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[queni]

 

Hi folks, I’m not certain if you would be able to help, be willing to help.

I’ve got about 40-50 .ape files from <2006 which were created with a long lost download of Monkey Audio from WAV files ripped from 12” singles long since lost too (Group A). I also have some which were created post 2007, seemingly with the same version of Monkey Audio, but I have no way to tell (Group B).

Now then, here is my predicament. For some reason ALL of the older Group A files are unplayable, they start up in Media Jukebox, but just loop through the player with no output in quadruple quick time. In Media Jukebox the artist/track titles seem to appear correctly. The Group B files play perfectly.

It would appear that the Group A files are corrupted somehow, but I have no way of telling HOW or WHY they’ve become corrupted. I’ve tried to re-encode back to WAV files, but Monkey Audio just spits them back as corrupt.

So, what I am asking for is a little technical help with this. If necessary I can send you log files, or even a sample of one of the files to do some diagnostics on.

TIA

[JimH]

You might try the trial version of JRiver Media Center.  It's here:

www.jrmediacenter.com

[queni]

Is there a difference between the APE converter in MJ and MC? If not, I don't see how this will help. However, I will try it tonight.

[Matt]

You might get the Monkey's Audio tool directly from monkeysaudio.com.  If it says the files are corrupt, they are.  APE files have a robust error detection system.

[queni]

Is there a way of, if they ARE corrupted, recovering them?

[queni]

Okay, did a Verify in MonkeyAudio and they are coming up with Invalid Checksum... As requested before, is there any way to recover these?

[Matt]

Okay, did a Verify in MonkeyAudio and they are coming up with Invalid Checksum... As requested before, is there any way to recover these?

Once data is gone, it's gone.  Bad system memory is the most common cause of data corruption.  A bad tagging program can also corrupt a file. 

JRiver is a good APE tagging program (it uses the reference code), but years back I seem to remember some free program goofing up APE files.

If you use Media Jukebox / Media Center to convert the APE files, it will try to salvage the file as best it can.  It could be a minor blip (at the end if it's the tag).  The Monkey's Audio tool by contrast is all-or-nothing.

[Alex B]

queni,

Did you actually try MC14? Last year Matt added some fixes to MC's APE decoder that make it a bit more forgiving. (MJ12 is older and doesn't contain those changes.)

As Matt said, if you are lucky, MC14 might be able to decode the files, but even if that works it can't do miracles. If the actual audio stream is corrupted it can only bypass the bad passages.

[JimH]

You might not know that Matt is also the author of Monkey's Audio.

[queni]

You might not know that Matt is also the author of Monkey's Audio.

Yes, I appreciate that, that's why I came here to see if I could get some advise on what to do... well, I've now tried it with MC14 as well, and just got nothing Looks like they're gone forever now - boo