What is APE?

Audio Format Description

The main advantage of Monkey Audio lies in its being lossless. Despite the file being compressed to up to 50%, it retains the original quality of sound no matter how many times it is decompressed and then compressed again. Another advantage of Monkey Audio is that the speed at which the file is compressed and decompressed is very fast and accurate. Other features include high efficiency, easy usability, error detection, and it comes completely free. It also supports its own tags, which makes cataloging and managing an audio collection easy. With Monkey Audio, one will easily be able to recreate the original music collection in case something happens to the CDs. There won’t also be any need to switch formats in case there is a change in technology. Together, all these features make Monkey Audio the ideal format for distribution, playback, and archival purposes.

The only drawback with this file format is that it is proprietary. In other words, its support on platforms other than Windows is erratic, and playback is slow on portable audio devices. This makes Monkey Audio less popular than its main rival FLAC, also a lossless format, which supports more platforms and usually comes preinstalled with Linux.

Monkey Audio is only available for Microsoft Windows. The programs that open the ‘.ape’ (file extension for Monkey Audio) files are Monkey’s Audio and JMAC. The Mac OS platform also sometimes supports ‘.ape’ files if JMAC Java Monkey's Audio Decoder has been installed on it. It's easier to convert APE to other widely supported audio formats with Factory Audio Converter.

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The Best Audio Format