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[BullishDad]

To make my library more consistent and to save some space, I'm thinking of converting all WAV files to APE. 

When I first started ripping my music (about 3 years ago) I used EAC and created WAV files.  About a year ago, I began using MC to rip to APE.

I use APE or WAV when listening thru my stereo, and have a separate MP3 library for managing portable devices.

If I delete a WAV file, I imagine a similar quality WAV could be recreated with the APE. (If I understand Lossless properly.)

Because I spent so much time creating the WAV files, I want to make sure that I'm not going to regret converting to APE and deleting the WAVs.

Any thoughts are appreciated.

[Doof]

Your understanding is correct. Go ahead and convert to APE and be done with those pesky WAV files. APE is even better than WAV because it actually supports tag data.

But as always, do a couple first and make sure the results are disireable before you queue up your entire collection.

[Matt]

APE has really strong error detection built in.  You don't get that with WAV.

It bailed me out big time a few months ago when I had a bad stick of memory.  It allowed me to quickly find the few files with data corruption.  With WAV, I'd have been sunk.

[hit_ny]

APE has really strong error detection built in.  You don't get that with WAV.

It bailed me out big time a few months ago when I had a bad stick of memory.  It allowed me to quickly find the few files with data corruption.  With WAV, I'd have been sunk.

You can get this if you use checksums (sfv/md5), with any data.

Would be mighty cool if you could build testing these checksums into the next version of MC

[KingSparta]

Would be mighty cool if you could build testing these checksums into the next version of MC

yep sure would

2 of them

one with tags and one without

[Jakester]

If you copy a .wav file, convert it to .ape and then back to .wav, the two .wav files should be bit perfect.  Definition of lossless.  Like a .zip file on a PC.

Go for it.  APE is a great format, supports tags (even better than .mp3), and is 1/2 to 1/3 the size.  You can always convert back to .wav if you wish.

[scottlindner]

The *only* reason not to convert to APE is that APE is less portable than WAV.  But with each day APE is becoming more and more portable so it really isn't a big deal.  If APE can be played every place you care your music to be played.. portability isn't an issue for you.

If it means anything, I'm embarking on a project to rerip all of my CDs to APE.  It's like the perfect audio format for all of the reasons noted in this thread.

Cheers,
Scott

[BullishDad]

Thanks everyone for your replies.

Given that there were no compelling reasons not to, I completed the conversion last night.  I had to do some maintenance, like missing track numbers first, then slowly began the conversion one artist at a time.  After the artist was done, I played back a portion of a few songs, as a test and what I heard was fine.  As bedtime approached, I got bold and decided to create a huge batch to run over night.  There were no problems reported by MC when I checked in the morning. 

I chose not to delete the WAV files upon conversion, so I still have that to do.  Hit_ny brought up the discussion about checksum, which is an area I have no experience.  I googled MD5 and saw you could download a program that creates a checksum for a file or group of files.

I'm not sure if it's worth the time to figure out how to use the Advanced Checksum Verifier, then run and compare the results.  Does MC have some kind of internal check as it completes the conversion? 

Any thoughts about running Advanced Checksum Verifier?  Waste of time or necessary tool?

[GHammer]

An easy MD5 tool is FSum which can be run from the commandline to do entire directories if you want. If you search for this, get the free commandline version. For me it is easier to use than bothering with a GUI.

If you want to be certain about the conversion you could recreate a wav from an ape and then check the sizes or MD5 for the original wav and the recreated wav. After a few I think you'll have confidence and skip doing all of them.

[hit_ny]

If you copy a .wav file, convert it to .ape and then back to .wav, the two .wav files should be bit perfect.  Definition of lossless.  Like a .zip file on a PC.

This is what i thought as well, but verifying the conversion to other lossless formats is harder.

The question is not whether to pick APE over WAV, that one is easy, but rather about the pros & cons of APE vs other lossless contenders.