Monkey's Audio
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Monkey’s Audio is a lossless audio compression codec. Unlike lossy methods such as MP3, Ogg Vorbis, or Advanced Audio Coding that permanently discard data to save space, Monkey’s Audio compresses audio in a mathematically perfect way, creating bit-for-bit copies. Therefore, a file compressed with Monkey's Audio always sounds the same as the source file, no matter how many times the resulting file is burnt to a CD, ripped and re-encoded. Monkey's Audio files use the .APE extension.
Like all other lossless codecs, such as FLAC, Monkey's Audio's compression rates are virtually always far lower than those of "lossy" options, and thus the resulting files take up much more storage space. Audio at CD quality (44100 Hz, 16 bits per sample, 2 channels) can be compressed by MP3 to 128kb/s with only a slight loss in quality, while Monkey's Audio will struggle to compress even to 700kb/s. For a comparison of FLAC and other lossless audio codes, see foobar2000's study (http://foobar2000.net/lossless/) (in French).
See Also
External links
- Monkey's Audio official website (http://www.monkeysaudio.com/)
- Cog (http://cogosx.sf.net/) - new open source audio player for Mac OS X (Panther or later), supporting many codecs including .ape
- A comparison of several Lossless Audio encoders (http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lossless_comparison) at Hydrogenaudio Wiki.de:Monkey's Audio