know this gets into a different subject, but is there a way to convert the .wav to mp3 with MediaPlayer and/or Nero? While the files now play on my computer, I can't transfer them to my Rio player
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QUOTE Besides, I dare anyone to tell the difference between a high quality mp3 and a audio CD.

mp3s aren't gapless, unlike audio cds.. there you go, a difference
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and i hate that, because many of my fav albums have transitions between tracks. some apps provide ways to minimize the problem, but unfortunately the mp3 format wasn't designed with transitions from track to track in mind..

chiisai, you might have seen some information about ape for macintosh because there's a system utility called Ape (application enhancer).. there's where the confusion might come from!

/jp
 
QUOTE (darkdog @ Jan 31 2006, 07:08 PM)mp3s aren't gapless, unlike audio cds.. Gapless? You mean like a pause in the sound between two songs?
If this is what you mean, then I would say it depends entirely on the player and the person who did the encoding.

MP3 and CDA (the audio format used on CDs) are simply two different codecs. They only define the way an analog signal is to be stored in a digital format. Nothing more, nothing less.
What you hear between tracks is not due to the encoding.
 
considering i import music with LAME and then burn it with 0 second gaps, and i still hear the gap, and according to what i read somewhere on the internet i thought that the format did have something to do with that. For example, OGG was done with gapless audio in mind, so it shouldn't have any of these problems.

i could be wrong though.

/jp
 
it probably depends on the media player and computer. i don't hear any gaps unless my computer is running really slow at the time. if your media player has crossfading, try turning that on and setting it to like .1 seconds... might sound really bad, but that's all i can come up with.
 
crossfading doesn't do the trick.. it disguises the gap, but at least on itunes it's still easily noticed if there's a constant rhythm across the gap. and when i burn it to cd with the best burning app for the mac (as far as i know), the gaps are still noticeable..

/jp
 
QUOTE (darkdog @ Feb 1 2006, 12:50 PM)it's still easily noticed if there's a constant rhythm across the gap. How can there be a rythme in the gap?? By gap, don't you mean a moment of silence BETWEEN two un-related songs??

I would also say, like Ben-Sama, it is related to your decoder more than to the file. So the computer is more to blame that the enoding that is used.
 
on some albums, track changes don't mean there's a moment of silence.. many of the albums i listen to have nearly no noticeable gaps between songs, when one is finishing the other has begun already.. or the next song picks up where this one ended, without even stopping the rhythm.

if you want some examples let me know, and i'll make them available for you!

/jp
 
Why are people complaining about a little gap on some songs. It's only like 1-5 seconds waiting, is it really that hard to endure? ^^
 
@Daedroth
Well, there are some of us (me included
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) that have a bit of a perfection complex
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We like it to be REALLY good and notice anything that is out of place. The trick is to notice but to know when to drop the case because it is un-important
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@darkdog
I see what you mean. In that case, I would say both tracks should have been encoded in a single mp3. The only reason you don't hear that gap in regular audio CD is because there is a loarge part of the decoding that is done in hardware by your CD drive and sound card. It is a lot less CPU "intensive" to read an audio cd than an MP3.

But to get back on the original topic, this other compression codec cannot do anything to prevent this. You mentionned OGG that solved the problem. I don't know a lot about that format, but the only way I can see this as possible, is if the ogg codec pre-load the second file before the first one is actually finished. Its a nice feature. But it is not related to the encoding standard. Its more implementation dependant on a perticular codec.

The thing with standards is there is a lot more to them than the technical. To become a "good" standard, it needs to be more than good technicly speaking. It's a bit like the MKV format. It is extremely superior to the avi. BUT, its not wide spread and to most normal users, they don't see the difference. So using a new format is more of an annoiyance than a enjoyable thing. Just look how many people are bashing against mkv and you will understand what I mean.

In the end, the question is, what does the ape format has that the MP3 does not. Considering there are thousands of mp3 players already in circulation and every computer (Windows, Linux or MAC) all suport mp3 out of the box.
 
Let's sum up things a bit and bring a little more information.

~1: .APE files
* They are music files encoded with a codec called Monkey's Audio (MAC). It is not related to Apple's Macintosh®.

MAC is a lossless codec, which means it retains all info a WAV provides, but in more compact form. Such compressors are generally based on a technology called "linear predictive coding" which helps reach even higher compression rates than standard compressors such as RAR or 7-Zip.

Nowadays, most used lossless formats on Internet are APE, FLAC and TTA. Apple's also launched its own format, ALAC.
Most formats were designed to be easily seekable and have various advandtages and drawbacks (CPU usage, etc.).
APE has one of the highest compression ratios (files are smaller) and FLAC is a free codec that has been ported on several platforms and on several hardware players.

Generally, lossless formats are considered for music archiving. On the lossy side, MP3s are considered perceptually transparent (i.e. difference can rarely be told by human listeners) around VBR 245 Kibps, strongest bitrate being 320 Kibps.

There are also so-called hybrid codecs, such as WavPack and OptimFROG, that can produce a lossy file and a complementary file that turns the whole into a lossless file. Quite neat, but not everyone wants this.

~2: Playback
* APE files may of course be converted back to WAV and be recognized by most players, although it is a bit radical. For this, you can use the tools available at http://www.monkeysaudio.com/

Recent players yield support for the APE format, either natively or by the means of a plug-in. For instance, there is a Winamp plug-in and one for foobar2000.

* A recent tendency is to have albums packaged as a (huge) monolithic APE unit, combined with a cuesheet (.cue).
You may see this as the chaptering feature on video DVDs.
One advantage of this method is the ability to play songs without gaps in-between. Once again, support varies between players. foobar2000 supports cuesheet loading natively, for instance, whereas Winamp 5 requires a plugin.

~3: Converting to other formats
As said above, you may convert APEs back to WAVs to burn them back to CDs (ideally, with the help of a cuesheet to preserve original gaps).

If you want to convert APE files to another format, I suggest using foobar2000's diskwriter plug-in alongside with the internal CLI encoder plug-in, which acts as a front-end for command-line-based encoders such as FLAC or LAME, or simply output waveform files.
Predefined profiles may help a bit in configuring the CLI tools options, but you should always have a look at the manuals and online tutorials for reference.

~X: QnA
# Can mp3 have gapless playback information?
Yes, but it's not standard. LAME can embed this metadata info (delay/padding) in a proprietary block, which must be recognized by the player. The latter then automatically trims silence when playing the file.
See: http://www.answers.com/topic/gapless-playback (from Wikipedia)


# Pros & Cons of APE or <insert lossless format here>?
I suggest reading this article: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...less_comparison
Keep in mind that lossless formats were designed for archiving and demanding audiophiles. They do not play in the same court as lossy formats.
If you do not mind at all, you may re-encode everything as MP3 320 Kibps for widespread playback support.
 
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