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Topic: Monkey's Audio 3.99 released (Read 59638 times) previous topic - next topic
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Monkey's Audio 3.99 released

Reply #50
OK, here are my results for "Pink Floyd - Hey You" (used the MAC GUI as decoder):

WAV -> APE 3.97 -> WAV = Pass
WAV -> APE 3.99 (MAC.EXE) -> WAV = Pass
WAV -> APE 3.99 (foobar2000) -> WAV = Error

Before running the conversion I have made sure that none of the files contained any tags (or ReplayGain information).

Edit: All files are good when decoded using the foobar2000 diskwriter. It seems that the MAC GUI has problems with the foobar2000 encoded APE file.

Monkey's Audio 3.99 released

Reply #51
Foo_ape Case uploaded before was vulnerable to field name length exploit in maclib, please redownload it. Old foo_ape bundled with foobar2000 0.8.1 was patched against this already, so if you didn't update you have nothing to worry about (other than 3.99 files not working).
Alternatively, patched foo_ape is available here.
Microsoft Windows: We can't script here, this is bat country.

Monkey's Audio 3.99 released

Reply #52
Thanks for the quick answer, but that did not solve the problem. The MAC GUI still doesn't decode the APE correctly.

Edit: It seems that the WAV created by the MAC GUI lacks a header.

Monkey's Audio 3.99 released

Reply #53
Sorry about the foo_monkey issue. I uploaded new version that decodes correctly with Monkey's GUI and mac.exe.


Monkey's Audio 3.99 released

Reply #55
I was hoping for significant improvements, to make APE a more competitive alternative to FLAC.  What I've seen so far, the very slightly decreased filesize & slightly increased encode/decode time, doesn't impress me.

According to HansHeijden's graph, FLAC still decodes 2-5x more quickly than APE (12x if you include -insane), while the average difference in WAV compression between the recommended settings is a mere ~4%. 

To compare statistics more relevantly, on average a -5 FLAC is ~8% larger, but ~5x quicker to decode & ~2x quicker to encode than an Extra High APE.  Against a High APE, -5 FLAC is also ~7% larger, but ~3x quicker to decode & just a bit faster to encode.

For transcoding & playback purposes, FLAC still seems to remain relatively unchallenged.  =/

Monkey's Audio 3.99 released

Reply #56
In the world of lossless codecs, 4%, 5% or 8% means A LOT of diference for many people.

That's the reason for LA to exist.
Just a thought...

Monkey's Audio 3.99 released

Reply #57
Quote
For transcoding & playback purposes, FLAC still seems to remain relatively unchallenged.  =/

I don't think that flac is advantaged on playback, at least on computer. Except in some rare cases (Pentium 75 or long DSP list, including SSRC in slow mode).
But for decoding purpose, flac is really nice (like wavpack -fast and the unbeatable shorten).
But flac have really poor ratio, and I'm not convinced that MAC have to be considered as a "flac challenger".
The two formats seems to have different purpose or priority.

[span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'](EDIT : spelling)[/span]

Monkey's Audio 3.99 released

Reply #58
IMHO, Monkey's Audio has a good ballance between compression ratio and speed.

I gave FLAC a try with "Pink Floyd - Hey You" and Monkey's Audio (extra high) converted the 48 MB file to 23 MB, while FLAC (8) reached only 29 MB. I cannot say that the encoding time differed a lot. It took about 7 seconds for MAC and 5 for FLAC on my Pentium 4 (3.06 GHz).

Edit: Spelling

Monkey's Audio 3.99 released

Reply #59
Yes, speed means nothing to me, and I don't understand why it means anything to anyone else really. I do care a little about CPU usage during playback, but APE seems to be fine in this respect; around 4-8%, right in line with WAV. Optimfrog genarally gives me about 2-3 times the CPU usage of APE. I haven't even tried LA because of the Microsoft .NET requirement; there's no way I'm installing that "shizzle."

Anyway, I have a question: I found a plugin for Nero that allows you to burn APEs from CUE files, e.t.c. but it doesn't seem to be working with files encoded in v3.99 of Monkey's Audio. Here's the link:
http://neroplugins.cd-rw.org/

Does anyone know if there'll be an update of this anytime soon, or know of another burning utility that supports CUE + v3.99 APE files directly?

Monkey's Audio 3.99 released

Reply #60
Quote
IMHO, Monkey's Audio has a good ballance between compression ratio and speed.

Seconded. I would love to use FLAC, but until FLAC significantly improves compression ratio's the choice is rather mute. I would lose a lot of drive space if I were to re-encode using FLAC, and on todays fast machines Monkey's is quick enough.

