-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 2
/
2005-11-04-to-convert-ape-audio-files.html
206 lines (182 loc) · 10.5 KB
/
2005-11-04-to-convert-ape-audio-files.html
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en"
>
<head>
<title>aadm: to convert ape audio files</title>
<!-- Using the latest rendering mode for IE -->
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
<link href="http://aadm.github.io/favicon.png" rel="icon">
<link rel="canonical" href="http://aadm.github.io/2005-11-04-to-convert-ape-audio-files.html">
<meta name="author" content="Alessandro Amato del Monte" />
<meta name="keywords" content="computer" />
<meta name="description" content="Lots of sites nowadays offer digital music as .ape or .flac files; what’s wrong with mp3s ? I should include a technical note here together with a bit of history, but since I’m not the most qualified for this sort of thing I’ll keep it short and simple …" />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="aadm" />
<meta property="og:type" content="article"/>
<meta property="og:title" content="to convert ape audio files"/>
<meta property="og:url" content="http://aadm.github.io/2005-11-04-to-convert-ape-audio-files.html"/>
<meta property="og:description" content="Lots of sites nowadays offer digital music as .ape or .flac files; what’s wrong with mp3s ? I should include a technical note here together with a bit of history, but since I’m not the most qualified for this sort of thing I’ll keep it short and simple …"/>
<meta property="article:published_time" content="2005-11-04" />
<meta property="article:section" content="misc" />
<meta property="article:tag" content="computer" />
<meta property="article:author" content="Alessandro Amato del Monte" />
<!-- Bootstrap -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://aadm.github.io/theme/css/bootstrap.journal.min.css" type="text/css"/>
<link href="http://aadm.github.io/theme/css/font-awesome.min.css" rel="stylesheet">
<link href="http://aadm.github.io/theme/css/pygments/tango.css" rel="stylesheet">
<link href="http://aadm.github.io/theme/css/typogrify.css" rel="stylesheet">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="http://aadm.github.io/theme/css/style.css" type="text/css"/>
<link href="http://aadm.github.io/static/custom.css" rel="stylesheet">
<link href="http://aadm.github.io/feeds/all.atom.xml" type="application/atom+xml" rel="alternate"
title="aadm ATOM Feed"/>
</head>
<body>
<div class="navbar navbar-default navbar-fixed-top" role="navigation">
<div class="container">
<div class="navbar-header">
<button type="button" class="navbar-toggle" data-toggle="collapse" data-target=".navbar-ex1-collapse">
<span class="sr-only">Toggle navigation</span>
<span class="icon-bar"></span>
<span class="icon-bar"></span>
<span class="icon-bar"></span>
</button>
<a href="http://aadm.github.io/" class="navbar-brand">
aadm </a>
</div>
<div class="collapse navbar-collapse navbar-ex1-collapse">
<ul class="nav navbar-nav">
</ul>
<ul class="nav navbar-nav navbar-right">
<!-- <li><a href="http://aadm.github.io/blog_index.html"><i class="fa fa-th-list"></i><span class="icon-label">blog</span></a></li> -->
</ul>
</div>
<!-- /.navbar-collapse -->
</div>
</div> <!-- /.navbar -->
<!-- Banner -->
<!-- End Banner -->
<div class="container">
<div class="row">
<div class="col-lg-12">
<section id="content">
<article>
<header class="page-header">
<h1>
<a href="http://aadm.github.io/2005-11-04-to-convert-ape-audio-files.html"
rel="bookmark"
title="Permalink to to convert ape audio files">
to convert ape audio files
</a>
</h1>
</header>
<div class="well well-sm">
<footer class="post-info">
<span class="label label-default">Date</span>
<span class="published">
<i class="fa fa-calendar"></i><time datetime="2005-11-04T21:16:00+01:00"> 2005-11-04</time>
</span>
<span class="label label-default">Tags</span>
<a href="http://aadm.github.io/tag/computer.html">computer</a>
</footer><!-- /.post-info --> </div>
<div class="entry-content">
<p>Lots of sites nowadays offer digital music as .ape or .flac files; what’s wrong with mp3s ? </p>
<p>I should include a technical note here together with a bit of history, but since I’m not the most qualified for this sort of thing I’ll keep it short and simple: mp3 is a format that stores music in compressed format, therefore with some quality degradation (high compression=high degradation=low quality music=small file); wav/aiff is the format that is used for audio CDs, highest quality, uncompressed, large files (size ratio is 10:1 for <span class="caps">CD</span>-quality files versus mp3 files). So a bunch of people came up with some new formats for digital music, such as ape and flac. These are lossless compression formats — which means that they have exactly the same quality of the input <span class="caps">CD</span> music, but they’re half the size. So if you don’t want to trade on quality, go for ape/flac. </p>
