Sunday, 11 August 2013

Converting .ape files in Linux

I came across some .ape files the other day.  Apparently, they're a lossless format like flac.  And the name?  MonkeyAudio.  Get it?  Because the extension is .ape.

Licensing apparently isn't full-on open-source kosher, but there are a couple of utilities you can use if you need to convert the for an audio play that doesn't handle .ape.

Option 1: via the command line, install this package

sudo apt-get install flac libjmac-java lame mp3splt

run like this:

lossless2mp3 START_DIRECTORY

(The author intends to add more options in the future.  View the helpfile for lossless2mp3 to see what they currently are.)

Option 2: use SoundConverter.  Download and install via your package manager software.

Currently more than a couple hundred people have posted good reviews on it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

FYI, latest version of mp3splt supports flac. You will only need to convert ape into flac and use directly mp3splt.
If you convert ape into mp3 you will loose quality.