Monkey's Audio 3.99 released

Reply #61
i'm having trouble converting from normal apes to mp3s via lame 3.96... tried it with an earlier version too, but it still didn't work...

it just crashes and gives me the xp send error dialog.  anyone else have this trouble?

mac will transcode to ogg just fine, and decompresses perfectly as well... btw, i'm using the mac gui on windows xp

edit: if i'm on the wrong topic, please let me know where to go

Monkey's Audio 3.99 released

Reply #62
Quote
Does anyone know if there'll be an update of this anytime soon, or know of another burning utility that supports CUE + v3.99 APE files directly?

Mausau, the author of the Nero Monkey's Audio plugin appears to have halted releases. The last plugin release was 12/13/03 and several versions behind with some builds (AAC for example).
foobar2000 with the Monkey's Audio decoder (foo_ape) & Audio CD writer components will allow you to do so.

If you're not using foobar, the superb Burrrn by Gambit should, afaik.
Replace the (v. 3.97) MAC.exe within Program Files\Burrrn\ with the new MAC.exe from v.3.99.

Time to sleeep, tec

Monkey's Audio 3.99 released

Reply #63
Quote
I frequently get checksum errors when seeking quickly through ape files at normal compression and above.  Fast compression doesn't seem to have this problem though.

Quote
ERROR (foo_ape) : invalid checksum

Is this a known problem?

Same problem here - sometimes even during playback. Quite annoying actually. There's nothing wrong with the file itself though.


Monkey's Audio 3.99 released

Reply #65
My problem with this update is that the author chose to break the decoder for a point release with a small increase in compression performance.

Is speed important?  That depends.  Last night I ran a video reencoding job that took just over seven hours on a P4 2.6ghz machine.  Now if I wanted to transcode a bunch of archived albums that day, I would be out of luck.

A lot of the focus around here is on little things.  Sometimes too little.  Breaking the decoder is orders of magnitude more important than the improvement in compression demonstrated herein.

Monkey's Audio 3.99 released

Reply #66
Why? You can still play old files with the new decoder. 1min to update. That's it.

Monkey's Audio 3.99 released

Reply #67
You can play old files with the new decoder, but not the other  way around.  One minute to update, but only if you know what the problem is and where to get the decoder.  Think about it this way, what if varios developers brought out a point upgrades of their MP3 encoders that broke all existing decoders?  Havoc would result.  Or, look at all the debate about Vorbis 2 and how it will break existing decoders. The exotic and obscure is the norm around here, I sometimes forget.

Monkey's Audio 3.99 released

Reply #68
Quote
Still no pipe support for mac.exe, pitty.

I haven't seen any response to this lamentation, so I thought I would mention that I've been maintaining a Windows version with pipe support for use with shntool, available here:  http://www.etree.org/shnutils/shntool/

Beware, it's an ugly hack, but it works for me.


Monkey's Audio 3.99 released

Reply #70
Ok I'm gonna use 3.99 High compression becuase the Nero plugin now works, and I really like the APE File Info. I like high becuase extra high and insanse save very little space, take longer, and use extra memory to play.
Cyberdyne Systems - Making you a better person through technology.

Monkey's Audio 3.99 released

Reply #71
Quote
added 3.99 to the FLAC comparison

http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html

apple lossless is there too.

Josh

It's interesting to note that in your test Apple Lossless is so close to FLAC (default) as to not make a difference--414.45 MB vs 413.46 MB--1 MB is certainly nothing to lose sleep over (especially after reading that Microsloth expects everyone to have 1 terabyte of storage to run Longshot--er--Longhorn in '07). This pretty much decides it for me. I had been waiting around until someone had a FLAC or Monkey's Audio solution for Mac OS X (I have both PCs and Macs in my home), but I don't see the point in continuing to wait. It may not have the best compression out there, but as far as I see it, Apple Lossless is the winner for cross-platform support. Nope, it won't work with Linux, but Windows XP and Mac OS X are all that I care about. Apple Lossless is streamable, iTunes runs on both my PCs and Macs (even automatically sharing songs across my network--regardless of whether the machines are running Windows or Mac OS X), I'm even able to play Apple Lossless files on my iPod. I've got ample tags, album covers, smart playlists, the nicest media library interface around...what's not to love? Well, there's no gapless playback right now...but hopefully it's coming. In the mean time, I'll get by with crossfades set to zero, which works fairly well for most transitions.

Regards,

Jay
Watching for pigs on the wing...

Monkey's Audio 3.99 released

Reply #72
Quote
My problem with this update is that the author chose to break the decoder for a point release with a small increase in compression performance.

The new decoder (v3.99) seems to be decoding v3.97 streams fine, that's ok with me. I tested with Easy CD-DA Extractor, it now includes the latest Monkey.

Monkey's Audio 3.99 released

Reply #73
From my preliminary testing: It's not that different from .96 or .97 - .99 will produce a working gapless file at -c4000 ... anything above will be be buggy and (halfway) unplayable and anything below will be a waste of space unless your CPU is 10 yrs old ...
"ONLY THOSE WHO ATTEMPT THE IMPOSSIBLE WILL ACHIEVE THE ABSURD"
        - Oceania Association of Autonomous Astronauts