Monkey's Audio

Monkey's Audio
A fast and powerful lossless audio compressor
Developer(s)	Matt Ashland
Release	2000; 24 years ago
Type	Lossless
Recommended encoder	6.61 (August 25, 2021)
Website	monkeysaudio.com

Monkey's Audio (APE) is a freeware lossless audio compression format with a highly competitive compression algorithm, and is used primarily by Windows users. Although software is available for Linux, Monkey's Audio is not as popular among this operating system's users. Monkey's Audio suffers from slow decompression speeds as compared to other lossless audio codecs.

Monkey's Audio uses a combination of traditional lossless compression tactics (linear prediction and channel coupling) and a simple neural network. To store the output values of its prediction step it uses range coding, modified to work well with more or less continuous values.

Its main competitor is FLAC, which has more features than Monkey's Audio (streaming support, for example) and hardware support to its advantage, though its efficiency in compression is not as great.

Monkey's Audio is proprietary software released under a custom "source available" license that does not grant the right to redistribution of modified versions of the source code and is difficult to integrate with free software. However, a third-party free and open source decoder is included with ffmpeg.

See also

• Lossless Codec Comparison
• Configuring EAC and Monkey's Audio

Installing

Go to Monkey's audio download page and download the latest installer for your system, double click the installer and run.

• find a suitable audio recording (.WAV), or record an audio session using Audacity and save to PCM (.WAV) , now proceed and run Monkey's Audio, select your (.WAV) audio file and compress, you now have an audio file compressed in (.APE).

Decoding

Recommend decoding with foobar2000.

• foobar2000 - foo_input_monkey component provides decoding support for monkey's audio files (.APE).

Alternative decoding with foobar2000 and FFmpeg.

• foobar2000 - foo_input_ffmpeg component provides FFmpeg support with FFmpeg Decoder Wrapper.

• FFmpeg Decoder Wrapper
• FFmpeg Windows Builds - gyan.dev - https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds

Setting up FFmpeg Decoder Wrapper in foobar2000.

• Download the foo_input_ffmpeg plugin (Double click on the plugin to Install), Next from foobar2000 Menu select Option >> Configure >> Playback >> Decoding >> FFmpeg Decoder Wrapper > select 'Monkey's Audio' tick box, also within FFmpeg Decoder Wrapper option screen, you can browse location for FFmpeg.

• Assign Path for FFmpeg in Windows 10

Windows 10 users you can also Assign a Path for FFmpeg from the 'System Properties >> Enviroment Variables ( Use Windows 10 Search, to find Enviroment Variables ) Select Path from system variables >> Edit' >>New >> Add >> C:\ffmpeg\Bin , assuming you have FFmpeg extracted at this location.

Players

Additional Supported software for playing (.APE) audio files.

• foobar2000 + Plugin ( Windows )
• Bass audio library supported players using Bass_ape.dll for decoding. MusicBee, AIMP, Tag scanner ( Windows )
• WACUP (WinAmp Community Update Project)
• Winamp + Monkey's audio installer ( Windows )
• VLC plays (.APE) YES, seek bar is unresponsive when playing. ( Windows / Linux ? )
• mpv (via ffmpeg)

Encoding Monkey's Audio with foobar2000

In this guide we are going to show you how to access foobar2000 "Quick Convert" and create a new custom preset, the new preset will allow you to encode (.WAV) audio files to Monkey's Audio (.APE).

Quick Convert: To gain access to Quick Convert you need to Right Click a selected (.wav) audio file, this action will open the context menu from the context menu select "Convert > Quick Convert", This action will open Quick Convert > Now click the "Add New" button, this will open the "Commandline Encoder Settings" > Now click on the encoder menu and select custom.

You are now ready to edit your preset.

Parameters Modes:

      fast        -c1000
      normal      -c2000
      high        -c3000
      extra high  -c4000
      insane      -c5000

Example custom preset using normal.

      Encoder file: C:\Program Files\Monkey's Audio x64\MAC.exe
      Extension: ape
      Parameters: %s %d -c2000
      Format is: lossless (or hybrid)
      Highest BPS mode supported: 24
      Encoder name: APE (Monkey's Audio)
      Settings: normal

Now to save your preset click OK. You are now ready to convert any audio file with (.wav) extenstion to (.ape)

External links

• Monkey's Audio - Official website
• Monkey's Audio on Wikipedia