What is the .ape Format

**Octagon** · 17th October 2002

HI I dl an album which has these the files. I assumed that they would be in Mp3 but they arent. Does anyone know what format these are? I already tried to relabel them as .mp3.

**Tyro** · 17th October 2002

http://www.monkeysaudio.com/

May I also suggest www.google.com

**Octagon** · 17th October 2002

Oh snap. thanks. I tried google. kept bringing me articles on ape shit.

**opiumoverdoze** · 17th October 2002

For future reference...

http://www.filext.com

**th3virus** · 17th October 2002

.ape?

Isnt that the ebonics of digital audio?

(sorry, had to say it

)

**Creed** · 17th October 2002

Originally posted by th3virus
.ape?

Isnt that the ebonics of digital audio?

(sorry, had to say it )

you should be a comedian

**skazz** · 17th October 2002

Maybe where you downloaded the album from, the server where the files are hosted on dosnt allow file extentions like .zip, .mp3, .rar etc. to be hosted there.

Open up one of the files with WinRAR. It doesnt matter if you dont have the right extention for the type of file it is, WinRAR still reads it.

If this fails, well then, your on your own

soz.

**Phreaker47** · 17th October 2002

The first reply is right, they are Monkey's Audio files. What you have there is files that use a lossless compression and are superior to MP3s. When you decompress them you will have the full, 100% original quality of the CD they came from, assuming they were made straight from an original or duped CD... or even a CD that has a lineage but as long as it was only a lossless compression (no quality loss) lineage.

There are Winamp plugins for APE and SHN (shorten, the other popular lossless compression type) for direct playback, and there's a great prog called Media Jukebox that has playback support for those, as well as every other audio and video type (yes, even quicktime and real media... goodbye realone)

If you want to have MP3s of those, go ahead and decompress them to wav's then create MP3s from those. The only quality loss will come from the MP3 compression, but you have perfect original files.

Heh, some people might notice I take every opportunity to blab about this stuff (see cheapo depot iPod thread). I just love the lossless compression stuff like SHN and APE. It's already caught on big time in newsgroups with broadband users, so I do everything I can to help promote it. What I want in the end is a CD that is 100% the quality of the original. With Mp3 you can never have that.