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Topic: Monkey's Audio Testers Wanted Again (Read 3600 times) previous topic - next topic
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Monkey's Audio Testers Wanted Again

Hi there,

I released a new beta version of Monkey's Audio:
https://www.monkeysaudio.com/download.html

It switches from warning level 4 to all warnings and works through several and just suppresses a few (mostly informational ones).

I'm just hoping for some testing to make sure it still verifies old files and nothing fell through the cracks.

Thanks!

Re: Monkey's Audio Testers Wanted Again

Reply #2 –
This codec was my first lossless one when many many years ago I started going lossless. Though I have nowadays almost everything in FLAC and some in WavPack, I wanted to give Monkey's Audio's new version a quick try to see where compression stands without having to set up foobar2000 converter entries.

The MAC frontend just supports a few input formats and FLAC is not among them. Dragging or selecting folders containing FLAC just does nothing. The same for folders with WavPack files.

Then I saw when clicking the "Add Files" button I can select WavPack files but with .wav extension. Files with .wv are ignored, even if I select "All Files (*,*)".

Re: Monkey's Audio Testers Wanted Again

Reply #3 –
If you switch the mode to "Decompress" or "Verify", both WavPack and FLAC should be fully supported.

Re: Monkey's Audio Testers Wanted Again

Reply #4 –
Thanks to your hint I saw there's a Convert mode which indeed recognizes FLAC and WavPack files and convert them to APE, but without tagging (no tags transferred).

I converted a few albums and I must say that all APE compression levels are impressive (even better than TAK), but for the Extra High and Insane modes the decoding speed is much penalized. The insane converted APE files in foobar2000 start playing after 2-3 seconds after loading and when scrolling the progress bar to somewhere in the middle of the song while song is playing takes from 3-5 seconds to hear the music again. APE files converted in extra high mode have less playback delay and the ones in high mode even less. I've never got this playback delay with FLAC, WavPack, ALAC or TAK files. This is on Win10 Intel Q9650 with SSD.

Besides this, I haven't noticed any error.

Re: Monkey's Audio Testers Wanted Again

Reply #5 –
As long as you don't care about what non-audio was in an original .wav file, you can use foobar2000 to convert between lossless formats as long as they are not 32-bit integer.

I kinda married FLAC (and nowadays storage is much cheaper) so I don't use Monkey's, yet some general ramblings:
* It is "easy" to support someone else's decoder. (refalac can do that as well - although it does not redistribute, you need to copy the codec's .dll into the refalac directory.)
* For applications that support stdout/pipe/stdin, converting the audio isn't witchcraft either.

But:
* To copy metadata, you need to be able to handle the source's file format or tag output, which is a different thing altogether. (Even if WavPack uses the APEv2 tags - unless you use some application that insists on writing ID3 - it is not straightforward!)
* Add to that that both WavPack and Monkey's are wave file compressors that recreate not only the audio, but also the original .wav file with its metadata, WAVE format version, container file structure - bit by bit the same file. You won't get that by piping the audio only. So that is a different thing than piping. Of course it could be handled by a two stage procedure - with tag transfers as a third.
(FLAC is a PCM audio compressor, it has no ambition of recreating the file, only the audio.)

So sure, those who want to archive bit by bit their old .wav files and tag them in the meantime, and convert either way between those formats that restore entire files files (WavPack/Monkey's/OptimFROG), would want a utility that for each file can (1) restore the WAVE from the source format, (2) encode the target file, (3) transfer tags from source to target and probably also (4) bit-compare source and target audio to verify the conversion. But that takes way more than the ambition of creating a lossless compressor!
Those who only want the audio (if the original was not a .wav file, say a CD - or if it has been converted by an utility that pipes the audio only) - can use foobar2000. 


Phew, long. (It would take me even more time to cut down this down to half length.)


As for "Insane" ... there could be two reasons to call the mode "Insane". One is to appeal to those who want the most bad-ass; the second is to warn everyone else that this is ... insane. Developer can answer for himself, but back in the day Insane was introduced (when? the version history doesn't tell!), it should probably be both.

Re: Monkey's Audio Testers Wanted Again

Reply #6 –
Quote from: Alexxander on
This codec was my first lossless one when many many years ago I started going lossless. [...]
I guess we can safely assume it was most old HA members' 'first'.  ;)
Listen to the music, not the media it's on.
União e reconstrução

Re: Monkey's Audio Testers Wanted Again

Reply #7 –
I decode Monkey files with "shnconv". I think I never succeed to compile Monkey. But I have a old "mac" executable. So maybe I did  at some point.


It seem that the shntools deal with the *.ape format without Monkey.

I just try to recompile shntools and it read:

checking for mac... no (install for ape support)

But then in the end:

formats :  wav aiff shn flac ape ...


 

Re: Monkey's Audio Testers Wanted Again

Reply #8 –
shntool invokes the codecs as "helper programs", which for Windows means .exe files in shtool's directory or PATH: http://shnutils.freeshell.org/shntool/
But, the Monkey's executable you find there is patched - IIRC to handle piping, which the official build did not support.
Monkey's officially got pipe less than half a year ago.
There should be enough players that can decode and play .ape, as ffmpeg can do that (stereo only and not 32-bit, last time I checked - I haven't done that much testing).


Quote from: includemeout on
Quote from: Alexxander on
This codec was my first lossless one when many many years ago I started going lossless. [...]
I guess we can safely assume it was most old HA members' 'first'.  ;)

"safely" and "most" becomes a too bold statement - remember people were downloading .shn bootlegs before there were any Hydrogenaudio nor Monkey's nor FLAC (nor WavPack) around - but if you allow for "first" to mean either "initial" or "first choice" as applicable, Monkey's surely had a heyday at HA.
Then FLAC took the download market and TB drives became so affordable that who bothered to recompress, even if Moore's law also got you a CPUs that could convert to Monkey's and play them back at the same time. Well I guess most of those with big collections bought new drives more often than new CPUs.

(I still remember - must be when I was only lurking here - download stores insisting on no other lossless format than AIFF, and I guess people would download them from their workplaces' high-speed lines. And before people would insist to keep their CD rips as .wav (audio isn't compressed on the CD!!!!!11) - and dBpoweramp introduced "uncompressed" FLAC to satisfy their audiophoolery - there were those praising AIFF for sounding so much better than WAVE. Oh, and hard drive brand was allegedly crucial to sound quality. Those were the days. The days before hi-rez.)

Re: Monkey's Audio Testers Wanted Again

Reply #9 –
Quote from: Porcus on
Quote from: includemeout on
Quote from: Alexxander on
This codec was my first lossless one when many many years ago I started going lossless. [...]
I guess we can safely assume it was most old HA members' 'first'.  ;)

"safely" and "most" becomes a too bold statement - remember people were downloading .shn bootlegs before there were any Hydrogenaudio nor Monkey's nor FLAC (nor WavPack) around -  but if you allow for "first" to mean either "initial" or "first choice" as applicable, Monkey's surely had a heyday at HA.
Fair enough, that was a somehow sloppy choice of words.
Besides, I should've made it clearer, I meant it from the 'encoding for personal use''s POV.
Listen to the music, not the media it's on.
União e reconstrução