Talk:Monkey's Audio

Conversion

This article badly needs links to tools to convert this nonsense to a proper format. A single track for a whole CD? Seriously? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.153.81.32 (talk) 16:01, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Edit: these worked for me: http://www.medieval.it/cuesplitter-pc/menu-id-71.html (split if you have a .cue) http://www.dbpoweramp.com/ (convert) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.153.81.32 (talk) 16:11, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Extension

We need something here about the .APE extension, so people wondering what this extension is can find it. --Weyoun6 01:29, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Lossless

This was developed by Kenny `jones.

Therefore, a file compressed with Monkey's Audio always sounds the same as the source file, no matter how many times the resulting file is burnt to a CD, ripped and re-encoded.

Surely, the process of burning, ripping and re-encoding introduces the possibility of read/write errors, and thus this would be a bad example(as using a lossless codec would obviously prevent only conversion inaccuracies). Proposed replacement:

Therefore, a file compressed with Monkey's Audio always sounds the same as the original file, no matter how many times it is is uncompressed and reencoded. In contrast, if a file is repeatedly reencoded in a lossy codec, the unavoidable inaccuracies will accumulate, and the errors will eventually become noticeable. The ability to decode and reencode sound without losing accuracy is important in sound processing. 85.166.69.122 19:52, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Partially incorporated. Detailed elaboration on lossy errors is probably better placed in the lossy/lossless article. Shawnc 10:04, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

On that subject, both times the article mentions that the codec is lossless, it goes on to explain what this means in more detail than is probably necessary, and also the way it is worded makes it sound like Monkey audio is unique in this. All that needs to be said is that it means the compressed audio will be identical to the original. Aninhumer (talk) 16:55, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Inaccurate statements?

In the article it says that Monkey's Audio is not free or open source, but it's web site seems to disagree with both those counts.--Frenchman113 on wheels! 23:47, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Monkey's Audio is not under a free license, and unfortunately the author thinks that all the people who care about the licenseare are trolls. Looks like FLAC is it. Terrible Tim 22:57, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I got mislead by the phrase "not free software". I thought it meant that a user would have to pay to use it. Really confusing, it took me days of reading around to get my head around what was meant. I believe that as far as an ordinary user is concerned, it's free. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.189.230.42 (talk • contribs)

What about this: http://www.monkeysaudio.com/license.html ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.198.143.71 (talk • contribs)

It should be quite obvious that this license would in no way qualify as a free software license. Not to mention that it's written in a legally unprofessional manner and leaves a lot of ambiguities, such as the "All rights not expressly granted here are reserved by Matthew T. Ashland" bit. -- intgr 13:30, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

If this is worth anything, I personally find it nauseating that the Monkey's Audio web site claims "Freely available source code, simple SDK and non-restrictive licensing" -- intgr 13:30, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Add Link Back?

I would like to see if anyone would object to me adding the link back to our site, The Lossless Audio Blog? Our site tries to bridge the gap between the forums and the various EAC Guides by providing information on getting started with lossless audio formats as well as current news and information. Because the Wiki pages for lossless audio formats are such a great place for those learning about the various formats I feel that our site compliments this and have heard from a lot of users voicing the same opinion.

No $ is generated from The Lossless Audio Blog. We are also in the process of moving to our own domain, links are below. So take a look at the site and see if you think its apprpriate. We will be adding and moving alot of the content/links, etc from the old site to the new as well as adding alot of new features to the new site. Thanks for the consideration! Windmiller 15:56, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Old Site The Lossless Audio Blog New Site The Lossless Audio Blog

Link added back. This was discussed on the talk page.Windmiller 17:37, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Hold on a sec... Discussed on which talk page? -- intgr 18:11, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I believe this user is fairly inexperienced. Between that and the advice they were given, I think what they mean by "discussion" is that it's been suggested here since a while and nobody has objected. (For the record, I'm neutral on this link: I don't think we should link blogs, but it is a particularly good blog-style site.) — Saxifrage ✎ 23:37, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm impartial as well, I just found it strange that he said it was discussed while no discussion really happened. :) -- intgr 11:52, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I think that's just from the official-sounding usage of "discussion" in the advice given, so the word is being invoked. Yes, it sounds strange. :) — Saxifrage ✎ 18:55, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

While this may or may not be a good resource, is it really necessary on the Monkey's Audio article, rather than the Lossless article. There is no specific information on the site about Monkey Audio, other than links to other sites with information (that I can see), which it would be more appropriate to link to directly.

A question

I have a collection of the Rolling Stones and I'd like to make a back up using EAC and Monkey's Audio. Now, there are several mono songs on most of the compilations so I wonder what happens when I make one big .wav file and then compress it into .ape. Do they translate into stereo with two exact channels somewhere along the road? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.105.61.189 (talk)

Wikipedia talk pages are not meant for getting advice or help about the subject, but rather discussing the article. Please refer to other resources, such as Hydrogenaudio forums: [1]. -- intgr 21:16, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

The sole reason why I wrote it here is because I believe it should've been explained in the article in the first place. I do have over hundred posts on Hydrogenaudio, but on the other have I have contributed with over 100 articles on Wikipedia. I knew where I could've gotten the explanation just for me, but I figuered other people should be able to know this right here on Wikipedia. --77.105.60.165 23:44, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Just for the reference - if you're going to make 'one big wav file', it obviously has to use one single number of channels and one single bit rate. So most likely you'd have to somehow resample the mono audio tracks to 44khz stereo before combining and processing. The MAC docs say that various sampling rates and both mono and stereo are supported though. But how you got an audio CD (since you mentioned EAC) with mono tracks on it is beyond me, since that's impossible...

