Topic: Question About APE... (Read 6186 times)

LonWar · « **on:** August 21, 2003, 09:25:48 am »

If I rip my cd's to ape and then do a Conversion to MP3 at 128kbps or 320 will it be as good as just ripping it in those speeds?

I know if I rip it at 320 then convert it to anything else it loses quality....

Thanks,

KingSparta · « **Reply #1 on:** August 21, 2003, 10:04:10 am »

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will it be as good as just ripping it in those speeds?

yes

LonWar · « **Reply #2 on:** August 21, 2003, 10:07:32 am »

Just another question then,

Why would ape to MP3 have no loss when MP3 to MP3 would be?

I'm just trying to understand...

nameless · « **Reply #3 on:** August 21, 2003, 10:19:18 am »

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If I rip my cd's to ape and then do a Conversion to MP3 at 128kbps or 320 will it be as good as just ripping it in those speeds?

You mean just as bad? Yes.

The general, non-technical explanation is that APE is a non-lossy format; you can think of going from APE to MP3 as being equivalent to going directly from your CD to MP3. With MP3 to MP3, you are taking a file that has already had its quality compromised, then processing it again, and making it lose even more quality.

This site has enough related info to make your eyes glaze over.

LonWar · « **Reply #4 on:** August 21, 2003, 11:20:34 am »

Thanks,

LonWar · « **Reply #5 on:** August 21, 2003, 01:50:05 pm »

When ripping in APE there are a couple of choices.

Fast
Normal
High
Extra High

If this is lossless then whats the difference.

Thanks again

Doof · « **Reply #6 on:** August 21, 2003, 02:00:38 pm »

Levels of compression.

Basically, High is a smaller file than Fast. But the higher you go with the compression, the more processing power you need to decompress it. Hence the lowest setting, Fast, is the fastest to be compressed and decompressed, takes less processing power to do so, but is a bigger file than Extra High, which takes more processing power to decompress.

The quality is the same no matter which setting you choose.

Doof · « **Reply #7 on:** August 21, 2003, 02:02:11 pm »

Think of it this way, APE is to audio, what ZIP is to plain old files. No matter how small ZIP compresses a file, it can still be decompressed to the same original files.

LonWar · « **Reply #8 on:** August 21, 2003, 02:19:23 pm »

I just ripped a cd in ape Extra High and some songs are 858kbps and some are 944, 953 etc.

I guess that is normal?

Matt · « **Reply #9 on:** August 21, 2003, 02:29:16 pm »

APE is VBR, so it's normal that they vary. Piano music will be like 200 - 400 kbps. Hard rock is more like 700 - 1000.

And I wouldn't use "Extra High" -- lots of extra waiting for not much gain. "High" and below are a lot more efficient.

LonWar · « **Reply #10 on:** August 21, 2003, 02:43:22 pm »

by Gain you mean size?

LonWar · « **Reply #11 on:** August 21, 2003, 03:14:28 pm »

Ape Extra High is 494mb and Fast is 503mb.

So the 9mb is just compression and not quality... I can live with that.

Thanks all.

KingSparta · « **Reply #12 on:** August 21, 2003, 03:45:24 pm »

I use the "Extra, Extra, Extra, Extra High Setting"

it seeems to work better on Disco music

Charted At 01 In 1976

Listening to: 'Play That Funky Music (White Boy)' from 'The Best Of Wild Cherry' by 'Wild Cherry' on Media Center 9.1

gkerber · « **Reply #13 on:** August 21, 2003, 05:24:10 pm »

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APE is VBR, so it's normal that they vary. Piano music will be like 200 - 400 kbps. Hard rock is more like 700 - 1000.

And I wouldn't use "Extra High" -- lots of extra waiting for not much gain. "High" and below are a lot more efficient.

Matt - What do you know about APE anyway?

Just kidding...

You are the first person I know who has a newsgroup named after their software product.

alt.binaries.sounds.monkeysaudio

I think you should have Monkey icon for your user id....

sraymond · « **Reply #14 on:** August 21, 2003, 06:42:20 pm »

So Matt is Monkey? Say it ain't so! I've got to start paying more attention.