<p>What if you just want to play this music and convert it in mp3, add it to iTunes, etc ? The answer is <strong>xACT</strong>. This is a little Mac <span class="caps">OS</span> X wrapper for a set of command-line tools available also for Linux and Windows.. </p>
<p>So here we go: </p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>make sure you have both the music.ape and the music.ape.cue file (the .cue file contains the split points and the name of the tracks).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>launch xACT, go to the “shntool” tab</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>select the “split” option; select the output format (usually I’d use aiff, then leave the conversion to mp3/aac format to iTunes)</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>drag the music.ape file in the drop area on the left</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>click the “Call Shntool” button; the app will now ask for the location of the file with split point data; that’s you music.ape.cue file ! Just select the .cue file, choose an output folder and the splitting/conversion process will begin.</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>A few notes to finish up: </p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>the cue file should begin with the “<span class="caps">FILE</span>” line; if it doesn’t then delete the first lines (they could have other information such as performer and title of the album).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>there’s very little information about what xACT is doing; if you’re worried that it might be stuck just have a look at the output folder, where you should see the output aiff files being created. Or just fire up the Activity Monitor, and look at processes called “sox”, or “mac” (usually with a fairly high degree of cpu usage).</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>xACT has lots of other options which can be helpful (you can, for example, create an .ape file with its .cue info sheet), but unfortunately has no automatic file renaming tool based on the cue files. So you’re kinda stuck with a set of music files called “split-track001.aiff”, “split-track002.aiff”, etc.</p>
<p>It should be simple enough to put together a perl or ruby script which has as input the cue file and does the job for you. </p>
</div>
<!-- /.entry-content -->
<section class="well" id="related-posts">
<h4>Related Posts:</h4>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://aadm.github.io/2019-05-02-relocating-to-linux.html">relocating to linux</a></li>
<li><a href="http://aadm.github.io/2013-12-04-naming-files.html">file naming</a></li>
<li><a href="http://aadm.github.io/2013-11-09-blog-renewal.html">blog update</a></li>
<li><a href="http://aadm.github.io/2013-07-24-google-calendar-activity-tracker.html">google calendar activity tracker</a></li>
<li><a href="http://aadm.github.io/2013-06-18-app-for-passwords-update.html">app for passwords update</a></li>
</ul>
</section>
</article>
</section>
<style type="text/css">
#navcontainer ul
{
margin: 0;
margin-top: 40px;
padding: 0;
list-style-type: none;
text-align: center;
}
#navcontainer ul li { display: inline; }
#navcontainer ul li a { padding: 1em 3em; }
</style>
<div id="navcontainer">
<ul id="navlist">
<li><a href="http://aadm.github.io/2005-11-04-tv-shows-2.html"><i class="fa fa-angle-left"></i> PREVIOUS</a></li>
<li><a href="http://aadm.github.io/2005-11-29-no-more-safari.html">NEXT <i class="fa fa-angle-right"></i></a></li>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<footer>
<div class="container">
<hr>
<div class="row">
<div class="col-xs-10">© 2005-2019 Alessandro Amato del Monte <p><small> <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="//i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/4.0/80x15.png" /></a>
<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</a>
</small></p>
</div>
<div class="col-xs-2"><p class="pull-right"><i class="fa fa-angle-up"></i> <a href="#">TOP</a></p></div>
</div>
</div>
</footer>
<script src="http://aadm.github.io/theme/js/jquery.min.js"></script>
<!-- Include all compiled plugins (below), or include individual files as needed -->
<script src="http://aadm.github.io/theme/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>
<!-- Enable responsive features in IE8 with Respond.js (https://github.com/scottjehl/Respond) -->
<script src="http://aadm.github.io/theme/js/respond.min.js"></script>
<!-- Google Analytics -->
<script type="text/javascript">
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-32354823-1']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
(function () {
var ga = document.createElement('script');
ga.type = 'text/javascript';
ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>
<!-- End Google Analytics Code -->
</body>
</html>