Error robustness

I believe this statement is incorrect:

"It [..] has no error robustness, so if the file is damaged, any audio data after that point will be lost."

In my original research (oh my! oh my!) I have found that the decoder compares CRC checksum of each block with the one stored in the stream, reports a mismatch, and continues decoding the next block. The size of one block is proportional to the chosen compression level.

Here are quotes from the official changelog:

Version 3.70

+ Can now "ignore" bitstream errors during playback... you'll just get a little silence

Version 1.61

* improved file format,
slightly better compression and more error resistant

-- 83.99.184.75 16:25, 22 March 2007 (UTC) (User: J7n)

It's not "original research" if you've published it somewhere else, and WP:COI does not seem to apply here, as it's a matter of factual accuracy. -- intgr 01:07, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

ffmpeg implementation

Some code was committed to ffmpeg (and mplayer) today that allows playback of .ape files, listening to some right now. It was based on rockbox code and is under the GPL. --Mikachu42 17:15, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

That's great! But hold on changes to the article until it's part of a released version. -- intgr [talk] 18:45, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

MPlayer 1.0rc2

Monkey Audio audio decoding via lavc

Mikachu42 22:38, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Non-Win32 ports by SuperMMX

The port by SuperMMX works perfectly on native Win32 (MingW) with some very minor adjustments to the makefiles. From the article, I get the impression that the port does not work on Windows at all. The Sourceforge summary page doesn't mention Windows being supported either. Can someone add it to the article? -- 60.48.116.95 04:04, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Article Obsolete

Monkey's audio is now open-source. This article should be updated to reflect this development. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.65.27.20 (talk) 04:14, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Monkey's Audio is not open source, as the license is ambiguous and not legally rigorous. If the license is not legally binding then the "fallback" is the author retaining all rights. It won't be listed as open source until there is a reliable source describing it as such. -- intgr [talk] 05:25, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

outdated, not obsolete, if ;) --84.159.152.166 (talk) 10:41, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

ape vrs flac on filesharing

Ape is much more widespread than flac on filesharing networks, but i guess its impossible to source that --84.159.152.166 (talk) 10:41, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

From my personal tests, no matter what insane commandline options you feed to FLAC, MAC default will still beat it. Compression time is roughly the same and the decoding cpu usage is negligible on today's machines. In the world of data-transfer, size matters, so MAC is the better choice. Theultramage (talk) 08:21, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

The above comment about APE being more widespread on file sharing networks was made in 2008 (and as I type this it's April 2011) and I have to say that I see far more FLAC files on fire-sharing (file-locker) download links vs APE. I've always wondered who uses APE - seems to me it's more commonly used by eastern europeans / russians as a format for music file distribution. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.231.87.252 (talk) 01:34, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

One big file, like a 250MB .ape file, can the songs be listened separately?

I have a 250MB .ape file. I can use VLC Player, Windows Media Player, KMPlayer, Media Jukebox to play it, but it must be played as "1 big song" of 48 minutes. Can i listen to them by choosing which song to listen to? thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Winterheat (talk • contribs) 21:30, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

You need to index the individual parts. I know the foobar2000 player supports CUE sheets for compressed audio files (instead of just .wav), for more info you could try googling. Theultramage (talk) 08:25, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Supported platforms - request to reformat into "hardware" and "software" subsections

This would be my first legitimate edit to a WP article, which is why I'm starting here first. I'm not sure what the predominate wisdom is for subsections, so I'd like a second opinion.

One minor thing that tweaks me about this article is the misplaced statement "As of version 4.02 (19 January 2009) a directshow filter is distributed with the installer, allowing for compatibility with most mp3 players." Because of where it's at in context, this makes the reader believe that DirectShow somehow enables "most" hardware MP3 players to play Monkey's Audio (which we know to be patently false). I propose moving this text up around the discussion of ffmpeg, and clarifying the statement with something like "enabling playback (of Monkey's Audio files) with most software MP3 players on the Windows platform." --Ernstkm (talk) 22:01, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Origin of the name - "Monkey's Audio" ?

Seems to me that something missing from the mail article is an explanation as to the origin of the .APE file extension, as well as the naming of this compression format as "Monkey's Audio". Why "Monkey" ? What is the significance or meaning of Monkey in this context? What is it meant to denote or identify? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.231.87.252 (talk) 01:39, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Comparisons - FLAC's active development community

In the "Comparisons" section, it is stated that "FLAC has an active development community that continues to refine the format." This being read in the context of the comparison of alternative formats, being preceded by mentioning the inactivity of Shorten's development, and followed by stating that "FLAC has largely eclipsed it as the preferred format for commercial distribution of lossless audio," will leave the reader wondering about the activity status of the Monkey's Audio project. Looking at FLAC's CVS repository, I think that this statement should be revised and made more clear.

Despised (talk) 15:29, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Also - "Monkey's Audio's advantages are better compression rates compared to FLAC…" Comparison re better "compression" isn't meaningful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 27.253.56.6 (talk) 10:21, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

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