I hated MP3/itunes but loves their portability....
and have just found a lovely format called APE, the sound is as good as FLAC and I can duplicate the whole Audio album into a drive and just play like normal CD by album/artist, skip/fast forward etc.

It took me less than 10 minutes to transfer my Audio CD into the ape (and the ape cue list automatically) format and the software can grab the info of the album/track list from the web...

Most important, to my ears, the lossless playback felt like the exact copy and exact sound quality like the real CD, and sound better if the CD player have some wear off lens....

Any of you have tested it?

Hi Michael,

I have not heard of APE but is there also a reason why might one want to consider using this over FLAC? Does it offer deeper, lossless compression? Better compatibility with tags, album art? or is it just another format choice to try out.

Also, could you explain the term "and sound better if the CD player have some wear off lens...."

Any lossless, APE, FLAC, ALAC, should all sound the same as CD. Hence the term, "lossless."

That's why I asked what 'other' features it might offer. By "Deeper Lossless compression," I meant does it compresses to smaller file sizes than flac but remains lossless.

Sorry, I was mostly aiming at the mpyw there.

I've rip the "Tracy Chapman - Tracy Chapman" album into the HDD, total size is 194MB for the whole album.

I like the APE cue list as it will arrange the tracks according to the album without needed me to manually to create a playlist to it.

I've ripped the hundreds of CDs I have numerous times to different formats (and this is just in the last year and a half).

APE, FLAC, Window Lossless, Back to FLAC, now I'm back to Windows lossless, with a second mp3 copy.

To me it all depends on the players you are using it with

For me using a Squeezebox, Xbox360s and WMC. Windows lossless just works, and with my WHS MyMovies plug in, I can rip to Windows Media Lossless and also have a second copy ripped in mp3 "automagically" in a different directory for my droid.. so that's my current flavor(s)

APE was the least unfriendly, FLAC plays nice most places, but WMA Lossless, is working for me now... again, depends on your preferred players

I can't tell the difference between a CD and a high quality encode of it in mp3 or wma (using spdif from my HTPC to the AVR). I still think the origonal mastering of the album makes much more difference than the medium it comes on.

Amen, brother.

Hey!! Don't we have enough worms crawling around here already?

I havn't really tried a comparison. I figure I have room for flac on my pc so have gone that route.

Naw, we don't have a cable or break in thread going at the moment.