Scott-

Doof · « **Reply #15 on:** August 21, 2003, 07:01:36 pm »

Yeah, Matt is Monkey.

Sergio · « **Reply #16 on:** August 22, 2003, 03:14:15 am »

Yep, he's the one that got some people hooked on lossless

jleerigby · « **Reply #17 on:** August 22, 2003, 04:20:49 am »

I've never quite understood the 'MP3=bad quality' notion. I always thought that, provided you rip at say 160 or above, all the losses are sounds that the human ear is not capable of detecting, therefore to me and you it sounds the same.

In my experience (using digital connection to a Denon AVR 3802 from an Audigy2) my MP3s @ 192 kbps sound just the same as a .wav

gkerber · « **Reply #18 on:** August 22, 2003, 05:19:50 am »

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I've never quite understood the 'MP3=bad quality' notion. I always thought that, provided you rip at say 160 or above, all the losses are sounds that the human ear is not capable of detecting, therefore to me and you it sounds the same.

To some it sounds the same, to others it's distorted. The sound quality of any lossless encoder is lower, how much,if any that offends the listener is in the ears of the listener.

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In my experience (using digital connection to a Denon AVR 3802 from an Audigy2) my MP3s @ 192 kbps sound just the same as a .wav

I can clearly hear the difference at 128, I don't think I can hear any difference at 256, everyone has a threshold where they can hear the differnce, assuming their equipment can present the sound in high enough quailty to expose the difference. If I used a portable player, I would use lossy encoding for space concerns.

What if I used mp3 to encode at a level where I can't hear the difference today, and then later I begin to hear the difference? Too late, the bits are gone..... And then that would mean re-ripping millions of cd's. So I use ape, hd space is cheap these days, and I can sleep better at night not worrying about those lost bits....

Doof · « **Reply #19 on:** August 22, 2003, 05:22:44 am »

There are some songs where the quality loss is very clear. On others, it's not so clear.

But there are other benefits to APE. Hate the way MP3's can't ever seem to really play gapless? APE doesn't have this problem.

Plus if you use the APE+APL CUE sheet method, you can always recreate a perfect replica of your CD if it ever gets damaged or lost.

LisaRCT · « **Reply #20 on:** August 22, 2003, 05:51:32 am »

APL cue sheets?
Ooops, looks like I missed something when I switched to APE.
Are they like m3u playlists?
How do you generate them?

Doof · « **Reply #21 on:** August 22, 2003, 07:14:49 am »

You'd use Exact Audio Copy to rip the entire CD to one APE file. It then generates a CUE sheet, which is just a text file that basically says "Track X begins at this position and ends at this position". It also has some very limited track info as well, like Title, Artist, Album, Track #.

Then you use the Make APL tool that's installed with Monkey's Audio. It reads the CUE sheet, and generates a seperate APL file for each track. Each APL is nothing more than a pointer to its part of the Album-length APE.

MC then imports these APL files and treats them the same way it would if you'd ripped each track to individual APE's.

zevele10 · « **Reply #22 on:** August 22, 2003, 07:20:39 am »

Why this method better than rip each tracks ?

bspachman · « **Reply #23 on:** August 22, 2003, 07:36:21 am »

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Why this method better than rip each tracks ?

Because you end up with a single APE file that is the whole CD. If you use the CD Read/Write offsets in EAC, you can actually create an EXACT duplicate of the original CD from your APE file. If you use separate tracks, you can run the risk of samples getting shifted one way or the other.

As far as gapless playback goes, I don't know if there is a difference.

Best,
Brad

gkerber · « **Reply #24 on:** August 22, 2003, 07:39:55 am »

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Because you end up with a single APE file that is the whole CD. If you use the CD Read/Write offsets in EAC, you can actually create an EXACT duplicate of the original CD from your APE file. If you use separate tracks, you can run the risk of samples getting shifted one way or the other.

Sounds neat, and allows a total repro of the cd for a burn.

But it does prevent deleting individual tracks later after we learn we don't like them all.

Depends if one is album oriented or track oriented.

zevele10 · « **Reply #25 on:** August 22, 2003, 07:51:59 am »

There are some songs where the quality loss is very clear. On others, it's not so clear.

