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Topic: Monkey's Audio 4.06 doesn't see LAME (Read 8218 times) previous topic - next topic
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Monkey's Audio 4.06 doesn't see LAME

Hello everybody !


I have downloaded the latest Monkey's Audio binary package (4.06) from the official website and installed it.

I wanted to try the Convert Mode with LAME as the output coder (to convert .ape files to .mp3 files), but, after copying lame.exe and lame_enc.dll in the install directory and the "External" directory of Monkey's Audio, Monkey's Audio.exe doesn't seem to see it. In the Mode > Compression > External menu, only Monkey's Audio (External) appears.

I've tried with LAME 3.96.1, 3.97, 3.98.2, and still got no result.


However, I managed to force LAME encoding by renaming lame.exe to MAC.EXE, but if I do this, the settings you can add to the command line in Monkey's Audio.exe don't apply.


If anybody has an idea ...


Thanks in advance.

Monkey's Audio 4.06 doesn't see LAME

Reply #1
I'm afraid that these functions (converting to mp3) were available in version 3.99 and it seems they are not available in 4.06.
BTW, encoder in version 4.06 itself is calling 4.05 ...

Monkey's Audio 4.06 doesn't see LAME

Reply #2
In folder "External" there is file MAC.apx, looks like kind of script. I've copied it to the same folder renaming to LAME.apx, modified line <General>
to <Name>LAME (external)</Name> and now I have under external also LAME (external). Probably modifying all other lines related to description and compression you can get converting to mp3 using LAME working properly.

 

Monkey's Audio 4.06 doesn't see LAME

Reply #3
Use foobar2000. Configure the converter to use the command line encoder for LAME (lame.exe) and download the APE decoder for foobar2000. Done.
It's only audiophile if it's inconvenient.

Monkey's Audio 4.06 doesn't see LAME

Reply #4
In folder "External" there is file MAC.apx, looks like kind of script. I've copied it to the same folder renaming to LAME.apx, modified line <General>
to <Name>LAME (external)</Name> and now I have under external also LAME (external). Probably modifying all other lines related to description and compression you can get converting to mp3 using LAME working properly.


Although this thread is now almost 6 years old (!) it is still useful. My experiences...

Taking this as a hint on how to get this thing working... I modified the MAC.apx file
<General>
    <Name>WavPack (external)</Name>
    ...
<Compress>
    <Normal>
        <InputExtension>.wav</InputExtension>
        <OutputExtension>.wv</OutputExtension>
        <Application>.\wavpack.exe</Application>
        <CommandLine>[INPUT] [OUTPUT] -m</CommandLine>
        ...

And you can make up the rest as you go along.

This was good! When doing a 'convert' it took the input APE file and made an output file using the WavPack compressor (I put the executable in the 'external' folder). Problem is though, it creates a tempoary file with a "WV" extension, but when it renames the file to the final file name, it removes the extension!

Now I tried this with WV, but my eventual aim is to go FLAC, so I am going to experiment some more, and see if I get anywhere.

So, is this a bug, or something I am doing wrong?

By the way, I tried all the WavPack & FLAC frontends (all I could find, including that 'pay' program "AudioConvert"), but none of them recurse directories properly. I am transcoding an entire disk of APE to another disk of WV/FLAC (hopefully with the extensiion) and I want to preserve the entire directory structure. This extends to 5 or 6 levels deep in some cases, and everything else I've tried just won't do it.

MM

Monkey's Audio 4.06 doesn't see LAME

Reply #5
Update:

I tried this with FLAC, and the same result. The 'apx' file is again modified to specify ".flac" as the extension, and the command line is different.
<CommandLine>-o [OUTPUT] [INPUT]</CommandLine>

As expected, the 'external' option also works in 'compress' mode, however, when this is done, the extension is retained correctly.

This makes me think that the loss of the extension in 'convert' mode is a bug.

A workaround is to decompress all to WAV (going from the primary disk to the second disk), and then compress the entire second disk to FLAC and delete the WAVs en-route. The original disk hence remains untouched (nothing is erased from it). If I was picky (and I am), I would then have to perform a defrag. This turns a simple operation into a more complex one, but still far better than attempting to drop separate directories into the alternate frontends because they can't handle multi-level trees 

It is a shame there is not more explicit documentation on this feature of Monkey's. This forum post seems to be the only place on the web that talks about using the 'apx' file, and I have searched for hours! Everything else talks about using the older versions (up to v3.99f) that semi-hard-code external compressors. I like the new version (first version I have that does this is v4.06) because it can handle deep trees, and now that I have it going, it seems to be a much tidier solution than any of the official (and unofficial) frontend GUIs for either FLAC or WV!

Now if only it supported the verification tools for WV and FLAC...

MM

PS: If I don't hear back from the author on this thread in a reasonable time, I'll send a bug report directly (I'll run a few more experiments first though to make sure).