APE file format (.ape)

What is an APE file?

In short: An APE file (.ape) is an audio file in the APE format. APE compresses audio losslessly and squeezes out a few per cent more than FLAC, at the cost of decoding that is several times slower and a licence that is not open. It can be converted to MP3, WAV or FLAC for free in a web browser with iHateFiles, without uploading it.

Monkey's Audio, released by Matthew Ashland in 2000.

APE compresses audio losslessly and squeezes out a few per cent more than FLAC, at the cost of decoding that is several times slower and a licence that is not open. It has a devoted following in archival circles and very little support anywhere else.

What APE is good at

• Slightly smaller than FLAC
• Genuinely lossless
• Popular in some archival communities

Where APE falls short

• Decoding is slow enough to matter on low-powered devices
• Licence is not open source
• Very limited player support

When to use APE

Convert APE to FLAC. You lose a few per cent of size and gain support everywhere.

How to open a APE file

Foobar2000, VLC and a handful of dedicated players.

The thing that usually goes wrong

APE to FLAC is lossless in both directions, so nothing at all is lost in making that swap.

Inside a APE file

Monkey's Audio is lossless compression, like FLAC, and it compresses a few percent smaller. That margin is the entire reason it has any users, and it comes at a cost people discover later.

The cost is asymmetry. APE spends far more processor time than FLAC, and the higher compression levels — Extra High and Insane — are slow enough that older hardware players stutter or refuse. FLAC decodes cheaply by design; APE decodes expensively by design.

It also arrived under a licence that was not quite open in the way FLAC was, so hardware makers standardised on FLAC and APE stayed a desktop enthusiast format. Most APE files in circulation are full-album rips paired with a .cue sheet, which is why converting one often produces a single long track that still needs splitting.