-=-=-=-

This is really true.
Got not long ago some Chris Rea songs at 128 and they sound good.

But ,as a rule ,mp3 128 is not good sounding.

Most of you know i'am a vinyl head . But i riped Cure Pornography from a remastered cd and i can tell you that the Lame 192 sounds MUCH better than the original lp.
I found someone with the original cd - not remastered - and the mp3 still sounds MUCH better.

In another hand if i play the 180grs Lp from analog tapes ,the mp3 is just junk

gkerber · « **Reply #26 on:** August 22, 2003, 08:02:09 am »

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Most of you know i'am a vinyl head . But i riped Cure Pornography from a remastered cd and i can tell you that the Lame 192 sounds MUCH better than the original lp.
I found someone with the original cd - not remastered - and the mp3 still sounds MUCH better.

The Garbage In, Garbage Out rule applies. A totally accurate encoder, encoding a bad sounding input file will produce a file that sounds worse (but is is totally accurate) than a lossy encoder encoding a perfectly sounding input file (not totally accurate).

LisaRCT · « **Reply #27 on:** August 22, 2003, 08:45:13 am »

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Sounds neat, and allows a total repro of the cd for a burn.

But it does prevent deleting individual tracks later after we learn we don't like them all.

Depends if one is album oriented or track oriented.

So I gather there is no easy way to use this cue sheet to break this single file into seperate track files later?

gkerber · « **Reply #28 on:** August 22, 2003, 08:55:06 am »

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So I gather there is no easy way to use this cue sheet to break this single file into seperate track files later?

Good question. anyone?

Matt · « **Reply #29 on:** August 22, 2003, 10:19:11 am »

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If you use separate tracks, you can run the risk of samples getting shifted one way or the other.

Are you sure about that? Have you seen examples with a modern accurate stream drive where the sum of the tracks is different than the whole?

I rip to individual APE tracks, and it's always been perfectly gapless for me on playback.

Seriously, let us know if there's a reason for this and we'll add it to MC.

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So I gather there is no easy way to use this cue sheet to break this single file into seperate track files later?

Sure, you can decompress an individual APL file with any program that properly supports Monkey's Audio.

gkerber · « **Reply #30 on:** August 22, 2003, 10:24:02 am »

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I rip to individual APE tracks, and it's always been perfectly gapless for me on playback...

Me too.

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Sure, you can decompress an individual APL file with any program that properly supports Monkey's Audio.

I'm confused. If I have one huge ape file and a cue sheet for it, where would I start and in what program to get it broken down into individual tracks? Thanks.

Matt · « **Reply #31 on:** August 22, 2003, 10:28:12 am »

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I'm confused. If I have one huge ape file and a cue sheet for it, where would I start and in what program to get it broken down into individual tracks? Thanks.

You have one giant APE file. Then you have a little APL file for each track. The APL links back to a region of the main APE file and also contains tag information.

Using the APE SDK, you open an APL just like you open an APE file, so they're functionally identical -- including decompression.

Hopefully that makes sense. Like I said though, I'm still not sure why this is good with a modern CD drive.

gkerber · « **Reply #32 on:** August 22, 2003, 10:31:40 am »

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You have one giant APE file. Then you have a little APL file for each track. The APL links back to a region of the main APE file and also contains tag information.

Using the APE SDK, you open an APL just like you open an APE file, so they're functionally identical -- including decompression.

Hopefully that makes sense. Like I said though, I'm still not sure why this is good with a modern CD drive.

I woudn't use it, but sometimes I get a huge ape file and need to break it up into tracks. I've been doing it manually using an audio editor which is quite tedious.

I never get any apl files, so I guess I'm stuck doing it manually (or burning from the cue file and then ripping ...)

dkan24 · « **Reply #33 on:** August 22, 2003, 11:28:57 am »

Try this program:

http://www.homepages.hetnet.nl/~mjmlooijmans/cdwave/download.html

It does not read ape or apl though. So you have to decompress back to wav. Then use the original cue sheet. It works perfectly.

gkerber · « **Reply #34 on:** August 22, 2003, 11:40:13 am »

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Try this program:

http://www.homepages.hetnet.nl/~mjmlooijmans/cdwave/download.html

It does not read ape or apl though. So you have to decompress back to wav. Then use the original cue sheet. It works perfectly.

Thanks! I will give it a try, converting to wav is no problem, in fact I have to do that anyway to manually split the file in Goldwave.

hit_ny · « **Reply #35 on:** August 23, 2003, 12:03:50 am »

Ahh i seen to have found the right thread (maybe)

i like the way ape has this makeapl utility. it means that a big APE file can be played as one mixed album or put into a random playlist using APL. MC treats it like an individual file and analyse audio works etc.

What i am looking for is a similar utility to do this with mp3. i have lots of albums ripped as one big MP3 with cue sheets. i can imagine so do a lot of others.

With the latest MC to date my options are to play the whole MP3 file with just artist album info & album titile displayed. i have no way of seeing what the tracks are nor any way to inventory them using MC as it is currently.

Now i am sure if i could turn back the clock i prolly would have used APE, but i cant. So for the moment my options are to

1 - split the big MP3 file into individual tracks and store the big one as well. ( doubles HD space reqd) since i dont want to lose the big mixed file. Not really good

2- listen with winamp. but i would like to use MC instead.

SO in summary i am asking is there a way MC can create a similar way to APL maybe call it MPL files( or whatever you want) so that i can import all the track names of the big mp3 file from the cue sheet and have them appear transparently in MC. Any modifications, AA analysis to the track names imported would be stored in the MPL file as with APL files. The cue sheet remains untouched by MC.

This would require MC to
-parse the cue sheet,
-understand it points to an mp3, create MPL files.
- enable MC to recognise the MPL file and play it as it does currently with APL.
- This would be done in one step during import

Can/Will this be done in MC at all ?

Doof · « **Reply #36 on:** August 23, 2003, 01:02:53 pm »

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Seriously, let us know if there's a reason for this and we'll add it to MC.

How about adding APE+CUE & APL creation to MC? I could ditch EAC altogether, then.

nameless · « **Reply #37 on:** August 23, 2003, 07:09:24 pm »

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If you use the CD Read/Write offsets in EAC, you can actually create an EXACT duplicate of the original CD from your APE file. If you use separate tracks, you can run the risk of samples getting shifted one way or the other.

If you use offset correction in EAC, your individual APE files will also be "exact duplicates" of their CD originals. So that reason for using CUE/APL goes out the window.

Omni · « **Reply #38 on:** August 23, 2003, 10:22:20 pm »

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If you use offset correction in EAC, your individual APE files will also be "exact duplicates" of their CD originals. So that reason for using CUE/APL goes out the window.

This is technically true, of course, but in reality, we are talking a few milliseconds of padded nulls (read: silence). Given that the read offset varies from CD player to player, I think the Red Book standard actually requires a specific window of leading silence to account for this variation. (Given I used to work for Philips, you'd think I'd know for sure, but I don't.

) So in the end, does it really matter?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not throwing stones or anything. In fact, I still generally rip my CD's with PlexTools for this reason alone, i.e., to adjust the read offset correctly. I am just saying that admittedly, this is just a psychological hang-up, not one that is really based in reality.

Omni

nameless · « **Reply #39 on:** August 24, 2003, 09:05:25 am »

Of course. I was not arguing the benefits of offset correction; I know it's a waste of time (though I admittedly use it in EAC, mostly because "it's there", and the same neurotic reasons you quoted).

My real point was that the ability to correct offsets doesn't make using CUE/APL better than ripping to individual tracks (as was suggested by another poster), since even if the offsets were significant, offset correction would benefit both methods, not just CUE/APL. Matter of fact, offset correction is much more a benefit to individual-track ripping than to the CUE/APL method.

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Author Topic: Question About APE... (Read 6186 times)

nameless

gkerber

sraymond

jleerigby

gkerber

LisaRCT

zevele10

gkerber

zevele10

gkerber

LisaRCT

gkerber

gkerber

gkerber

gkerber

nameless

nameless